in other fields of thought. Hume and Gibbon had set the example
of a strictly naturalistic treatment of history; and the clerical
Robertson was faithful to their method; but Hallam makes a stand
for supernaturalism even in applying a generally scientific critical
standard. The majority of historical events he is content to let pass
as natural, even as the average man sees the hand of the doctor in
his escape from rheumatism, but the hand of God in his escape from
a railway accident. Discussing the defeat of Barbarossa at Legnano,
Hallam pronounces that it is not "material to allege ... that the
accidental destruction of Frederic's army by disease enabled the
cities of Lombardy to succeed in their resistance.... Providence
reserves to itself various means by which the bonds of the oppressor
may be broken; and it is not for human sagacity to anticipate whether
the army of a conqueror shall moulder in the unwholesome marshes of
Rome or stiffen with frost in a Russian winter." [1926]
But Hallam was nearly the last historian of distinction to vend
such nugatory oracles as either a philosophy or a religion of
history. Even the oracular Carlyle did not clearly stipulate for
"special providences" in his histories, though he leant to that
conception; and though Ranke also uses mystifying language, he writes
as a Naturalist; while Michelet is openly anti-clerical. Grote
was wholly a rationalist; the historic method of his friend and
competitor, Bishop Thirlwall, was as non-theological as his; Macaulay,
whatever might be his conformities or his bias, wrote in his most
secular spirit when exhibiting theological evolution; and George
Long indicated his rationalism again and again. [1927] It is only
in the writings of the most primitively prejudiced of those German
historians who eliminate ethics from historiography that the "God"
factor is latterly emphasized in ostensibly expert historiography.