happiness of mankind. We thought history actually passing under his eyes. He might take not less but more interest in processes which he saw to be the continuation of the great evolution of thought and society. But the phrase indicates the conception which was necessarily obscure to Gibbon. To lave reached that view would in his time have required almost superhuman attributes. that their happiness was best secured in the ages when a benevolent despotism maintained peace and order throughout the world; when philosophers could rule and the lower orders be confined to the work for which they were really competent. We held in religion pretty much what you hold, only that you try to cover your real meaning under a cloud of words. We accepted my great maxim: To the philosopher all religions are equally false; and to the magistrate equally useful. You try to spin theories which will combine the two opinions-which will allow you to use the most edifying language, while explaining that it means nothing; and to base arguments for "faith" on the admission that nobody can possibly know anything. We were content to say that it was too much honor to the vulgar to argue as to the truth of their beliefs. We were content to belong to the upper circle of enlightenment in which it was understood that the creeds were meaningless, but without attempting the hopeless task of enlightening the uncultivated mind. Gibbon, no doubt, would have to confess that this view involved an important practical mistake. Philosophy, political and religious, could not be kept as an esoteric doctrine of a narrow circle; and when hot-headed Rousseaus and the like spread its tents among the vulgar, it produced an explosion which took the calm philosophers by surprise. Gibbon began to see a good side even in the superstition, the vitality of which had astonished him so much on the publication of his first volume. This suggests the obvious weakness of his position; nor do I adopt the sentiments which I have ventured to attribute to him. What I desire to indicate is the necessity of this position to the charge of his function as a historian. We can no doubt conceive of a more excellent way; of a great thinker, who should at once be capable of philosophical detachment, of looking at passing events in their relations to the vast drama of human history on the largest scale without losing his interest in the dis Gibbon's merits were scarcely consistent with the virtues of which we regret the absence. He had to choose, one may say, between two alternatives. If he were to take an active part in the politics of the day, he would have had to be a Wilkes on condition of not being a Wilkeite, or at least, with Burke, to give up to party what was meant for mankind. To save him from such a fate, which would have been a hopeless waste of power, he required to be endowed with an excess of indifference, and a deficiency of close and spontaneous sympathy with men outside of his little inner circle. Of this, I fear, he cannot be acquitted. Indeed, his qualification in this respect went a little too far, for he appears to have been on the very point of accepting a post which would have cut short the history half-way. Even his best friends, strangely as it seems to pressed him to commit this semi-suicide. Here, therefore, his good genius had once more to interfere by external circumstances. The task was not difficult. A happy dulness to his claims was infused into the minds of the dispensers of patronage. And Gibbon was compelled to retire to that philosophic retirement, at Lausanne where in due time he was to take the famous stroll in the covered walk of acacias which on 27th June, 1787, succeeded the completion of the "last lines of the last page" of his unique achievement. us, We see how strangely Gibbon had been fitted for his task; how fate had first turned him out of the quiet grooves down which he might have spun to obscurity, and then applied the goad judiciously whenever he tried to bolt from the predestined course. The task itself was obviously demanded by the conditions of the time, and its im He portance recognized by other, and in pears to be simply a "register of the some respects acuter or more powerful crimes, follies, and misfortunes of manintellects. History was to emerge from the stage of mere personal memoirs and antiquarian annals. A survey from a higher point of view was wanted; a general map or panoramic view of the great field of human progress must be laid down as preparatory to further progress. Such men as Hume and Voltaire, for instance, had clearly seen the need, and had endeavored in their way to supply it. Gibbon's superiority was, of course, due in the first place to the high standard of accuracy and research which has enabled his work to stand all the tests ap plied by later critics. His instinctive perception of this necessity, combined with the intellectual courage implied in his choice of so grand a subject, enabled him to combine width of view and fulness of detail with unsurpassed felicity. All this is unanimously granted. But other qualities were equally required, though from a later point of view they account rather for the limitations than the successes of his work. There must be a division of labor between generations as well as between individuals. Kepler had to describe the actual movements of the planets before Newton could determine the nature of the forces implied by the movements. In Gibbon's generation it was necessary to describe the evolutions of the puppets which move across the stage of history. His successors could then, and not till then, attempt to show what were the hidden strings that moved them. Gibbon, it has been said, "adheres to the obvious surface of events, with little attempt to place them beneath the deeper sky of social evolution." He appreciates, it is suggested, neither the great spiritual forces nor the economic conditions which lie beneath the surface. He calmly surveys the great stream of his tory, its mingling currents and deluges and regurgitations, the struggles of priests and warriors and legislators, without suggesting any adequate conceptions of what is called the social dynamics