while, in four hundred-one tires of it, and falls back even on the long swelling periods of Gibbon, or the flowing cantus obscurior of Hume by way of relief.

Perhaps it should not be mentioned in his dispraise, that there is completely within his power the machinery of prose fiction, the application of the dramatic art to the romances and novels of the last age.

He brings the reader with ever-increasing interest to the very denouement of his chapter, and then, by a perhaps pardonable art, he turns off at right angles upon a subject of different interest, until he is ready to recur, with all the force of deferred curiosity, to the first.

The combination of these characteristics gives a dazzling restlessness, like the painful glitter of sun-light upon rippling water, which fatigues by its very brightness and mobility. It is akin to his conversational power, a power by which, we are told, he carries away his club, day after day; so that it is a common question: "What did Macaulay speak about to-day?" There is a point in the bon-mot of Sydney Smith which, by a certain imaginative change, may be applied to his history: "How charming Mr. Macaulay would be, if he only had a few brilliant flashes of silence;" but his want of silence in conversation, and his want of true simplicity in writing, are characteristic of the man: if he had both or either, he would not be Macaulay.

With regard to the spirit evinced by Mr. Macaulay, it is difficult to characterize it. Belonging to the moderate party-"the constitutional Liberal party"—a convenient one for a tendency either way, towards conservatism or radicalism, with perhaps a tendency towards the latter, he seems in parts of his history to change places more than once, and it requires a man well versed in English party-politics of the present day, to understand his views of men and measures during the revolution.

The truth is, Mr. Macaulay is rather a man of strong prejudice than a partisan, after all. Let him once set his mind in one direction, and he is as fixed as flint; armed with the technicalities of logic, he becomes an advocate, establishes his conclusion first, and then makes, if he can not find, premises by which to prove it; and so vast is his learning, and so elec

tric his intellect, that he has more than once made "the worse appear the better reason," while his slow-witted readers have been taken by storm, and defeated by his knowledge, energy, and brilliancy.

Such were parts of his essay on Milton, such his estimate of Cromwell, and his extreme views of the great rebellion; and these parts have been more universally quoted, and have given more incorrect notions of the truth of history, than any thing which has been written in prose during the present century. These were but the chips which fell from the block of his history, but they gave us the species and texture of the material of which it was to be made.

He has assigned to himself a great task, a noble life-work, and he has brought extraordinary intellectual powers to its accomplishment. He has done his best with his revengeful and partisan feelings-to be just, and his volumes are not without occasional evidence of the same spirit which prompted him to give up political preferment rather than refuse his vote for the grant to the Roman Catholic College at Maynooth.

But it is time to leave him; and, as we do so, it is with a consciousness, after all, of the greatness of his work, and his wonderful independence in producing it; independence of persons, of parties, and of political station; independence of all save his own firmly-rooted and all-mastering prejudice.

Better far than what we can say of him, by way of summary, will be the citation of a few words on writers of history, recently from the pen of an able and eloquent English writer: they seem strangely applicable to Mr. Macaulay: "His style, indeed, (he is speaking of Tacitus,) is not only faulty in itself, but is, in some respects, peculiarly unfit for historical composition. He carries his love of effect far beyond the limits of moderation. He tells a fine story finely; but he can not tell a plain story plainly. He stimulates till all stimulants lose their power. In the delineation of character, he is unrivalled among historians, and has very few superiors among dramatists and novelists." Again. "The perfect historian is he in whose work the character and spirit of an age is exhibited in miniature. He relates no fact, he attributes no expression to his characters which is not authenticated by sufficient testi

* *

mony." "If a man, such as we are supposing, should write the history of England, * * he would intersperse the details, which are the charm of historical romance. At Lincoln Cathedral there is a beautiful painted window, which was made by an apprentice out of pieces of glass which had been rejected by the master. Sir Walter Scott, in the same manner, has used those fragments of truth which historians have scornfully thrown behind them, in a manner which may well excite their envy." "An historian, such as we have been attempting to describe, would indeed be an intellectual prodigy. In his mind, powers scarcely compatible with each other, must be tempered into an exquisite harmony. We shall sooner see another Shakspeare or another Homer." But, enough, our readers deserve to know that these just and excellent views are those of Mr. Macaulay himself.* He is at once his own severe critic and apologist.

