on the rise of monasticism is more fair and discriminating
than the average Protestant treatment of that subject. He distinctly
acknowledges the debt we owe the monks for their attention to
agriculture, the useful trades, and the preservation of ancient
literature. The more disgusting forms of asceticism he touches with
light irony, which is quite as effective as the vehement denunciations
of non-Catholic writers. It must not be forgotten that his
ecclesiastical history derives a great superiority of clearness and
proportion by its interweaving with the general history of the times,
and this fact of itself suffices to give Gibbon's picture a permanent
value even beside the master works of German erudition which have been
devoted exclusively to Church matters. If we lay down Gibbon and take
up Neander, for instance, we are conscious that with all the greater
fulness of detail, engaging candour, and sympathetic insight of the
great Berlin Professor, the general impression of the times is less
distinct and lasting. There is no specialism in Gibbon; his book is a
broad sociological picture in which the whole age is portrayed.

To sum up. In two memorable chapters Gibbon has allowed his prejudices
to mar his work as an historian. But two chapters out of seventy-one
constitute a small proportion. In the remainder of his work he is as
free from bias and unfairness as human frailty can well allow. The
annotated editions of Milman and Guizot are guarantees of this. Their
critical animadversions become very few and far between after the
first volume is passed. If he had been animated by a polemical object
in writing; if he had used the past as an arsenal from which to draw
weapons to attack the present, we may depend that a swift blight would
have shrivelled his labours, as it did so many famous works of the
eighteenth century, when the great day of reaction set in. His mild
rebuke of the Abbe Raynal should not be forgotten. He admired the
_History of the Indies_. It is one of the few books that he has
honoured with mention and praise in the text of his own work. But he
points out that the "zeal of the philosophic historian for the rights
of mankind" had led him into a blunder. It was not only Gibbon's
scholarly accuracy which saved him from such blunders. Perhaps he had
less zeal for the rights of mankind than men like Raynal, whose
general views he shared. But it is certain that he did not write with
their settled _parti pris_