implied. To him history ap kind." The criticism, taking its truth to tial, not enough to be subject to the illusions, useful illusions possibly, of a sudden regeneration of mankind by philosophy. His political position was the necessary complement of his historical position. A later philosophy may have taught us how to see a process of evolution, of a gradual working out of great problems, even in the blind, instinctive aspirations and crude faiths of earlier ages. At Gibbon's time, he had choose between rejecting them in the mass as mere encumbrances or renouncing them altogether. That is to admit that the one point of view which makes a reasonable estimate possible was practically excluded. On the other hand, his historical instinct forced him at last to set forth the material facts both impartially and so grouped and related as to bring out the great issues. It is easy now, both for positivists and unbelievers, to show, for example, that his account of the origin of Christianity was entirely insufficient. He explains, as has been remarked, the success of the Church by the zeal of the early disciples, and forgets to explain how they came to be zealous. Undoubtedly that is an omission of importance. What, however, Gibbon did was not the less effectively to bring out the real conditions of any satisfactory solution of the greatest of historical problems. Newman observed how, in a later period, Athanasius stands out more grandly in Gibbon than in the pages of the orthodox ecclesiastical historians." That is because he places all events in their true historical setting. In the writings of the apologists of the time, the spread of Christianity was treated as though converts had been made by producing satisfactory evidence of miracles in a court of justice. Gibbon's famous chapters, however inadequate, showed at least that the development of the new creed required for its expansion a calm consideration of all the multitudinous forces that go to building up a great ecclesiastical hierarchy and a testing by careful examination of all the entries about saints and martyrs which flowed so easily from the pens of Upon this, however, it would be idle to say more. I have only tried to point an obvious moral; to show what a rare combination of circumstances with character and intellect is required to produce a really monumental work; to show how easy it generally is even for the competent man of genius to mistake his path at starting or to be distracted from it by tempting accidents; how necessary may be not only the intervention of fortunate accidents, but even the presence of qualities which, in other relations, must be regarded as defects. Happily for us, the man came when he was wanted, and just such as he was wanted; but after studying his career, we understand better than ever why great works are so rare. We may probably have known of men-many instances might easily be suggestedwho might be compared to Gibbon in natural endowments, and who have left nothing but fragments, or been confined to obscure tasks, the value of which will never be sufficiently recognized. It is only when the right player comes, and the right cards are judiciously dealt to him by fortune, that the great successes can be accomplished. LESLIE STEPHEN. NOTE.-It may be worth while to explain Lord Sheffield's mode of constructing Gibbon's autobiography, as it is not explicitly set out in the recent publication. Gibbon wrote six MSS., marked A to F. A is confined to an account of previous Gibbons, and D is a brief account of his own life till 1770. Lord Sheffield only used these for the ing his life till 1789; then C, a fuller redaction of opening paragraphs. Gibbon then wrote E, giv E till 1770; then B, a fuller redaction of C till 1764; and finally F, a fuller redaction of B till 1753. Lord Sheffield follows the last version in each case, F to 1753, B from 1753 to 1764, C from 1764 to 1770, and E from 1770 to 1789. He prefers the shorter account of the militia, however, in C to that in B; and restores a phrase or two dropped by Gibbon, So the "sighed as a lover and obeyed From The Fortnightly Review. OUR GENTLEMANLY FAILURES. To hear some people talk, they would almost suppose that athletics were a kind of parasitic growth upon modern educational institutions. He did not take that view, and he never had taken that view. While patience, sobriety, courage, temper, discipline, subordination, were virtues necessary for the highest excel lence either at cricket or football, there was a higher point of need. No doubt a university existed largely to foster that disinterested love of knowledge which was one of the highest of all gifts, and to give that professional training which was an absolute necessity in any modern civilized community. But he did not think the duties of a modern university ended there. A university gave a man all through his life the sense that he belonged to a great community in which he spent his youth, which, indeed he had left, but to which he still belonged. . . . That feeling might be fostered-was fostered, no doubt by a community of education, by attending the same lectures, by passing the same examinations, but no influence fostered it more surely and more effectually than the feeling of common life which the modern athletic sports, as they had been developed in modern places of learning, gave to all those who took an interest in such matters, whether as performers or as spectators."-Mr. Balfour, at Edinburgh. Aspiring young Englishmen should think a little less of athletics, and more of acquiring knowledge such as would make them distinguished citizens.