ugby--and, in spite of the inevitable heavy
conservatism, were allowed to do their work in the field of ancient
history as well as in that of ancient classical literature.

The place of myth in history thus became more and more understood,
and historical foundations, at least so far as SECULAR history was
concerned, were henceforth dealt with in a scientific spirit. The
extension of this new treatment to ALL ancient literature and history
was now simply a matter of time.

Such an extension had already begun; for in 1829 had appeared Milman's
History of the Jews. In this work came a further evolution of the
truths and methods suggested by Bentley, Wolf, and Niebuhr, and their
application to sacred history was made strikingly evident. Milman,
though a clergyman, treated the history of the chosen people in the
light of modern knowledge of Oriental and especially of Semitic peoples.
He exhibited sundry great biblical personages of the wandering days
of Israel as sheiks or emirs or Bedouin chieftains; and the tribes of
Israel as obedient then to the same general laws, customs, and ideas
governing wandering tribes in the same region now. He dealt with
conflicting sources somewhat in the spirit of Bentley, and with the
mythical, legendary, and miraculous somewhat in the spirit of Niebuhr.
This treatment of the history of the Jews, simply as the development of
an Oriental tribe, raised great opposition. Such champions of orthodoxy
as Bishop Mant and Dr. Faussett straightway took the field, and with
such effect that the Family Library, a very valuable series in which
Milman's history appeared, was put under the ban, and its further
publication stopped. For years Milman, though a man of exquisite
literary and lofty historical gifts, as well as of most honourable
character, was debarred from preferment and outstripped by ecclesiastics
vastly inferior to him in everything save worldly wisdom; for years he
was passed in the race for honours by divines who were content either
to hold briefs for all the contemporary unreason which happened to be
popular, or to keep their mouths shut altogether. This opposition to him
extended to his works. For many years they were sneered at, decried, and
kept from the public as far as possible.

Fortunately, the progress of events lifted him, before the closing years
of his life, above all this opposition. As Dean of St. Paul's he really
outranked the contemporary archbishops: he lived to see his m