: bright, and when there is no cloud in the sky, the impression made by the landscape is sad and awful. The path lies along a stream which issues from the most sullen and gloomy of mountain pools. Huge precipices of naked stone frown on both sides. Even in July the streaks of snow may often be discerned in the rifts near the summits. All down the sides of the crags heaps of ruins mark the headlong paths of the torrents. Mile after mile the traveller looks in vain for the smoke of one hut, for one human form wrapped in a plaid, and listens in vain for the bark of a shepherd's dog or the bleat of a lamb. Mile after mile the only sound that indicates life is the faint cry of a bird of prey from some storm-beaten pinnacle of rock. The progress of civilisation, which has turned so many wastes into fields yellow with harvests or gay with apple-blossoms, has only made Glencoe more desolate." As a companion picture to this scene of massacre there is that scene of battle, the once "fearsome" glen of Killiecrankie, which now boasts (?) a highway as smooth as any road in Middlesex, ascending gently from the low country to the summit of the defile-white villas peeping from the birch forest, while, on a fine summer day, there is scarcely a turn of the pass at which may not be seen some angler casting his fly on the foam of the river, some artist sketching a pinnacle of rock, or some party of pleasure banqueting on the turf in the fretwork of shade and sunshine whereas, in the days of William the Third, Killiecrankie was mentioned with horror by the peaceful and industrious inhabitants of the Perthshire lowlands. It was deemed the most perilous of all those dark ravines through which the marauders of the hills were wont to sally forth. The sound, so musical to modern ears, of the river brawling round the mossy rocks and among the smooth pebbles, the dark masses of crag and verdure worthy of the pencil of Wilson, the fantastic peaks bathed, at sunrise and sunset, with light rich as that which glows on the canvas of Claude, suggested to our ancestors thoughts of murderous ambuscades and of bodies stripped, gashed, and abandoned to the birds of prey. The only path was narrow and rugged: two men could hardly walk abreast; and, in some places, the way ran so close by the precipice that the traveller had great need of a steady eye and foot." There are numerous sketches, too, taken in passing, as only the artist eye and artist hand can take them, of such scenery as that between Cambridge and the Wash, vast and desolate fens, "saturated with all the moisture of thirteen counties, and overhung during the greater part of the year by a low grey mist, high above which rose, visible many miles, the magnificent tower of Ely;" or of that in the south-western part of Kerry, with its mountains, and glens, and capes stretching far into the Atlantic, and crags on which the eagles build, and lakes overhung by groves in which the wild deer find covert-whose soil the myrtle loves, and where better than even on the sunny shore of Calabria the myrtle thrives-the turf showing a livelier hue than elsewhere, the hills glowing with a richer purple, the holly and ivy shining with a glossier varnish, and berries of a brighter red peeping through foliage of a brighter green.* Hampton Court is described, as William "improved" it-seeking to create there another Loo, that paradise on a sandy heath in Guelders, the admiration of all Holland and Westphalia, for its fish-ponds and orangeries, its cascades and grottoes; and nearly every place of note the historian touches at, he adorns ("nil tetigit quod non ornavit") with colouring after his own heart, and in his own "Canaletti" style. These volumes contain about the average quantity of the author's characteristic mannerisms, tricks of composition, similes, and sarcasms. We have the usual recurrence of the phrases, "It was long remembered," "there were old men living who could remember," &c.; the usual interfusion of very short sentences; the usual plenitude of historical parallels, † and of argumentative illustrations. Perhaps there is more than the average proportion of high colouring and ex parte pleading-of a fondness for upsetting standard opinions, and flooring established reputations, and making new readings of authorised texts, and shedding a new and strong (sometimes a too strong) light on what the world took to be clear as daylight before. * Macaulay: iv. 191; iii. 41, 135, 352 sq. See, for instance, vol. iii. pp. 62, 95; vol. iv. pp. 115, 163, 409. Mr. Macaulay's knack of enlivening and elucidating his abstract argument by concrete illustrations, is perhaps