[Sidenote: To be compared with Gibbon.] He lived in the days when the world was recovering from its horror at the French Revolution, and the reaction against the monarchical restorations in central Europe was setting in. He was persuaded that the great social and political results of Greek history were because of, and not in spite of, the prevalence of democracy among its States, and because of the number and variety of these States. He would not accept the verdict of all the old Greek theorists who voted for the rule of the one or the enlightened few; and he wrote what may be called a great political pamphlet in twelve volumes in vindication of democratic principles. It was this idea which not only marshalled his facts, but lent its fire to his argument; and when combined with his Radicalism in religion and philosophy, produced a book so remarkable, that, however much it may be corrected and criticised, it will never be superseded. It is probably the greatest history among the many great histories produced in this century; and though very inferior in style to Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_, will rank next to it as a monument of English historical genius. [Sidenote: His eloquence.] [Sidenote: His panegyric on democracy.] There are chapters of speculation, such as those on the Greek myths and their historical value, on the Homeric question, on Socrates and the Sophists, which mark an epoch in the history of their respective subjects, and have been ever since gradually moulding even the most obstinate opponents, who at first rejected his theories with scorn[15:1]. There are chapters of narrative, such as that on the battle of Platæa, or the Athenian defeat at Syracuse, where he so saturates himself with the tragic grandeur of the events, and with the consummate art of his great Greek predecessors, that his somewhat clumsy and unpolished style takes their colour and rises to the full dignity of his great subject. But the greatest novelty among the many which adorn his immortal work is his admirable _apologia_ for democracy,--for that form of government where legislation is the result of discussion; where the minority feels bound to acquiesce in the decision of the majority; and where the administrators of the law are the servants, not the masters, of the nation, appointed with defined powers to terminable magistracies, and liable to indictment for exceeding or abusing these powers. He occupied the whole body of the book in illustrating how the voluntary submission of the free citizen to control of this kind, the alternation in the same men of commanding and obeying, and the loyalty and patriotism thus engendered, were far higher social factors than the enforced or unreasoning submission of the masses to the dictates of a monarch or a close aristocracy. [Sidenote: Objections: that democracies are short-lived;]