to disclaim her for a mother.  I spent fourteen months at Magdalen College.  They proved to be fourteen of the most idle and unprofitable months of my whole life.”  This singular experience may be contrasted with that of hundreds, but may be most fittingly illustrated by stating that of Dr. Lowth, a venerable contemporary of the historian.  He speaks enthusiastically of the place where the student is able “to breathe the same atmosphere that had been breathed by Hooker and Chillingworth and Locke; to revel in its grand and well-ordered libraries; to form part of that academic society where emulation without envy, ambition without jealousy, contention without animosity, incited industry and awakened genius.”

Gibbon, while still in his boyhood, had read with avidity ancient and modern history, and had written a juvenile paper on The Age of Sesostris, which was, at least, suggested by Voltaire’s Siecle de Louis XIV.

Early interested, too, in the history of Christianity, his studies led him to become a Roman Catholic; but his belief was by no means stable.  Sent by his father to Lausanne, in Switzerland, to be under the religious training of a Protestant minister, he changed his opinions, and became again a Protestant.  His convictions, however, were once more shaken, and, at the last, he became a man of no creed, a sceptic of the school of Voltaire, a creature of the age of illumination.  Many passages of his history display a sneering unbelief, which moves some persons more powerfully than the subtlest argument.  This modern Platonist, beginning with sensation, evolves his philosophy from within,—­from the finite mind; whereas human history can only be explained in the light of revelation, which gives to humanity faith, but which educes all science from the infinite—­the mind of God.

The history written by Gibbon, called The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, begins with that empire in its best days, under Hadrian, and extends to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, under Mohammed II., in 1453.

And this marvellous scope he has treated with a wonderful equality of research and power;—­the world-absorbing empire, the origin and movements of the northern tribes and the Scythian marauders, the fall of the Western Empire, the history of the civil law, the establishment of the Gothic monarchies, the rise and spread of Mohammedanism, the obscurity of the middle age deepening into gloom, the crusades, the dawning of letters, and the inauguration of the modern era after the fall of Constantinople,—­the detailed history of a thousand years.  It is difficult to conceive that any one should suggest such a task to himself; it is astonishing to think that, with a dignified, self-reliant tenacity of purpose, it should have been completely achieved.  It was an historic period, in which, in the words of Corneille, “Un grand destin commence un grand destin s’acheve.”  In many respects Gibbon’s work stands alone; the general student must refer to Gibbon, because there is no other work to which he can refer.  It was translated by Guizot into French, the first volume by Wenck into German (he died before completing it); and it was edited by Dean Milman in England.