which, in the fine language of Corneille -

'Un grand destin commence, un grand destin s'acheve.'"
This extent and harmony of design is unquestionably that which
distinguishes the work of Gibbon from all other great historical
compositions. He has first bridged the abyss between ancient and
modern times, and connected together the two great worlds of
history. The great advantage which the classical historians
possess over those of modern times is in unity of plan, of course
greatly facilitated by the narrower sphere to which their
researches were confined. Except Herodotus, the great historians
of Greece - we exclude the more modern compilers, like Diodorus
Siculus - limited themselves to a single period, or at 'east to
the contracted sphere of Grecian affairs. As far as the
Barbarians trespassed within the Grecian boundary, or were
necessarily mingled up with Grecian politics, they were admitted
into the pale of Grecian history; but to Thucydides and to
Xenophon, excepting in the Persian inroad of the latter, Greece
was the world. Natural unity confined their narrative almost to
chronological order, the episodes were of rare occurrence and
extremely brief. To the Roman historians the course was equally
clear and defined. Rome was their centre of unity; and the
uniformity with which the circle of the Roman dominion spread
around, the regularity with which their civil polity expanded,
forced, as it were, upon the Roman historian that plan which
Polybius announces as the subject of his history, the means and
the manner by which the whole world became subject to the Roman
sway. How different the complicated politics of the European
kingdoms! Every national history, to be complete, must, in a
certain sense, be the history of Europe; there is no knowing to