ctable book; I mean respectable from its
antiquity, and from containing, as Herder says, 'the earliest records of
the human race,' though those records are far from being dispassionately
written, on which account they are of less value than they otherwise
might have been. There is too much passion in the Bible, too much
violence; now, to come to all truth, especially historic truth, requires
cool, dispassionate investigation, for which the Jews do not appear to
have ever been famous. We are ourselves not famous for it, for we are a
passionate people; the Germans are not--they are not a passionate
people--a people celebrated for their oaths: we are. The Germans have
many excellent historic writers, we--'tis true we have Gibbon. You have
been reading Gibbon--what do you think of him?"

"I think him a very wonderful writer."

"He is a wonderful writer--one _sui generis_--uniting the perspicuity of
the English--for we are perspicuous--with the cool, dispassionate
reasoning of the Germans. Gibbon sought after the truth, found it, and
made it clear."

"Then you think Gibbon a truthful writer."

"Why, yes; who shall convict Gibbon of falsehood? Many people have
endeavoured to convict Gibbon of falsehood; they have followed him in his
researches, and have never found him once tripping. Oh, he's a wonderful
writer! his power of condensation is admirable; the lore of the whole
world is to be found in his pages. Sometimes in a single note he has
given us the result of the study of years; or, to speak metaphorically,
'he has ransacked a thousand Gulistans, and has condensed all his
fragrant booty into a single drop of otto'."

"But was not Gibbon an enemy to the Christian faith?"

"Why, no; he was rather an enemy to priestcraft, so am I; and when I say
the philosophy of the Bible is in many respects unsound, I always wish to
make an exception in favour of that part of it which contains the life
and sayings of Jesus of Bethlehem, to which I must always concede my
unqualified admiration--of Jesus, mind you; for with his followers and
their dogmas I have nothing to do. Of all historic characters, Jesus is
the most beautiful and the most heroic. I have always been a friend to
hero-worship, it is the only rational one, and has always been in use
amongst civilised people--the worship of spirits is synonymous with
barbarism--it is mere fetish; the savages of West Africa are all spirit
worshippers. But there is something p