gress of the Bank of England, the settlement of the Coinage difficulty, the withdrawal of the censorship, and the infancy of that Fourth Estate, the English newspaper. We commend, too, "in especial," to the reader's attention, Mr. Macaulay's confutation of the fallacious assertion that the Presbyterians were not, before the Revolution, the majority of the people of Scotland *—his inquiry into the justice of our ascribing to the Gaelic tribes the feelings of English cavaliers, "profound reverence for the royal office, and enthusiastic attachment to the royal family," on the ground that, during the century which commenced with the campaign of Montrose, and terminated with that of Charles Edward, every great military exploit which was achieved on British ground in the cause of the Stuarts was achieved by Scottish Highlanders †-and his remarks, equally positive and pungent, on the national debt and its critics from one generation to another. There needs no indication of such topics, so treated as he treats them, as the narrative of the war in Ireland and in the Low Countries; the records of Jacobite plots one after another, and sometimes one within another; the disfranchisement of Alsatia, that "labyrinth of squalid, tottering houses, close packed, every one, from cellar to cockloft, with outcasts whose life was one long war with society"-" debtors who were in fear of bailiffs," "attorneys struck off the roll, witnesses who carried straw in their shoes as a sign to inform the public where a false oath might be procured for half-a-crown, sharpers, receivers of stolen goods, clippers of coin, forgers of bank-notes, and tawdry women, blooming with paint and brandy, who, in their anger, made free use of their nails and their scissors, yet whose anger was less to be dreaded than their kindness." The pen that wrote on Milton, in the quadrangle at Trinity, and that burnt into the deskpaper at the War Office those glowing ballads of ancient Rome, is as vigorous and as graphic as ever of old.

Glimpses of scenery are caught at intervals as he speeds us onward now from flat, damp

Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land,

As but th' offscouring of the British sand,

and now of our rugged northern "land of brown heath and shaggy wood, land of the mountain and the flood." The scene of the murder of the Mac Ians-" murder most foul, as in the best it is; but this most foul, strange, and unnatural "—is painted with stern and vivid power. "In the Gaelic tongue Glencoe signifies the Glen of Weeping; and in truth that pass is the most dreary and melancholy of all the Scottish passes, the very Valley of the Shadow of Death. Mists and storms brood over it through the greater part of the finest summer; and even on those rare days when the sun is † Vol. iii. pp. 313-339. 326 sqq.

* Vol. iii. pp. 261 sqq.

Vol. iv.

pp.

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: "Succes'sive 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 "Macariæ 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."

THE DIFFERENCES WITH THE UNITED STATES.

Ir is very much to be regretted that any differences should have arisen to embitter the feelings of the people of the United States against this country. Any war that might arise from the obstinacy or imprudence of either party would be alike scandalous and unnatural. The very interests of the two nations are identical. Nor can this fact be better shown than in the excitement which manifested itself at New York, and the general rise which took place of all speculative securities, when the unexpected news arrived of the acceptance by Russia of the propositions of the Allies as the basis of peace negotiations.

These unfortunate differences have had their origin in a longstanding grievance the contested claims of Nicaraguans and Mosquitos, of English and Americans, for the possession of Greytown, or San Juan de Nicaragua, on the river of same name. The claims of Great Britain date from a period anterior to that of the declaration of independence by the Spanish colonies, and are therefore of greater antiquity than the existing governments in Central America. The place was, indeed, first captured in 1779 by a force under Sir John Dalling, in retaliation for Spain having abetted the revolt of the British colonies in North America. A small garrison was at that time left in the fort. After the declaration of independence the Nicaraguans took forcible possession of the place, and held it till an expedition was sent, in 1848, to dispossess them. After some further prosecution of hostilities the Nicaraguans consented to a treaty, which provided that they should not disturb the English in their possession, or attempt to re-occupy the port. The place was then called Greytown, and a regular government was established. Steamers began next to ply between the port and the United States, and a considerable number of Americans established themselves there, and they gradually succeeded, in the words of one of their countrymen, "in suffocating British influence." They took the direction of affairs in their own hands, adopted a constitution, and organised a government of their own. This led to recriminations on the part of the English and Nicaraguans alike, and under circumstances which we have elsewhere alluded to, and which are described by another American writer, and one who is violently hostile to this country, in the very strongest possible terms of animadversion, the place was bombarded and totally destroyed by a United States flotilla. The error, however, having been acknowledged, the town rose up from its ashes, and was, it was supposed, protected from further calamities by the

VOL. XXXIX.

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