But we approach the end of our labors. At length worn out with the importunities and follies of James, exhausted by the war; wise enough to see that the confederates were learning wisdom and the art of war from his very successes; weighed down by the approach of old age; Louis agreed to treat for peace, to give up the Stuart cause, and to acknowledge William of Orange the sovereign of England.

Long work would the ambassadors have made of it at their convention at Ryswick. They quarrelled about precedence and plate, "how many carriages, how many horses, how many lacqueys, how many pages, each minister should be entitled to bring to Ryswick." (IV., 548.) "The imperial ambassadors refused to call the ambassadors of electors, Excellency. If I am not called Excellency,' said the minister of the elector of Brandenburg, 'my master will withdraw his troops from Hungary.'"

But William and Louis were shrewder men; while the ambassadors were fighting for trifles at the council-table, they had deputed Portland and Boufflers to negotiate a peace. The kings were not to appear in it; Portland sent a friendly message to Boufflers for an interview; they met five times in an orchard.

*Article on History, Edinburgh Review.

about ten miles from Ryswick, and when the negotiations had sufficiently progressed, they retired to a small house where paper and pens had been provided, to reduce their conferences to writing. We may judge of the astonishment of the grandees who were sitting in convention at Ryswick, when it was announced that peace had been made, by two men, “walking up and down an alley, under some apple-trees."

By the terms of the treaty "Louis pledged his word of honor that he would not favor, in any manner, any attempt to subvert or disturb the existing government of England." King James, deserted by his cousin of France, left St. Germain's to choose between Provence and Italy for his future residence; and a liberal jointure was made to his Queen Mary of Modena by King William and the English Parliament.

Upon the news of the peace London was in a state of furious but joyous excitement; the first newspaper extra ever printed in English, with headings in large capitals was hawked about the streets; bank stock rose "from eighty-four to ninety-seven ;” public confidence and cheerfulness were fully restored.

At length came King William himself: and this, this alone, was his real accession. Four times had he passed from the Continent to England and back from England to the Continent, the care-worn leader of an active but painful experiment in the eyes of the whole world. But now the experiment had been successful, he had conquered a peace for Europe, and had earned as a just reward the realm of England which for eight years he had nominally ruled.

On the sixteenth of November, 1697, he left Greenwich where he had lain all night for his triumphant entry into London. Amid the roar of cannon, through the double ranks of soldiers and train-bands; greeted by government schools drawn up in their simple uniform, and everywhere met and followed by citizens innumerable in all their holiday clothing, he made his double accession to the throne of the Stuarts and -what the Stuarts had never won-the hearts of the English people.

He had accomplished a mighty task for England, for Europe and for the world. Its results indeed were not immediately apparent, but they were soon to be felt everywhere. He him

self, an instrument in the hand of Providence, could not be fully aware of their value: but he did feel that he had enfranchised a realm, that the sceptre he grasped was no empty gilded bauble, but a veritable rod of rule. As we regard him in imagination, holding it aloft to the view of the English people, and pointing with it to the continent to which he had bound them "with hooks of steel," he seems to us a moral Eneas contemplating the divine armor, " dona parentis," and looking to the future deeds of valor and renown, which should signalize the British rule on land and sea:

rerum que ignarus, imagine gaudet Attollens humero famamque et fata nepotum.*

ART. II.-THE RUBRICS OF THE COMMUNION
OFFICE.

Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, according to the uses of Sarum, Bangor, York, and Hereford, etc. By the Rev. WM. MASKELL, M.A. Pickering: London. 1846. Origines Liturgica; or, Antiquities of the English Ritual.

By Rev. WILLIAM PALMER, M.A. 2 vols. Oxford. 1832. The Two Liturgies of King Edward VI. Compared by EDWARD CARDWELL, D.D. Oxford. 1841.

Liturgia Britannica; or, the several editions of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, from its compilation to its last revision, etc. By WM. KEELING, B.D. Pickering London. 1851.

A Tabular View of the Variations in the Communion and

Baptismal Offices of the Church of England, from the year 1549 to 1662, etc. By FREDERIC BULLEY, B.D. Parker: Oxford. 1842. The Judgment of the Rt. Hon. Stephen Lushington, D.C.L., delivered in the Consistory Court of the Bishop of London, in the

Eneid. Lib. VIII., 730.