-Mr. H. M. Stanley, in Lambeth. The conflicting, if not contradictory, counsels given by two men who have succeeded in life are placed at the head of this article because they will, perhaps, serve to draw attention to the view it puts forward. It is not a novelty, only a discarded idea which now seems due for revival-a protest against the pleasant cant involved in the phrase mens sana in corpore sano. We need not inquire whether Mr. Balfour would have published his "Defence of Fhilosophic Doubt" at the age of thirtyone, and led the House of Commons in as a son," and the description of Adam Smith as a" master of moral and political wisdom" come from C. his forty-fourth year, if he had made a play-time of his youth, or whether Mr. Stanley does not owe part of his African honors to a frame inured to privation and endurance. But politics and exploring are fancy trades, and offer no criterion for the humdrum callings by which most of us have to thrive, starve, or scrape up a bare sub ac sistence. Still, the divergence in the two texts is not without significance. Each preacher spoke of life as he has found it. Mr. Balfour had his career made smooth from the start: he might turn out, according as he used or wasted his chances, either a brilliant could not come absolutely to grief. Mr. success or a graceful failure, but he Stanley, on the other hand, had to push and drag himself into notice, or eat his heart out in the obscurity that is so galling to a man conscious of great gifts spoiling for want of opportunity. The one had no obstacle to overcome save an ingratiating diffidence; the other had to force his way, through poverty and ignorance, either to knowledged triumph or solitary chagrin. The one perhaps could afford to loiter on the road, trifle with the amenities of a full life, and develop every side of a versatile nature: the other had to be pressing forward all the time. For young men situated as Mr. Balfour was the precepts he delivered at Edinsound as burgh may, perhaps, be as Those they certainly are attractive. whose position more nearly resembles Mr. Stanley's will find him а more trustworthy guide-even if they start with greater advantages in point of birth and education. In any walk of life they may enter they will meet thousands of rivals equally well equipped, and, though the art of getting on does not contain the whole duty of man, it is a chapter which has to be studied. Forty, even thirty, years ago the young man who had passed through his public school with a tolerable record was reasonably sure of a decent berth if he went into commerce, or after taking a fair degree at the university would probably find a modest opening in one of the professions. There was a steady market for his respectable attainments. The number of muscular young Christians turned out on the world every year from the public schools was strictly limited-a few hundreds per annum. Now there are many thousands of them. The beginning of the glut is due to Doctor Arnold, whose famous work at Rugby was quickly imitated by a score of organizing head-masters, who either transformed the languishing grammar schools of country towns into great establishments with several hundred pupils apiece, or invested proprietary enterprises with a corporate and quasipublic character. This process has been carried on by another generation of teachers, and at the present time it would be difficult to point to an English county which does not possess half-a-dozen institutions where the instruction and general training are substantially identical with those administered at "Our Colleges of Eton and Winchester," as mentioned in the Prayer-book. Before Doctor Arnold's day, and for some time afterwards, these privileges had been almost restricted to the sons of parents who belonged by birth to the upper or upper middle class, or had struggled up to that rank. Now the middle class receives a public school education, and we have a generation of young gentlemen out of all numerical proportion to the general increase of our population. Grown and growing up, we see them everywhere; brighteyes, clean-limbed, high-minded, ready for anything, and fit for nothing-unemployed or wearing out their best years in third-rate situations. Walk along Cheapside, and every third young fellow you meet in a silk hat you may recognize as bred upon the Arnold tradition-trained, as part of his nature, to tell the truth and keep his nails clean. Excellent habits, both of them; but not essentials of success in the City of London. If you see one of them swinging along with his muscular stride, his fresh unwrinkled face, and his spotless high collar, you know he is only cheerful because he has been sent out on an errand, and forgets for the moment that he is the drudge of some puffy Israelite, has to call him Sir, and perhaps answer his bell-an estimable and not unkindly person, perhaps, nor without a certain weakness for the manly young clerk who is so little use in the office, and despises him, he feels, because he never took a cold bath in his life, and does not know which way to sit in a boat or which side to mount a horse. The time was, it has been said, when a demand existed for the public school type. It had its value in the City when it was less common. There were some houses which liked to have a show partner or a personable representative -he inspired their more fastidious clients with confidence. But that day has gone by, or all but gone, and a salary now is nicely adjusted to the service a man can render his firm and the business he can introduce. The ordinary merchant is no longer impressed with an athletic record. He does not ask whether the candidate for a stool in his office is the same redoubtable youngster, with the left-hand twist from the off, who took five wickets at Lord's last summer, kicked the odd goal for the Old Muggletonians in the final round for the Cup, or electrified the University of Oxford by stroking the Skimmery Torpid head of the River. Now and again it is true, real eminence in games may come in usefully. There is a genuine camaraderie amongst athletes. Old-fashioned investors may still be found who like paying their commissions to a broker whose name has been honored in the Field; here and there, perhaps, a solicitor is SO saturated with the traditions of his boyhood that he will carry a brief to the chambers of a distinguished cricketer in Lincoln's Inn, just for the pleasure of making his acquaintance and slowing him off afterwards at a dinner party of jolly old buffers like himself. But the normal dispenser of legal patronage entertains a prejudice in favor of counsel who have found time to pick up a little law; and the average Bull, Bear, or Stag fights shy of the high |