When such is the magnificence and interest of the subject of the Crusades, it is surprising 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]