Europe, prefixed to his _History of Charles V._, was largely
influenced, if it was not absolutely suggested, by the _Essay on
Manners_. But both Hume and Robertson surpassed their masters, if we
allow, as seems right, that the French were their masters. The Scotch
writers had no quarrel with their country or their age as the French
had. One was a Tory, the other a Whig; and Hume allowed himself to be
unworthily affected by party bias in his historical judgment. But
neither was tempted to turn history into a covert attack on the
condition of things amid which they lived. Hence a calmness and
dignity of tone and language, very different from the petulant
brilliancy of Voltaire, who is never so happy as when he can make the
past look mean and ridiculous, merely because it was the parent of the
odious present. But, excellent as were the Scotch historians--Hume, in
style nearly perfect; Robertson, admirable for gravity and shrewd
sense--they yet left much to be desired. Hume had despatched his five
quartos, containing the whole history of England from the Roman period
to the Revolution, in nine years. Considering that the subject was new
to him when he began, such rapidity made genuine research out of the
question. Robertson had the oddest way of consulting his friends as to
what subject it would be advisable for him to treat, and was open to
proposals from any quarter with exemplary impartiality; this only
showed how little the stern conditions of real historic inquiry were
appreciated by him. In fact it is not doing them injustice to say that
these eminent men were a sort of modern Livies, chiefly occupied with
the rhetorical part of their work, and not over inclined to waste
their time in ungrateful digging in the deep mines of historic lore.
Obviously the place was open for a writer who should unite all the
broad spirit of comprehensive survey, with the thorough and minute
patience of a Benedictine; whose subject, mellowed by long brooding,
should have sought him rather than he it; whose whole previous course
of study had been an unconscious preparation for one great effort
which was to fill his life. When Gibbon sat down to write his book,
the man had been found who united these difficult conditions.

The decline and fall of Rome is the greatest event in history. It
occupied a larger portion of the earth's surface, it affected the
lives and fortunes of a larger number of human beings, than any other
revolution on recor