tion of his first volume. This suggests the obvious weakness of his position; nor do I mean to adopt the sentiments which I have ventured to attribute to him. What I desire to indicate is the necessity of this position to the discharge of his function as a historian. We can no doubt conceive of a more excellent way; of a great thinker, who should at once be capable of philosophical detachment, of looking at passing events in their relations to the vast drama of human history on the largest scale without losing his interest in the history actually passing under his eyes. He might take not less but more interest in processes which he saw to be the continuation of the great evolution of thought and society. But the phrase indicates the conception which was necessarily obscure to Gibbon. To have reached that view would in his time have required almost superhuman attributes. Gibbon's merits were at the time inconsistent with the virtues of which we regret the absence. He had to choose, one may say, between two alternatives. If he were to take an active part in the politics of the day, he would have had to be a Wilkes on condition of not being a Wilkeite, or at least, with Burke, to give up to party what was
