arlisle's customers.'[50]

The opinions expressed in this, as in his later works, no doubt in
some degree obstructed the promotion of Milman in the Church, but he
had no reason to regret it. Of all men, he once said, he thought he
owed most to Bishop Blomfield, for there was once a question of
offering him a bishopric, and it was a remonstrance of the Bishop of
London that prevented it. 'I am _afraid_,' he said, 'that if it had
been offered me I should have accepted it, and I should then never
have written my "Latin Christianity."' But, though he escaped the fate
which has cut short the best work of more than one distinguished
historian, his conspicuous position among the scholars and writers in
the Church was widely recognised, and he was soon transferred from a
provincial town to a central position in the Metropolis. In 1835 Sir
Robert Peel made him Rector of St. Margaret's, Westminster, and
Prebendary in the Abbey. Though continuing without intermission his
historical work, he appears to have discharged with exemplary vigour
the duties of a large and poor parish until 1849, when Lord John
Russell appointed him Dean of St. Paul's. The position was exactly
suited to him. It was one of much dignity, but also of much leisure,
and it gave him ample opportunities of pursuing the studies which were
the true work of his life.

The great subject of the history of Christianity was, indeed,
continually before him. Among other things, he studied minutely both
the text and the authorities of Gibbon, for whom he had a deep and
growing admiration. An excellent edition of Gibbon was one of the
first results. Milman's notes have been included in Smith's later
edition, and, though a large proportion of them were naturally
somewhat controversial, being devoted to refuting some of the
conclusions of the fifteenth and sixteenth chapters, it is impossible
to read them without recognising the candour as well as the learning
and the acumen of the critic. Few things that Milman has written are
finer than the preface in which, in ten or twelve masterly pages, he
sums up his estimate of his great predecessor.

The three volumes of the 'History of Christianity,' dealing with its
early history up to the period of the abolition of Paganism in the
Roman Empire, appeared in 1840, and they were followed by the six
large volumes of the 'History of Latin Christianity,' carrying the
history of the Western Church to the end of the Pontificate of
Nic