Gibbon would have shown a greater sense of historic proportion if he had passed over this period with a few bold strokes, and summed up with brevity such general results as may be fairly deduced.

We may say of the first volume that it was tentative in every way.

In it the author not only sounded his public, but he was also trying his instrument, running over the keys in preparatory search for the right note.

He strikes it full and clear in the two final chapters on the Early Church; these, whatever objections may be made against them on other grounds, are the real commencement of the Decline and Fall.
From this point onwards he marches with the steady and measured tramp of a Roman legion.

His materials improve both in number and quality.
The fourth century, though a period of frightful anarchy and disaster if compared to a settled epoch, is a period of relative peace and order when compared to the third century.