right of the Prince of Orange, when he says they stood on the left; or that Marlborough dined on a certain day at one o'clock, when in point of fact he did not sit down, as is proved by incontestable authority, till half past two. We shall leave such minute and Lilliputian criticisms to the minute and Lilliputian minds by whom alone they are ever made. Mr. Macaulay can afford to smile at all reviewers who affect to possess more than his own gigantic stores of information.'

Nothing could have been more happily expressed by anticipation, to characterise the critique which made its appearance on the same day with these just and honourable sentences.

Paying, however, more regard to the quarter from which the missiles are ostensibly launched, than to their own weight or calibre, we mean to spend a few sentences and they shall be very few-in showing that the enemy has not even loaded with the small shot he professed to employ, and that all this sound and thunder is but a volley of blank cartridge after all. . Let us take him ad aperturam.

It is said, that in the anecdote of Francis, who was executed for the murder of Dangerfield, Mr. Macaulay was not justified in calling Francis a Tory gentleman. But Mr. Macaulay was very well justified in doing so-inasmuch as Francis was a Tory, as the critic himself might have known. Among the authorities at the bottom of the page, from which, probably, the eritic learned all he knows of the matter, Mr. Macaulay refers to Francis's dying speech in the State Trials, and to the Observator, July 29. 1685. Now both of these authorities sufficiently prove that Francis was a Tory. In his dying speech he prays that James may vanquish and overcome all his enemies, which I am glad to have seen so much prospect of,' and also ‘I 'cannot but regret my being made a sacrifice to the Faction, who I am satisfied are the only people who will rejoice at my ruin.' No one, acquainted with the language and feelings of the time these words were spoken, will doubt that Mr. Macaulay's character was perfectly just. But to make the matter certain, L'Estrange, in the Observator' above mentioned, speaks of Francis as a true friend and servant of the Government,' terms which he never could or would have applied to any but a Tory 'Gentleman, which Mr. Macaulay was quite correct in calling him; and which, after all, is not the most opprobrious epithet which Mr. Macaulay could apply to one of that school of politicians.

Again, Mr. Macaulay is accused of misrepresenting what Francis said about his wife, when he attributes to him the sentiment, that had she been inclined to break her marriage vow,

'she would at least have selected a Tory and a Churchman for 'her paramour.' The critic says, that Francis simply stated that his wife was so well born, that had she been inclined she ⚫ would not have debased herself to so profligate a person (as Dangerfield).' Mr. Macaulay may be a little paraphrastic, but the critic is absolutely false. He will not quote correctly. The original says, 'she was of too LOYAL A FAMILY So to debase herself.' What does this mean, but that Dangerfield's politics would have protected her, if her own virtue was insufficient; and why, if it did not plainly mean this, did the critic stoop to pervert the passage?

The critic spends a page on a lecture to Mr. Macaulay for quoting, in a foot note, one passage, and no more, of Lord Peterborough's character of Dangerfield · a task he might have spared himself had he attended to, or been fair enough to state, the object of the author in that quotation. Mr. Macaulay had been speaking of the probability of Francis having been jealous of Dangerfield's intimacy with his wife, and chose Lord Peterborough, who notoriously hated him, as an unexceptionable authority for his being a likely enough object of such a jealousy. Lord Peterborough was not, as the critic absurdly says, cited as a witness to his character-but simply to his appearance and address, having described him as a young man who appeared under a 'decent figure, a serious behaviour, and with words that did not 'seem to proceed from a common understanding.' Lord Peterborough was a good, because naturally an unwilling, witness to his personal advantages-he would have been the worst to prove him a villain, which, notwithstanding, he unquestionably was, and which Mr. Macaulay, in the text, had most abundantly shown him to have been.

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Again, the critic triumphantly asks, 'what it can signify, in a history of the reign of Charles II., that a writer, sixty years after the Revolution,' describes how the houses in Bath were furnished? He would have his reader imagine, what he could hardly help knowing very well was not the case, that the writer, sixty years after the Revolution,' was writing of the state of Bath at that time. The book is Wood's History of Bath,' published indeed in 1749, but in which the author describes what Bath was many years before, and speaks of the recollections of his youth. No better authority one would think could be found of what happened sixty years since' than the evidence of a man who remembered it.

The reviewer makes an absurd mistake, and convicts himself of gross ignorance, about the two Echards, or Eachards. 'Our 'readers,' he announces rather pompously, know that there

was a Dr. John Eachard, who wrote a celebrated work on the • Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy. They ' also know that there was a Dr. Lawrence Echard, who wrote both a History of England and a History of the Revolution. "Both of these were remarkable men; but we almost doubt 'whether Mr. Macaulay, who quotes the works of each, does not confound their persons, for he refers to them both by the 'common (as it may once have been) name of Eachard, and at least twenty times by the wrong name.' Every one who knows Mr. Macaulay is aware that this is the last kind of blunder he is at all likely to commit. But the blunder is all the critic's. We do not say that he knew nothing of these 'remarkable men' till he saw them mentioned in Mr. Macaulay's references; but had he known a little more of them, he would have been aware that they were of the same name, and nearly related; that though the name was sometimes spelt with an a, and sometimes without it, everybody who has occasion to mention them has always spelt both names alike that when Lawrence himself mentions John he spells his name as he does his own - Echard; and that the Biographia Britannica spells them both Eachard. Can the depths of drivelling sink lower than this?

