age brought before us in their flow and
expansion, the filiation of events over long periods deduced in clear
sequence, a synoptical view which is to the mind what a picture is to
the eye. In this respect Gibbon's method leaves not a little to be
desired.

Take for instance two of the most important aspects of the subject
that he treated: the barbarian invasions, and the causes of the
decline and fall of the Roman empire. To the concrete side of both he
has done ample justice. The rational and abstract side of neither has
received the attention from him which it deserved. On the interesting
question of the introduction of the barbarians into the frontier
provinces, and their incorporation into the legions, he never seems to
have quite made up his mind. In the twelfth chapter he calls it a
"great and beneficial plan." Subsequently he calls it a disgraceful
and fatal expedient. He recurs frequently to the subject in isolated
passages, but never collects the facts, into a focus, with a view of
deducing their real meaning. Yet the point is second to none in
importance. Its elucidation throws more light on the fall of Rome than
any other considerations whatever. The question is, Whether Rome was
conquered by the barbarians in the ordinary sense of the word,
conquered. We know that it was not, and Gibbon knew that it was not.
Yet perhaps most people rise from reading his book with an impression
that the empire succumbed to the invasion of the barbarians, as
Carthage, Gaul, and Greece had succumbed to the invasion of the
Romans; that the struggle lay between classic Rome and outside
uncivilised foes; and that after two centuries of hard fighting the
latter were victorious. The fact that the struggle lay between
barbarians, who were within and friendly to the empire, and barbarians
who were without it, and hostile rather to their more fortunate
brethren, than to the empire which employed them, is implicitly
involved in Gibbon's narrative, but it is not explicitly brought out.
Romanised Goths, Vandals, and Franks were the defenders, nearly the
only defenders, of the empire against other tribes and nations who
were not Romanised, and nothing can be more plain than that Gibbon saw
this as well as any one since, but he has not set it forth with
prominence and clearness. With his complete mastery of the subject he
would have done it admirably, if he had assumed the necessary point of
view.

Similarly, with regard to the causes o