A strong infusion of the spirit which animated not only Voltaire's _Essay on Manners_, but certain parts of Hume's _History of England_ might have been expected as a matter of course.

It is essentially absent.

Gibbon's private opinions may have been what they will, but he has approved his high title to the character of an historian by keeping them well in abeyance.

When he turned his eyes to the past and viewed it with intense gaze, he was absorbed in the spectacle, his peculiar prejudices were hushed, he thought only of the object before him and of reproducing it as well as he could.

This is not the common opinion, but, nevertheless, a great deal can be said to support it.
It will be as well to take two concrete tests--his treatment of two topics which of all others were most likely to betray him into deviations from historic candour.