Mr. Macaulay is complained of for his scanty catalogue of the luminaries of the English Church who flourished in 1685. The critic complains of the omission of Jeremy Taylor, Sanderson, Ken, Sparrow, Oughtred, Cudworth, Hall, Herbert, Godwin, Hammond, Fuller, Hooper, Pearson, and a hundred others.' The complaint is absurd - and worse than absurd. Cudworth and Pearson are mentioned in the paragraph complained of. Ken is mentioned so often in the book as not to require to be named again. As to the rest, not one of them, except Hooper and Sparrow, were alive in 1685, and these are not very great names. Taylor had been dead eighteen years; Sanderson twenty-two years; Fuller and Hammond twenty-four years; Oughtred twenty-five years; Hall nearly thirty years; and Godwin and Herbert nearly fifty years! And yet, these are the names which it seems Mr. Macaulay ought to have introduced as being the living lights of the Church of England in 1685!

Mr. Macaulay is vehemently assailed for his account of the social position of the clergy, and for his construction of the Royal Order given by Bishop Sparrow in his collection. We shall enter no further into this controversy than to make two quotations, which show that, as usual, if Mr. Macaulay is wrong, he errs in good company.

Selden, in his Table Talk, says, Ministers with the Protestants have very little respect: the reason whereof is, in the beginning of the Reformation they were glad to get such to 'take livings as they could procure by any invitations-things ' of pitiful conditions. The nobility and gentry would not suffer their sons or kinsmen to meddle with the Church, and therefore, at this day, when they see a parson they think him such a thing still, and there they will keep him, and use him accordingly. If he be a gentleman, he is singled out and used the 'more respectfully.'

The second quotation we make is from Jeremy Collier, who, in his Dialogues on Pride, evinces how clearly he understood the Royal Order, exactly as our author does. Philalethes, who represents Collier himself, is represented as saying- Upon my word, this order, take it which way you will, has a very sin'gular aspect, and looks as if intended to put the clergy in mind that they ought not to aspire above an Abigail.'

It seems to us, however, that the Order itself may be well explained, and the fact of the general lowness of the clergy's matrimonial alliances still further accounted for, by only recollecting the Great Queen's avowed predilection for the celibacy of churchmen; the contempt in which she held their wives, and the unprotected state in which she left their marriages. The act of Edward the Sixth, legalising their marriages, which had been repealed by Mary, was not revived till the accession of James I. Laud publicly declared in the reign of Charles I. that in the disposal of patronage he should always prefer single to married men. So that, at all events, it must be easy to understand, that, while such impressions prevailed in high quarters, persons of good condition would never consent to let their daughters form connexions which would, in the first place, draw on them the discountenance and reprobation of all the high social authorities and, in the event of a return to papacy. or even to a more rigorous discipline-often contended for in the Anglican church itself, might make them and their children causes of shame and humiliation to their families. Under such circumstances it seems to us inevitable that the habit of forming low marriages must have been very general among the great body of the country clergy; and if once established, would, as usual, continue after the first cause might have ceased.

The critic doubts if Mr. Macaulay ever read the Grand Duke Cosmo's Travels, because he, the critic, could find nothing in the book derogatory to the birth of the English clergy. That he had read through this huge quarto volume to verify, or rather discredit, our author's assertion, is good proof alike of his in

dustry and his inclinations. Next time, however, he consults the book, let him turn to Appendix A., where, after giving a list of the bishops, the Grand Duke says, They are of low 'birth, in consequence of certain customs which have been intro"duced into the kingdom.'*

But perhaps the most unblushing piece of ignorant and presumptuous fault-finding in this critique meets us a few pages on. Mr. Macaulay says that the English country gentleman knew 'the genealogies and coats of arms of all his neighbours, and <could tell which of them had assumed supporters without any right, and which had the misfortune to be Aldermen.' On which the better-informed critic exclaims, There was not one ' of these unlettered country gentlemen who could not have informed our historian that no such question about supporters had or could ever have arisen among private English gentle'men.' It is scarcely necessary to say that, as usual, Mr. Macaulay is right; and the critic speaking about a matter of which he knows nothing. No point in heraldry has been more disputed than the right of English private gentlemen to bear supporters. If our cotemporary will look at Edmonson, (Mowbray Herald's) Body of Heraldry,'† he will find the following passage: There have been many who, although they were 'neither ennobled nor ever enjoyed any public office under the 'crown, assumed and bore supporters, which were continued to be used by their descendants until the extinction of the family; as, amongst others, the Hevenings of Sussex, the 'Stawells of Somersetshire, Wallops and Titchbournes of Hants, 'Lutterells of Somersetshire, Popham of Hants, Covert of 'Sussex, Savage of Cheshire, &c. Hence it may justly be con'cluded that those families who anciently used such supporters either on their seals, banners, or monuments, and carved them in wood or stone, or depicted them on the glass windows of 'their mansions, and in the churches, chapels, and religious houses of their foundation, endowment, and patronage, as 'perspicuous evidences and memorials of their having a possessory right to such supporters, are fully and absolutely well

We have seen a book by a Mr. Churchill Babington, which is apparently intended to confute, but in reality very much confirms our author's views as to the clergy in the seventeenth century. We may simply mention, to show this gentleman's idea of refutation, that in order to neutralise the effect of a citation from the Whig poet, Shadwell, representing a Tory parson courting an Abigail, he judiciously rummages out a Tory pamphlet, which represents a Whig parson in the same situation!

† Vol. i. 191.