"Gibbon is a kind of bridge that connects the ancient with the modern ages" noted Thomas Carlyle. "And how gorgeously does it swing across the gloomy and tumultuous chasm of these barbarous centuries." Indeed Gibbon the supreme historian of the Enlightenmentthe illustrious scholar who envisioned history as a branch of literatureseemed almost predestined to write his monumental account of the Roman Empire's terrible self-destruction. "I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion" wrote the author in the famous epigram that summed up his towering achievement in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The second volume contains chapters twenty-seven through forty-eight of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.