With all these merits, and they are great, and with this rare combination of antiquarian industry with philosophic generalization, Sismondi is far from being a perfect historian. He did well to abridge his great works; for he will find few readers who will have perseverance enough to go through them. An abridgement was tried of Gibbon; but it had little success, and has never since been attempted. You might as well publish an abridgement of Waverley or Ivanhoe. Every reader of the _Decline and Fall_ must feel that condensation is impossible, without an omission of interest or a curtailment of beauty. Sismondi, with all his admirable qualities as a general and philosophic historian, wants the one thing needful in exciting interest--descriptive and dramatic power. He was a man of great vigour of thought and clearness of observation, but little genius--at least of that kind of genius which is necessary to move the feelings or warm the imagination. That was his principal defect; and it will prevent his great works from ever commanding the attention of a numerous body of general readers, however much they may be esteemed by the learned and studious. Conscious of this deficiency, he makes scarce any attempt to make his narrative interesting; but, reserving his whole strength for general views on the progress of society, or philosophic observations on its most important changes, he fills up the intermediate space with long quotations from chronicles, memoirs, and state papers--a sure way, if the selection is not made with great judgment, of rendering the whole insupportably tedious. Every narrative, to be interesting, should be given in the writer's _own words_, unless on those occasions, by no means frequent, when some striking or remarkable expressions of a speaker, or contemporary writer, are to be preserved. Unity of style and expression is as indispensable in a history which is to move the heart, or fascinate the imagination, as in a tragedy, a painting, or an epic poem.