with what satisfaction almost he records that Protestantism has come to a stand-still, forgetting or ignoring the facts that, although as a proselytising power nearly stationary in Europe, it is advancing as a missionary power in every other part of the globe; that as the principal element of British progress, its torch is leading the great march of general civilisation; that, in its rudest shape, as "Protestantism protesting against itself," it has of late begun to heave in revolution every country and throne on the Continent; and that even to hint a doubt as to the ultimate result of its struggle with Popery, is an act of treachery and cowardice, and betrays an ignorance of its true nature and pretensions. In all his later papers, Macaulay talks as if Popery and Protestantism were modifications of one system, instead of being opposed, as light is to darkness, inertia to progress, deceit to truth, God to the Devil. And while considering the attempts of such men as Macaulay to fritter away to nothing the distinctions between God's creed and the Devil's creed, we are tempted to use the language of the prophet, "Wo to them who put darkness for light and light for darkness, bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter, evil for good and good for evil." The contest between Popery and Protestantism is no scuffle in the dark between detachments of the same army; it is a deadly fight between deadly foes, carried on in one compartment of that field, the world, where the powers of light and darkness have been waging for ages their ever-deepening, ever widening, but not for a moment dubious engagement.

Protestantism at a stand-still! Neither as a statement of the facts at the time the paper was written, nor as a prophecy of what has occurred since, is this assertion of any value. It is true that nations do not of late change their creeds as individuals their cloaks. Islands are not now converted, as of yore, by the "yellow stick" of a Protestant proprietor (see Dr. Johnson's "Tour to the Hebrides"). Protestantism has, like many a strong tide, been rolled back again and again in its progress. Catholicism, on the other hand, has had, and has at this hour, spasmodic revivals, sudden flushes, like the colors of the dying dolphin. She is dying hard. Nor can she fully expire till the brightness of Christ's coming surprise, and the "breath of his mouth" consume, her. But, apart

from this, we think it difficult for a candid and true-telling observer to shut his eyes to the fact of a slow, steady, cumulative advance of the part of Protestantism-often repulsed, sometimes driven fiercely back, but always returning to the charge, and gaining sure and gradual ground with the wave of each successive generation. What, after all, has she lost? At her birth, she was hailed by literature and science they -on the points, at least, in which she differs from Poperyare on her side still. Her infant arm lifted the Printing Press, the Mariner's Compass, and the Telescope. She holds them now with a stronger grasp than ever. She rent then the shroud from the Bible, and she still defies the Catholic world to repair the rent. In Britain and the United States, and the great rising colonies of the South, and in the stronger half of Germany, she possesses the real keys of the intellectual world-keys more powerful than those fabled ones which clank at the side of Peter. In our own country, she, not long ago, with almost a superfluous expenditure of power and wrath, repelled the insolence of Papal aggression. One thing only does she want to complete the strength and dignity of her attitude, that is, not to become more Popish, but to become more Protestant. Without sacrificing her Bible or the leading principles of her creeds, without yielding to the raving scepticisms of the day, she might and must accommodate her spirit and language to those of the age; she might in many points abridge and modify her articles of faith; she might and must get rid of the wretched incrustations of Paganism and Popery which are still around her become, in short, that New Protestantism for which Milton's spirit long ago sighed, which alone can attract and detain before the Lord the young and the gifted of the age, and be thus prepared, as the “Bride, the Lamb's Wife," for welcoming her Husband, when he descends to the Universal Bridal. And then, like Milton's eagle, shall this young and puissant Protestantism rise above the fogs of scepticism, and the purple mists of Rome, and mate her stern and starry eye with the unearthly and farstreaming glory attending the steps of him "who shall come, will come, and will not tarry."

In his papers on Byron and Johnson, we find his enthusiasm wondrously subdued and united to an artistic self-command,

a self-consciousness, an elaborate wit, a bitter sarcasm, and a tone of society, not to be found in his first paper. With the exception of his papers on Madame D'Arblay and Addison, they are the last of his purely literary articles. Before he wrote them, he had entered Parliament, and there is in both a great deal of the clever Parliamentary reply. The elaborate carelessness of the papers on Byron is wonderful. Never was art more artificially concealed. Never did a deliberate and oil-smelling production seem so like an impromptu. Done in the sweat of his brow, it yet reads like a private letter. Its simplest seeming sentences have probably cost him more trouble. Such are a 66 poor lord and a handsome cripple." "Lord Byron's system had two great commandments, to hate your neighbor, and to love your neighbor's wife." How cool such fledglings seem! and yet they were probably hatched with great care, and amid considerable heat. His character of Byron is a long antithesis, and might, had it been done into rhyme, have figured well in Pope's "Moral Epistles." Bits of blame, and pats of praise, are distributed with exemplary equality. But, to apply his own words, "it is not the business of the critic to exhibit characters in this sharp, antithetical way." It is his business rather to show us the true nature of the man at once, by a winged word, or a simple sentence, or in a figure piercing to the dividing asunder of his soul and spirit." Had he spoken of Byron's aimless earnestness, his unprincipled and ill-managed power, his union of generosity and selfishness, his strong religious tendencies, connected with an utter want of definite religious or even irreligious opinions, or hinted at the dark germ of derangement which was working all along in his bosom, he had, in a sentence, helped us to a distincter view of the poet's charaectr, than by his whole seventeen pages of vague and uumingled brilliancy. As it is, he accounts for Byron's matchless misery from his bad education, the loss of his first love, the nervousness of dissipation; from every cause save the deepest of all-the want of habitual intercourse with the Father of Spirits. Byron was miserable, because he felt himself an orphan, a sunbeam cut off from his source, "without hope, and without God in the world." But how puritanical would any statement like this have looked in the eyes of the Reform Club, or of the splendid circles of Holland House!

