Then he paused exactly a year before he resolved
to carry on his work to its true end, the taking of Constantinople by
the Turks in 1453. The latter portion he achieved in three volumes
more, which he gave to the world on his fifty-first birthday, in 1788.
Thus the work naturally falls into two equal parts. It will be more
convenient to disregard in our remarks the interval of five years
which separated the publication of the first volume from its two
immediate companions. The first three volumes constitute a whole in
themselves, which we will now consider.
From the accession of Commodus, A.D. 180, to the last of the Western
Caesars, A.D. 476, three centuries elapsed. The first date is a real
point of departure, the commencement of a new stage of decay in the
empire. The second is a mere official record of the final
disappearance of a series of phantom sovereigns, whose vanishing was
hardly noticed. Between these limits the empire passed from the
autumnal calm of the Antonine period, through the dreadful century of
anarchy between Pertinax and Diocletian, through the relative peace
brought about by Diocletian's reforms, the civil wars of the sons of
Constantine, the disastrous defeat of Julian, the calamities of the
Gothic war, the short respite under Theodosius, the growing anarchy
and misery under his incompetent sons, the three sieges of Rome and
its sack by the Goths, the awful appearance of Attila and his Huns,
the final submergence of the Western Empire under the barbarians, and
the universal ruin which marked the close of the fifth century.
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