ent
of Clarendon are none the less his debtors for specific memoirs, the
personal element of history; and while Burnet has been vigorously
repudiated by standard historians, he continues, and justly, to be a
prolific authority. It is conceded by all candid explorers, that, as far
as it goes, the account of England by Rapin is the best. Franklin's
old friend Ralph was commended and quoted by Fox. As the enterprise of
historical writers enlarged and their style became elaborate, these and
such as these lost in popularity what they gained in usefulness. The
charm of rhetorical elegance and broad generalizations gradually usurped
the place of simple narrative and detailed statement. In the very design
of Gibbon there is a certain poetical attraction; his work may aptly
be described as panoramic, unrolling a vast picture or succession of
pictures, too vague in outline and too monotonous in color for minute
impressions, yet, on this account, the more remarkable for general
effect. What Europe was in the Middle Ages we find more specifically in
Hallam; the Moors in Spain have been more vividly painted by subsequent
writers, whose aim was less comprehensive: but how the imperial sway of
Rome subsided into the Christian era, how a republican episode gleamed
athwart her waning power in the casual triumph of Rienzi, the
later emperors, and what occurred in their reign in Jerusalem and
Constantinople, pass emphatically before us in the stately pages which
once charmed readers of English as the model of historic eloquence, and
now excite the admiration of scholars as a monument of erudition and
elaborate but artificial writing. There was a new attraction in the
pleasing style of Robertson and the characterization of Hume; the
winsome language of the one and the transparent diction of the other
made historical reading not so much a task to cumber the memory as a
pastime to entertain the mind; in the one chronicle we followed events
gracefully unfolded, and in the other discussed persons with acuteness;
yet, when to either was subsequently applied the test of absolute
accuracy and sound deduction, large allowances were demanded for
inadequate research on the part of Robertson and partial inferences on
that of Hume. The theories of the latter indicate why and how, with
all his intellectual abilities, the sympathies of his readers were
inevitably limited; in his view of humanity we find the true cause
of all his deficiencies as an histor