His work is
no longer the vapor of his own brain, which a breath will scatter; it is
the thing itself, which will have interest for all time. A thousand
theories may be formed about it,--spiritual theories. Pantheistic
theories, cause and effect theories? but each age will have its own
philosophy of history, and all these in turn will fail and die. Hegel
falls out of date, Schlegel falls out of date, and Comte in good time
will fall out of date; the thought about the thing must change as we
change; but the thing itself can never change; and a history is durable
or perishable as it contains more or least of the writer's own
speculations. The splendid intellect of Gibbon for the most part kept
him true to the right course in this; yet the philosophical chapters for
which he has been most admired or censured may hereafter be thought the
least interesting in his work. The time has been when they would not
have been comprehended; the time may come when they will seem
commonplace.
It may be said, that in requiring history to be written like a drama, we
require an impossibility.
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