nsient and mutable, these only
eternal and universal, assuredly whatever light may be thrown on the
mental constitution of man, even on the constitution of nature and the
laws which govern the world, will be concentered so as to give a more
penetrating vision of those undying truths.... Christianity may yet
have to exercise a far wider, even if more silent and untraceable
influence, through its primary, all-pervading principles, on the
civilisation of mankind.'

Macaulay, speaking of the 'History of Latin Christianity' in his
Journal, says, 'I was more impressed than ever by the contrast between
the substance and the style: the substance is excellent; the style
very much otherwise.' Looking at it from a purely literary point of
view it had undoubtedly great merits. Milman had an admirable sense of
proportion--a rare quality in history. He was invariably lucid, and it
is easy to cull from his history many characters excellently drawn,
many pages of vivid narrative, or terse and weighty criticism. Still,
on the whole his historic style is on a lower level than that of
Macaulay, Buckle, and Froude, though it will compare, I think, not
unfavourably with that of Hallam and Grote. The points of controversy
are usually relegated to his notes, which contain a great mass of
curious learning and excellent criticism. The reader who turns to them
from works of the German school will be struck by his strong English
common-sense and grasp of facts, and his dislike of subtle far-fetched
ingenuities of explanation. He has the crowning merit of being always
readable, and his strong sane moral sense never left him. He was
probably at his best in the later volumes, when he could treat his
subject like secular history and was free from the embarrassing
theological difficulties of the earlier portion, and he is especially
admirable in those chapters which give scope to his wide literary and
artistic sympathies. He was an excellent Italian scholar and keenly
sensible of the beauties of Italian literature, and his love of the
ancient classics never left him. There was something at once
characteristic and amusing in the delight which he again and again
expressed, after the termination of his History, at being able to
return to them after spending so many years in reading bad Latin and
Greek. In taste and character he was indeed pre-eminently a man of
letters, and as such he ranks in the first line among his
contemporaries.

The outburst of