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To Boswell and Johnson he is, we think, unjust, in various measures. Boswell, in his relation to Johnson, was one of the most sincere and remarkable of men. Used like a spaniel by his idol-now caressed contemptuously, and now fiercely spurned-laughed at by his friends and by the world for his attachment to Johnson, he remained true to him to the last, and has suffered for it after as well as before death, and nowhere more severely than at Macaulay's hands. To worship was the master instinct of his being, and he could no more avoid following it, than can the moon escape the gravitation of the earth. His conduct was the finer, from the contrast it presented to the selfish and infidel habits of the eighteenth century. Boswell had a god-Johnson; but Voltaire and Hume had none, except themselves or their callous theories. Boswell, in short, seems to us the first crude curdling of the future Hero-worshipper, as the Alchemist was the rude forerunner of the genuine Chemist. Nor were his talents so contemptible as Macaulay alleges. He was undoubtedly a clever and cultivated man. And the power to which he principally pretended, that of appreciation, he possessed in a very large degree. He saw Johnson as few even since have seen him; he gave him, during his life, an ante-past of the praise of future ages, and he added one important item to his claims for immortality. Boswell's "Life," according to many, is Johnson's greatest work; according to all, it is one of his best. Nay, we cannot but fancy that Macaulay originally possessed a great deal of the better element of Boswell, as his "Milton" testifies, and that to clear himself of the suspicion of being a Boswell of a bigger size, he has shed the blood of his own spiritual father.

Scarcely less unjust is he to Johnson himself, who, had he been alive, would certainly have turned him on the spit of one of his rolling periods before the slow, grim blaze of his manly indignation. "What is your opinion, Dr. J., of Thomas Babington Macaulay ?"-"Sir, the dog has some gifts and accomplishments, but he is a Whig, a vile Whig, a trimmer, sir, who would have acted as laureate to King George and the Pretender at the same time. Sir, he would have written a panegyric on the Pretender, on the steam of the sack which the king had just sent in at his door." "Isn't he something

like Burke, sir """ No, sir; Macaulay, sir, has not breath to blow the bellows to Burke's fire. As Goldy would say, he has Burke's 'tongue,' but without the garnish' of his 'brains.' -"What think you of his style, sir ?"-" It is mine, sir, docked, yet the dog turns round, and abuses the suit of clothes he has not only stolen, but mangled down, sir, to his own stature."—" Doesn't he know a great deal, sir?"—"Yes, sir, facts, not principles; he has millions of farthings, but few guineas, and no bank-bills; he is like a school-boy, who knows all the birds' nests in the parish, but can neither fly, nor lay an egg, sir, nor even incubate to life the deposits of others."-"What think you of his religious creed, sir?"—" Why, sir, it is that of one who prefers God to the Devil, because he is in, and not because he ought to be in, and who is full of saving clauses lest the tables should one day be turned, and the New Premier prove somewhat absolute. He has no creed, sir, only a new credibility of God and the gospels, sir."—" Isn't he descended from your old friend, Miss Macaulay, sir?"-"Too-too-too, sir, not from Miss Macaulay, surely, sir. His grandfather was a minister in the Hebrides, and probably had the second sight, which he has not left to his descendant, any more than old Zachary left him his religion, sir."

Dr. Johnson's merit, according to Macaulay, has now shrivelled up into his "careless table-talk." His writings have little merit. His criticisms on Shakspeare and Milton are "wretched." He knew nothing of the "genus, man--only of the species, Londoner." His style is "systematically vicious." His mannerism is "sustained only with constant effort." His "big words are wasted on little things." His prejudices and intellectual faults, too, are magnified by being torn from their context, and set up in cluster upon one pillory. Thus complacently does he try to "write down" old Sam an ass. The attempt is as insolent as we hope to show it to be vain. Now, first, his table-talk was not "careless." It was the very sweat of his mind. In all good society he "talked his best." Secondly, it has discovered no new powers in Johnson's mind, although it has revealed new weaknesses. It has increased our notion of his variety, shrewdness, and readiness of retort, but not of his power, eloquence, and deep-hearted sincerity of nature. Thirdly, with regard to the prejudices and failings