that no historian has yet appeared in Great
Britain who has done justice to the theme. Yet unquestionably none has
even approached it. Mill's history is the only one in our language which
treats of the subject otherwise than as a branch of general history; and
though his work is trustworthy and authentic, it is destitute of the
chief qualities requisite for the successful prosecution of so great an
undertaking. It is--a rare fault in history--a great deal too short. It
is not in two thin octavo volumes that the annals of the conflict of
Europe and Asia for two centuries is to be given. It is little more than
an abridgement, for the use of young persons, of what the real history
should be. It may be true, but it is dull; and dulness is an
unpardonable fault in any historian, especially one who had such a
subject whereon to exert his powers. The inimitable episode of Gibbon on
the storming of Constantinople by the Crusaders, is written in a very
different style: the truths of history, and the colours of poetry, are
there blended in the happiest proportions together. There is a fragment
affording, _so far as description goes_, a perfect model of what the
history of the Crusades should be; what in the hands of genius it will
one day become. But it is a model _only_ so far as description goes.
Gibbon had greater powers as an historian than any modern writer who
ever approached the subject; but he had not the elevated soul requisite
for the highest branches of his art, and which was most of all called
for in the annalist of the Crusades. He was destitute of enlightened
principle; he was without true philosophy; he had the eye of painting,
and the _powers_, but not the _soul_ of poetry in his mind. He had not
moral courage sufficient to withstand the irreligious fanaticism of his
age. He was benevolent; but his aspirations never reached the highest
interests of humanity,--humane, but "his humanity ever slumbered where
women were ravished, or Christians persecuted."[6]

Passion and reason in equal proportions, it has been well observed, form
energy. With equal truth, and for a similar reason, it may be said, that
intellect and imagination in equal proportions form history. It is the
want of the last quality which is in general fatal to the persons who
adventure on that great but difficult branch of composition. It in every
age sends ninety-nine hundreds of historical works down the gulf of
time. Industry and accuracy are so evid