of view. Hume was a Tory, and
took the side of the Stuarts against the Puritans. He sometimes
misrepresented facts if they did not uphold his views. His _History_
is consequently read more to-day as a literary classic than as an
authority.

[Illustration: EDWARD GIBBON. _From the painting by Sir Joshua
Reynolds_.]

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) is the greatest historian of the century.
His monumental work, _The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire_, in six volumes, begins with the reign of Trajan, A.D. 98, and
closes with the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople in
1453. Gibbon constructed a "Roman road" through nearly fourteen
centuries of history; and he built it so well that another on the same
plan has not yet been found necessary. E.A. Freeman says: "He remains
the one historian of the eighteenth century whom modern research has
neither set aside nor threatened to set aside." In preparing his
_History_, Gibbon spent fifteen years. Every chapter was the subject
of long-continued study and careful original research. From the
chaotic materials which he found, he constructed a history remarkable
as well for its scholarly precision as for the vastness of the field
covered.

His sentences follow one another in magnificent procession. One feels
that they are the work of an artist. They are thickly sprinkled with
fine-sounding words derived from the Latin. The 1611 version of the
first four chapters of the _Gospel_ of John averages 96 per cent of
Anglo-Saxon words, and Shakespeare 89 per cent, while Gibbon's average
of 70 per cent is the lowest of any great writer. He has all the
coldness of the classical school, and he shows but little sympathy
with the great human struggles that are described in his pages. He has
been well styled "a skillful anatomical demonstrator of the dead
framework of society." With all its excellences, his work has,
therefore, those faults which are typical of the eighteenth century.

[Illustration: EDMUND BURKE. _From the painting by Sir Joshua
Reynolds, National Portrait Gallery_.]

Political Prose.--Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was a distinguished
statesman and member of the House of Commons in an important era of
English history,--a time when the question of the independence of the
American colonies was paramount, and when the spirit of revolt against
established forms was in the air. He is the greatest political writer
of the eighteenth century.

Burke's best pro