ty.' 'What a delightful book, so tolerant
of the intolerant!' was his characteristic eulogy of the work of
another writer, and it truly reflects the turn of his own mind.
Provost Hawtrey, who was no mean judge of men, said, after an intimacy
of nearly fifty years, that he had never known a man who possessed in
a greater degree than Milman the virtue of Christian charity in its
highest and rarest form. It was a gift which stood him in good stead
in dealing with the very blended characters, the tangled politics, the
often misguided enthusiasms of ecclesiastical history. While he was
constitutionally extremely averse to the moral casuistry which
confuses the boundaries of right and wrong, he had too sound a grasp
of the evolution of history to fall into the common error of judging
the acts of one age by the moral standards of another. His history was
eminently a history of large lines and broad tendencies. The growth,
influence, and decline of the Papacy--the distinctive characteristics
of Latin and Teutonic Christianity; the effect of Christianity on
jurisprudence; the monastic system in its various phases; the rise and
conquests of Mohammedanism; the severance of Greek from Latin
Christianity; Charlemagne, Hildebrand, the Crusades, the Templars, the
Great Councils; the decay of Latin and the rise of modern languages;
the influence of the Church on literature, painting, sculpture, and
architecture--are but a few of the great subjects he has treated,
always with knowledge and intelligence, often with conspicuous
brilliancy.

In so vast a field there were, no doubt, many subjects which have been
treated with a greater fulness and completeness by other writers.
There are some in which subsequent research has gone far to supersede
what Milman has written, and inaccuracies of detail not unfrequently
crept into his work; but in the truthfulness of its broad lines, in
the sagacity of its estimates both of men and events, it holds a high
place among the histories of the world. Very few historians have
combined in a larger measure the three great requisites of knowledge,
soundness of judgment, and inexorable love of truth. The growth and
modifications of doctrines and the minutiae of religious controversies
were, however, subjects in which he took little interest, and though
they could not be excluded from an ecclesiastical history, they are
dealt with only in a slight and cursory manner. Those who desire to
study in detail this