THE expectations of the public had long been intently fixed on the History of England which Mr. Macaulay was known to be writing, and have been abundantly fulfilled in the appearance of these two volumes. They have entered at once into a degree of popularity which our firstrate historical works have very slowly attained. The eagerness of readers for an early perusal of them has reminded us of the publication of the Waverley novels. It has no parallel in recent times except in the welcome given to a Christmas tale of Mr. Dickens, and we believe as few will be found who have paused, except from necessity, in the perusal of the one as of the other. Those who are already familiar with Mr. Macaulay's reviews, which have often given buoyancy to a ponderous number of the publication in which they appeared, will not meet with him under a new face in his present work. As his reviews were really historical essays, so a considerable part of these volumes is rather an essay on the history of England than a history, and might have appeared in the Edinburgh Review, hung on the peg of some recently published or republished book. Even when the form is historical, the manner is the same. Mr. Macaulay possesses a singular faculty of reproducing past times, not in mere outline or individual portraiture, but with the fulness, the animation, the vivid colouring, which belongs to contemporary description. His boundless memory seems to present to him the scene he has to describe at once and by a single effort, or rather without any effort; while others have to call up persons and circumstances in succession, and find one vanishing from the point of distinct vision before the rest obey the summons. In his description, the land of our forefathers reappears to us as it shewed itself to those who lived on it several centuries ago. All that modern art and culture have placed on its surface is effaced as by the painter's sponge: its cities shrink to their ancient dimensions; its heaths and marshes resume the space which they have yielded to cultivation; its castles rise again in their gloomy grandeur, and the hovels of a rude but sturdy and independent peasantry are gathered around them. The habits, feelings, passions, recollections of the men of any given era seem as familiar to him, as if he had lived among them; the personal relations of the characters of history suggest themselves to him as readily, as if they were the public actors of the present day. His style is lively, graphic, pungent and antithetical, flowing but never languid: whatever may be objected to it by a critic whose taste has been formed on older models, he never falls into that, which after all is the only thoroughly

The History of England from the Accession of James II. By Thomas Babington Macaulay. Vols. I., II. Third Edition. London-Longmans. 1849.

bad style, the genre ennuyeux. His predecessors and contemporaries who have tried their powers in the same line might wonder, not without some mixture of envy, at the combination of gifts which has enabled Mr. Macaulay to fascinate every class of readers, and rival the masters of fiction in the amount of his popularity.

His History has, however, much higher merits than those of style. Though his margin is not usually crowded with references, it is evident that his researches have been most extensive, and that he has travelled not only over every highway, but every by-path, in the collection of evidence. The most obscure corners of our public libraries have been ransacked in search of those remains of a popular and fugitive literature, in which the spirit of an age is often more faithfully preserved than in works of more celebrity and pretence. The period which he has chosen is so recent, that he has escaped the dry and uncongenial labour of antiquarian research; but he has diligently read and happily applied the Memoirs, Diaries and Correspondence, which furnish materials for history from the middle of the seventeenth century in everincreasing abundance. His political principles are liberal enough to satisfy all who desire the progressive improvement of national institutions, and yet deprecate the rashness which would destroy the existing safeguards of liberty and order for its attainment. The blending of powers in the English Constitution, the object of ridicule to the school of Bentham, he evidently admires, but without considering the distribution which may exist at any given period as binding on all futurity. He is a Churchman, believing that in an establishment the interests of religion are most safe from the opposite evils of fanaticism and neglect; but the pretensions of the Church, as a power in the State, to control its other branches, or of priests to rule the consciences of laymen, have no more strenuous opponent. Some of the most eloquent passages in his work are devoted to the support of religious liberty; some of his bitterest sarcasms are directed against the inconsistencies of Churchmen. It will provoke hostility in many quarters, but in none more than among those who are endeavouring to revive the principles of Laud, and replace in the hands of the clergy that sceptre of spiritual power which the Reformation and the Revolution wrested from them. He is an ardent admirer of the men of the Revolution, regarding this as the great crowning triumph of the struggle between prerogative and popular rights; but he shews no disposition to palliate the faults of those who from selfish motives took part in it. If we miss the impartiality which should belong to the historian, it is not in his disguising the offences of the party which he espouses, but in the unsparing censure with which he loads that to which he is opposed. His conception of character is, we think, in general as just, as his delineation of it is faithful and lively; nor does he ever set a man up as a mark for reprobation without just cause. But there is an earnestness, a vehemence

and an iteration in his attacks on some of those who have fallen under his censure, which we think counteracts his purpose. He appears like the advocate, seeking to inflame the minds of a popular tribunal against a supposed culprit, rather than a judge, placed high above the reach of prejudice and passion. We regret this, because it gives the character of a pleading to his history of the reign of James II., and will undoubtedly produce a reaction in some minds instead of conviction.

In some respects, Mr. Macaulay's History is one of the easiest books to review-in others, the most difficult. In reading it, the pencil notes down one brilliant passage after another, till extracts have been marked sufficient to fill a number by themselves. If, on the other hand, it be required of the critic to re-examine the evidence and pronounce on the fairness with which he has used his authorities, much time and access to the same sources as the author has employed are necessary. What the reader, however, is most interested to know is, not his minute accuracy, but the general character of his style, his sentiments and principles. If he has been unfaithful, it will not be long before the world will be informed of it; for he has given Tories and High-Churchmen no cause to spare him.

