d. For it was essentially one, though it took
centuries to consummate, and though it had for its theatre the
civilised world. Great evolutions and catastrophes happened before it,
and have happened since, but nothing which can compare with it in
volume and mere physical size. Nor was it less morally. The
destruction of Rome was not only a destruction of an empire, it was
the destruction of a phase of human thought, of a system of human
beliefs, of morals, politics, civilisation, as all these had existed
in the world for ages. The drama is so vast, the cataclysm so
appalling, that even at this day we are hardly removed from it far
enough to take it fully in. The mind is oppressed, the imagination
flags under the load imposed upon it. The capture and sack of a town
one can fairly conceive: the massacre, outrage, the flaming roofs, the
desolation. Even the devastation of a province can be approximately
reproduced in thought. But what thought can embrace the devastation
and destruction of all the civilised portions of Europe, Africa, and
Asia? Who can realise a Thirty Years War lasting five hundred years? a
devastation of the Palatinate extending through fifteen generations?
If we try to insert into the picture, as we undoubtedly should do, the
founding of the new, which was going on beside this destruction of the
old, the settling down of the barbarian hosts in the conquered
provinces, the expansion of the victorious Church, driving paganism
from the towns to the country and at last extinguishing it entirely,
the effort becomes more difficult than ever. The legend of the Seven
Sleepers testifies to the need men felt, even before the tragedy had
come to an end, to symbolize in a manageable form the tremendous
changes they saw going on around them. But the legend only refers to
the changes in religion. The fall of Rome was much more than that. It
was the death of the old pagan world and the birth of the new
Christian world--the greatest transition in history.

This, and no less than this, is Gibbon's subject.

He has treated it in such a way as even now fills competent judges
with something like astonishment. His accuracy, coupled with the
extraordinary range of his matter, the variety of his topics, the
complexity of his undertaking, the fulness and thoroughness of his
knowledge, never failing at any point over the vast field, the ease
and mastery with which he lifts the enormous load, are appreciated in
proportion to the