by the public at large. The original work is quite unfit to be put into the hands of youth, on account both of its insidious misrepresentations of facts relating to the history of Christianity, and the disgusting obscenity which abounds in the notes *. Yet, unfortunately, we possess no work in the English language, which can be recommended as a substitute for this masterly performance; and he who has not read Gibbon-we speak of general readers not having access to the original sources-must be ignorant of one half of authentic history. We do not rank ourselves among the admirers of Mr. Gibbon's style, which is very deficient in that first attribute of good writing-perspicuity. Many of his sentences are perfect enigmas; and although splendid passages might be cited, exhibiting the florid style of composition in all the force and richness of which it is susceptible, yet, the effect of continuous reading is to pall and weary the attention. Gibbon has the art of condensing a volume of information into a few sentences; and when he can be depended upon, he is a most convenient authority to cite, both on account of the fulness and pithiness of his elaborate periods, and the pleasing effect produced by detached passages from his work, when aptly introduced and well set. The effect comes indeed very near to that of a well-chosen citation from a Greek or Roman classic. But sometimes, Gibbon assumes, by his recondite allusions, that information on the part of his reader, which it is the province of the historian to convey; and what is worse, he often assumes as well known and certain, that which is doubtful and disputed. He is never more peremptory in his allegations, than when he has least ground for his confidence. In aiming to be laconic, he is sometimes incoherent, erowding two or three sentences into one, and torturing the English language into the cramp forms of the Latin syntax. Throughout his history, the historian is too apparent. The reader is never suffered to lose sight of Mr. Gibbon, the philosopher, who evidently never forgets himself. The ruling motive which inspired his labours, was ambition, and he has raised for himself, in his great work, a splendid monument, the temple of his fame; but every where, as in the stupendous excavations of the Hindoo idolatry, we are met by the image or symbol of the Mahadeva to whose honour it was dedicated. Mr. Gibbon, we are told,

'aspired to the character of an historian long before he could fix upon

It has been often asserted, that objectionable expressions are confined to the learned languages. Innumerable passages, the Editor remarks, particularly in the last six volumes, might be adduced to prove the contrary...

à subject. Such early predilection is not uncommon. It was the case particularly with Dr. Robertson, and probably is always the case with men who have been eminently distinguished in any one branch of science. The time was favourable to Mr. Gibbon's ambition. He was daily witnessing the triumphs of Hume and Robertson, and he probably thought, with a vanity that cannot now be blamed, that a subject only was wanting to form his claim to equai honours.'-p. xxiv.

That this vague desire after literary distinction is 'always' the motive which actuates the votaries of science and literature, we cannot admit. We are, indeed, disposed to question, whether those who have the most eminently distinguished themselves in the various branches of science and literature, were impelled by any such principle. The mere passion for a name, is the ambition of a boy or of a little mind, and has originated few undertakings of a truly great or beneficial character. Literary vanity may be awakened in the minds of those who have been successful in their pursuits; and few are proof against its influence; but that is a very different 'case' from the one supposed to be so general. The love of learning or of truth has led thousands to consume the midnight oil over the manuscript or the problem, who never dreamed of fame. History, undertaken with this view, and written in this spirit, is not likely to be honestly or impartially directed to its proper object. There is something more respectable (although we admit it to be more noxious) even in that party spirit which has sometimes led writers to undertake such labours for the purpose of establishing or disseminating their political opinions, and of serving the cause of their church or faction. Surely, the attempt to benefit society, which even the partizan may be supposed to have in view, is more deserving of respect, than the selfish aim at literary honour.

But, whatever motive supplied the first impulse to Mr. Gibbon's ambitious labours, his choice of a subject must be supposed to have been determined by a distinct purpose. Accidental circumstances may have suggested the idea of the work, but that idea received its shape and character from the previous views and opinions of the man. He had long revolved several epochs and events as fit subjects for the exercise of his powers; among which he enumerates, in his Memoirs, the expedition of Charles VIII. into Italy; the crusade of Richard I.; the war of the Barons against John and Henry III. of England; the history of Edward the Black Prince; the life of Henry V.; of Sir Philip Sidney; of the Marquis of Montrose; of Sir Walter Raleigh; a history of the Swiss Revolution; Memoirs of the Republic of Florence under the Medici. These early projects were suspended by his continental travels. It was at Rome,' he tells us, 'on the 15th of October, 1764, as he sat

"musing amid the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed 'friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, (now the church of the Franciscan friars,) that the idea of writing the 'Decline and Fall of the City first started to my mind.' This idea, he afterwards extended to the Roman empire. Can there be a doubt as to the nature of the reflections, to which the circumstance above mentioned gave rise in the mind of the future historian of Christianity?-that the suggested contrast between the fallen majesty of classic heathenism and the extant mummery of the intrusive faith, was, to his feelings, altogether to the disadvantage of the latter? To a man whose nominal religion lay wholly in his imagination,-who identified the ill-understood creed with the unmeaning ceremonial, the genius of Christianity with the institutions of a corrupt Church,-how could it fail to be so? At Rome, above all other places, to escape becoming an infidel, a Christian man would require to be something more or something less than a philosopher. Reasoning only from the spectacle which is there presented to him, and from the dark records of ecclesiastical history, his conclusions must be fatal to his faith. If he did not detect the false Una imposed upon him by the Archimage, his attachment to the True One must be endangered by the cheat.

