'I have been steadily & delightedly reading Mitford's History. First of all, he is an Historian after my own heart, & I really believe a perfectly upright & honest man. He suffers not himself to be dazzled by the splendid qualities of the people he writes about - but, by turns, causes either an enthousiastic admiration of their magnanimity or a just horror of their atrocity. Individually they were the most glorious creatures, God ever permitted to shine upon earth - Collectively, they were infernal: and I take it, as good and honourable Mitford says, it was owing to their faulty religious & political institutions. But certainly the merit of this history is great, in proving, that bad as the world is now, even under Christian regulations., it is not nationally anywhere so bad as it was in Pagan Greece - except during the height and fury of the French Revolution - and still, and ever perhaps in Turkey'.