The first chapter is occupied with a history of the growth of the English Constitution, from the Saxon times to the Restoration of Charles II. The topic is not new, but Mr. Macaulay presents many of its most prominent points with great felicity of description. Perhaps it will be most suitable to the character of our pages to select for quotation his character of the founder of the English Church and of the Church itself. Those who believe it to be a heaven-descended institution may be startled to find how much human policy and expediency had to do in fixing its doctrines, ritual and discipline.

"The man who took the chief part in settling the conditions of the alliance which produced the Anglican Church was Thomas Cranmer. He was the representative of both the parties which, at that time, needed each other's assistance. He was at once a divine and a statesman. In his character of divine he was perfectly ready to go as far in the way of change as any Swiss or Scottish Reformer. In his character of statesman he was desirous to preserve that organization which had, during many ages, admirably served the purposes of the Bishops of Rome, and might be expected now to serve equally well the purposes of the English kings and of their ministers. His temper and his understanding eminently fitted him to act as mediator. Saintly in his professions, unscrupulous in his dealings, zealous for nothing, bold in speculation, a coward and a timeserver in action, a placable enemy and a lukewarm friend, he was in every way qualified to arrange the terms of the coalition between the religious and the worldly enemies of Popery.

She

"To this day the constitution, the doctrines, and the services of the Church, retain the visible marks of the compromise from which she sprang. occupies a middle position between the churches of Rome and Geneva. Her doctrinal confessions and discourses, composed by Protestants, set forth principles of theology in which Calvin or Knox would have found scarcely a word to disapprove. Her prayers and thanksgivings, derived from the ancient liturgies, are very generally such, that Bishop Fisher or Cardinal Pole might have heartily joined in them. A controversialist who puts an Arminian sense on her articles and homilies, will be pronounced by candid men to be as unreasonable as a controversialist who denies that the doctrine of baptismal regeneration can be discovered in her liturgy."

"In every part of her system the same policy may be traced. Utterly rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation, and condemning as idolatrous all adoration paid to the sacramental bread and wine, she yet, to the disgust of the Puritan, required her children to receive the memorials of divine love meekly kneeling upon their knees. Discarding many rich vestments which surrounded the altars of the ancient faith, she yet retained, to the horror of weak minds, the robe of white linen which typified the purity which belonged to her as the mystical spouse of Christ. Discarding a crowd of pantomimic gestures which in the Roman Catholic worship are substituted for intelligible

words, she yet shocked many rigid Protestants by marking the infant just sprinkled from the font with the sign of the cross. The Roman Catholic addressed his prayers to a multitude of saints, among whom were numbered many men of doubtful, and some of hateful character. The Puritan refused the addition of saint even to the apostle of the Gentiles, and to the disciple whom Jesus loved. The Church of England, though she asked for the intercession of no created being, still set apart days for the commemoration of some who had done and suffered great things for the faith. She retained confirmation and ordination as edifying rites, but she degraded them from the rank of sacraments. Shrift was no part of her system. Yet she gently invited the dying penitent to confess his sins to a divine, and empowered her ministers to soothe the departing soul by an absolution which breathes the very spirit of the old religion. In general it may be said, that she appeals more to the understanding, and less to the senses and the imagination, than the Church of Rome, and that she appeals less to the understanding, and more to the senses and imagination, than the Protestant churches of Scotland, France, and Switzerland."-Vol. I. pp. 51-54.

In the close of this passage Mr. Macaulay may seem to speak disparagingly of the Puritans, as if their dissent from the Church argued weakness or self-will. He does them more justice in his subsequent account of their origin.

"The compromise arranged by Cranmer had from the first been considered by a large body of Protestants as a scheme for serving two masters, as an attempt to unite the worship of the Lord with the worship of Baal. In the days of Edward the Sixth, the scruples of this party had repeatedly thrown great difficulties in the way of the government. When Elizabeth came to the throne, these difficulties were much increased. Violence naturally engenders violence. The spirit of Protestantism was therefore far fiercer and more intolerant after the cruelties of Mary than before them. Many persons who were warmly attached to the new opinions had, during the evil days, taken refuge in Switzerland and Germany. They had been hospitably received by their brethren in the faith, had sate at the feet of the great Doctors of Strasburg, Zurich, and Geneva, and had been, during some years, accustomed to a more simple worship, and to a more democratical form of Church government, than England had yet seen. These men returned to their country, convinced that the reform which had been effected under King Edward had been far less searching and extensive than the interest of pure religion required. But it was in vain that they attempted to obtain any concession from Elizabeth. Indeed, her system, wherever it differed from her brother's, seemed to them to differ for the worse. They were little disposed to submit, in matters of faith, to any human authority. They had recently, in reliance on their own interpretation of Scripture, risen up against a Church strong in immemorial antiquity and catholic consent. It was by no common exertion of intellectual energy that they had thrown off the yoke of that gorgeous and imperial superstition; and it was vain to expect that, immediately after such an emancipation, they would patiently submit to a new spiritual tyranny. Long accustomed, when the priest lifted up the host, to bow down with their faces to the earth, as before a present Ĝod, they had learnt to treat the mass as an idolatrous mummery. Long accustomed to regard the pope as the successor of the chief of the apostles, as the bearer of the keys of earth and heaven, they had learned to regard him as the beast, the antichrist, the man of sin. It was not to be expected that they would immediately transfer to an upstart authority the homage which they had withdrawn from the Vatican; that they would submit their private judgment to the authority of a Church founded on private judgment alone; that they would be afraid to dissent from teachers who themselves dissented from what had lately been the universal faith of western Christendom. It is easy to conceive the indignation which must have