It was seven or eight years before Mr. Gibbon was at leisure to enter in earnest upon the composition of his history, and twelve before the first volume made its appearance. In the mean time, his friendship with Hume, and his virulent controversy with Warburton, may be supposed to have strengthened his philosophical antipathies against the Christian 'priesthood' and their doctrines. But the workings of his mind during the time that he was arranging the materials for his great work, may be learned from his own avowal. As I believed,' he tells us, and as I still believe, that the propagation of the Gospel and the triumph of the Church are inseparably connected 'with the decline of the Roman monarchy, I weighed the causes and effects of the revolution, and contrasted the narratives and apologies of the Christians themselves, with the 'glances of candour or enmity which the Pagans have cast on the rising sects. The Jewish and Heathen testimonies, as 'they are collected and illustrated by Dr. Lardner, directed, without superseding, my search of the originals; and in an ample dissertation on the miraculous darkness of the Passion, I privately drew my conclusions from the silence of an unbe'lieving age.'

The elaborate passage in which the Historian attempts to fasten incredibility upon the evangelical narratives, reasoning from the supine inattention of the Pagan and philosophic 'world' to the miracles recorded to have taken place, is an

illustrious specimen of the insidious unfairness and malignant design of the English Porphyry. Mr. Bowdler has suppressed the whole chapter, towards the close of which it occurs, as well as the preceding one. Every one ought, however, to be acquainted with the infidel objection so ingeniously urged, so eloquently argued, and so triumphantly refuted by the learned Bishop of Llandaff,-the only opponent whom this champion of Infidelity did not affect to despise, yet whom he never at tempted to answer. Gibbon, we have seen, was conversant with the great work of Lardner; and he admits in a note, (inserted to save his own credit without weakening the force of the insinuation in the text,) that 'Origen and a few modern ' critics, Beza, Le Clerc, Lardner, &c., are desirous of con'fining' the preternatural darkness of the Passion 'to the land ' of Judea.' The only question with an honest historian ought to have been, what is the statement of the Evangelists. Ac- ~ cess to the New Testament was not less easy, than to Calmet and the fathers; but to this document, Gibbon disdained to apply his learned diligence. He must have known, however, from consulting Lardner, that the opinion upon which he builds the whole difficulty, is not justified by the sacred text. He represents the darkness which overspread the land, as greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye had been wit ness since the creation of the globe,'-such a one as neither Seneca nor Pliny could have failed to record. And he knew at the same time, that this infidel objection was as old as the time of Origen, and had been as long ago refuted by a simple appeal to the language of the record. But the sound criticism of Lardner, supported by Beza, Vossius, Bynæus, Whitby, Le Clerc, L'Enfant, and Basnage, is here contemptuously dismissed as a mere 'desire' to confine the darkness to the land of Judea. This is a fair specimen, by no means a solitary instance, though a signal one, of the unfairness and sinister design of this eloquent enemy of Christ. And we have seen from his own avowal, that he deliberately sat down to the composition of his history, with a mind thus impregnated with hostility against the Christian faith.

the

The great argument of his History is, indeed, not obscurely announced in the opening paragraph, although there is nothing in the eloquent misrepresentation directly offensive or obviously objectionable. We transcribe it from Mr. Bowdler's edition.

In the second century of the Christian era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused

the advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence. The Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the empe rors all the executive powers of government. During a happy period of more than fourscore years, the public administration was conducted by the virtues and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines. It is the design of this, and of the two succeeding chapters, to describe the prosperous condition of their empire; and afterwards, from the death of Marcus Antoninus, to deduce the most important circumstances of its decline and fall: a revolution which will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth.'

The revolution, it is not very indistinctly implied, was a baleful one for the happiness of mankind; and with the disastrous overthrow of this fair fabric, the propagation of the Gospel and the triumph of the Church were, in the Historian's mind, inseparably connected. This sentiment is the key to the whole narrative. We know, from his own avowal, that this was Gibbon's opinion; and holding such an opinion, he could not but frame his history according to this ground-work. Nor is it of his infidelity that we have a right to complain, but of his unfairness and insidiousness: it is not the dagger, but the mask that marks him as the intellectual assassin. For his infidelity, he had the excuse, such as it is, of mistaking the corruption of Christianity for the religion of Christ, and a political institution for the visible Church. Let the Historian be allowed to put the question his own way, and state it thus:-whether Pagan Rome or Papal Rome has been the fouler and more bloody tyrant and persecutor, the greater enemy of social happiness, and it would be no easy task to prove Giant Pope to be a wit better than Giant Pagan. Viewing then the revolution simply as issuing in the enthronement of the Papal power on the ruins of the Augustan empire, although we could not participate in the Historian's regrets at the abolition of the obscene rites of classic idolatry, we should be compelled to admit, that little had been gained, as regards the immediate seat of the Roman empire, by the change of dynasty and of ritual which has consigned the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus to the barefooted monks of St. Francis.

If we could forget that Mr. Gibbon was an Englishman, a professed Protestant, with the New Testament in his hand, and could view him as an enlightened Pagan philosopher, we might even concede to him the merit of great candour and impartiality. Such a history of the progress of Christianity would have done the highest honour to a Pliny or a Tacitus; and we should only have had to deplore the force of their prejudices and the unhappy origin of the mistake under which they laboured as to the true character and claims of the religion they