Could the great septic hydrocele, connected with the abdomen through the inguinal ring, have suddenly burst its bonds and flooded the peritoneum with streptococci? Streptococcic peritonitis is one of the most appalling diseases in surgery. Its symptoms to begin with are vague, and it spreads with the rapidity of a grass fire in summer. After an abdominal section the patient suddenly feels exceedingly weak, there is a little lazy vomiting, the abdomen becomes distended, the pulse goes to pieces in a few hours, and death occurs rapidly while the mind is yet clear. The surgeon usually calls it “shock,” or thinks in his own heart that his assistant is a careless fellow; but the real truth is that streptococci have somehow been introduced into the abdomen and have slain the patient without giving time for the formation of adhesions whereby they might have been shut off and ultimately destroyed. That is what I believe happened to Edward Gibbon. The loss to literature through this untimely tragedy was, of course, irreparable. Gibbon had taken twenty years to mature his unrivalled literary art. His style was the result of unremitting labour and exquisite literary taste; if one accustoms oneself to the constant antitheses--which occasionally give the impression of being forced almost more for the sake of dramatic emphasis than truth--one must be struck with the unvarying majesty and haunting music of the diction, illumined by an irony so sly, so subtle--possibly a trifle malicious--that one simmers with joyous appreciation in the reading. That sort of irony is more appreciated by the onlookers than by its victims, and it is not to be marvelled at that religious people felt deeply aggrieved for many years at the application of it to the Early Christians. Yet, after all, what Gibbon did was nothing more than to show them as men like others; he merely showed that the evidence concerning the beginnings of Christendom was less reliable than the Church had supposed. The _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_ shows the history of the world for more than a thousand years, so vividly, so dramatically, that the characters--who are great nations--move on the stage like actors, and the men who led them live in a remarkable flood of living light. The general effect upon the reader is as if he were comfortably seated in a moving balloon traversing over Time as over continents; as if he were seated in Mr. Wells’s “Time Machine,” viewing the disordered beginnings of modern civilization. I believe that no serious flaw in Gibbon’s history has been found, from the point of view of accuracy. Some people have found it too much a _chronique scandaleuse_, and some modern historians appear to consider that history should be written in a dull and pedantic style rather than be made to live; furthermore, the great advance in knowledge of the Slavonic peoples has tended to modify some of his conclusions. Nevertheless, Gibbon remains, and so far as we can see, will ever