We may gladly give Gibbon the benefit of the doubt with which the great judge closes. But surely most attempts to address the mental state depicted must needs be found impotent. There is great force in a dictum of Schelling's ("Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre") to the following effect--"The medium by which spirits understand each other is not the ambient air, but the deep-stirred sympathetic vibrations propagated by a community of spiritual freedom. When a soul is not pervaded by this atmosphere of conscious freedom, all inward communion with self or with another is broken,--what wonder, then, if such a one remain unintelligible to himself and to others, and in his fearful wilderness of spirit wearies himself by idle words, to which no friendly echo responds, either from his own or from another's breast? "To remain unintelligible to such an one is glory and honour before God and man. _Barbarus huic ego sim, nec tali intelligar ulli._ This," concludes Schelling, "is a wish and prayer from which no man can keep himself."--_Sämmtliche Werke_, I. 443. C.--ON SPECIAL PLEADING IN HISTORY AND MORALS. A few emphatic sentences from Lord Macaulay's strictures on historical special pleading will repay perusal:--"This species of misrepresentation abounds in the most valuable works of modern historians. Herodotus tells his story like a slovenly witness, who, heated by partialities and prejudices, unacquainted with the established rules of evidence, and uninstructed as to the obligations of his oath, confounds what he imagines with what he has seen and heard, and brings out facts, reports, conjectures, and fancies in one mass. Hume is an accomplished advocate. Without positively asserting much more than he can prove, he gives prominence to all the circumstances which support his case; he glides lightly over those which are unfavourable to it; his own witnesses are applauded and encouraged; the statements which seem to throw discredit on them are controverted; the contradictions into which they fall are explained away; a clear and connected abstract of their evidence is given. Everything that is offered on the other side is scrutinised with the utmost severity; every suspicious circumstance is a ground for comment and invective; what cannot be denied is extenuated, or passed by without notice; concessions even are sometimes made; but this insidious candour only increases the effect of the vast mass of sophistry. "We have mentioned Hume as the ablest and most popular writer of his class; but the charge which we have brought against him is one to which all our most distinguished historians are in some degree obnoxious. Gibbon, in particular, deserves very severe censure."--_Macaulay's Miscellaneous Writings--History._