unique, and certainly very noticeable among the ad captanda of his style. Where an ordinary historian would content himself with saying, for instance, in defence of the separate establishment of the English and Scottish churches, at the Union, that had there been an amalgamation of the hierarchies, there never would have been an amalgamation of the nations, Mr. Macaulay furthermore teaches philosophy by example: "Successive Mitchells would have fired at successive Sharps. Five generations of Claverhouses would have butchered five generations of Camerons." So, where another historian would confine himself to recording the Tory complaint (when the Whigs sought to alter the law regulating trials for political offences) that the Whigs seemed to reserve all their compassion for those crimes which subvert government, and dissolve the whole frame of human society,-he supposes them to object, that "Guy Faux was to be treated with an indulgence which was not to be extended to a shoplifter," and Bradshaw to have "privileges which were refused to a boy who had robbed a hen-roost." So, again, where another would end with the reflection that party and sectarian spirit lead men to do what they would not do for personal and private ends,-he adds: "There is no reason to believe that Dominic would, for the best archbishopric in Christendom, have incited ferocious marauders to plunder and slaughter a peaceful and industrious population, that Everard Digby would for a dukedom have blown a large assembly of people into the air, or that Robespierre would have murdered for hire one of the thousands whom he murdered from philanthropy."-iii. 257; iv. 150, 199. See also, for examples of the same kind, varying in form, vol. iii. pp. 256, 611, 620; vol. iv. pp. 10, 307, 458, 626. As for the "subjects" Mr. Macaulay has read up, to bear upon and furnish pabulum for his History, the number or the names of them who shall rehearse? They are omnigenous, for he is omnivorous. He abstains in many instances (some will think too many) from citing authorities, simply because, in his own words, "my authorities are too numerous to cite." He tells us that his notions of the temper and relative position of political and religious parties in the reign of William the Third, have been derived, not from any single work, but from thousands of forgotten tracts, sermons, and satires; in fact, from a whole literature which is mouldering in old libraries. Broadsides, pamphlets, pasquinades of every description and party, he has used with liberal hand and to capital purpose. Of graver authorities, among his principal documents and mémoires pour servir may be named the Leven and Melville Papers, to which "most valuable collection" he is largely indebted, the much neglected Archives of the House of Lords, the Carstairs and Nairne Papers, the Commons' Journals, the Scottish Parliament's Acts, Minutes, &c., that curious relic the "Macaria Excidium," the despatches of Avaux, the correspondence of William, L'Hermitage, Melfort, Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, old maps by the mile measure and old coins by the hundred-weight. The memoir-writers have been duly put under contribution,-Berwick, and St. Simon, and Ruvigny, and Evelyn, and a goodly company besides, consulted in manuscript or in type, for the first time or for the thousandth. In a foot-note to his twenty-first chapter Mr. Macaulay writes (not in italics: they are our doing): "There is a noble, and, I suppose, unique Collection of the newspapers of William's reign in the British Museum. I have turned over every page of that Collection." Very, very few are the Historians, of any land or any generation, who could have done that, and write a History that never tires, never flags, never shows trace of dry-as-dust researches, or inherited taint of dead-and-gone dulness. Mr. Macaulay embodies in fact the ideal somewhere sketched by Duclos: "L'historien doit chercher à s'instruire des moindres détails, parce qu'ils peuvent servir à l'éclairer, et qu'il doit examiner tout ce qui a rapport à son sujet; mais il doit les épargner au lecteur. Ce sont des instruments nécessaires à celui qui construit l'édifice, inutiles à celui qui l'habite. L'historien doit tout lire, et ne doit écrire que ce qui mérite d'être lu." BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY. MARCH, 1856. Contents. THE DIFFERENCES WITH THE UNITED STATES THE SPENDTHRIFT. A TALE OF THE LAST CENTURY. BY THE DOCK WARRANTS. A TALE OF THE TIMES. BY DUD- PAGE 221 236 252 BY LASCELLES WRAXALL 304 NEW-BOOK NOTES BY MONKSHOOD. MILMAN'S LATIN PRINTED BY CHARLES WHITING, BEAUFORT HOUSE, STRAND. |