This variety of objects will suspend, for some time, the course of the narrative; but the interruption will be censured only by those readers who are insensible to the importance of laws and manners, while they peruse, with eager curiosity, the transient intrigues of a court, or the accidental event of a battle.
Edward Gibbon, Henry Hart Milman, M. Guizot (François), William Smith (1872). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.197
