cribed much more to personal spleen, than to any impression produced on him by those events. He hated the English, and loved the French. The first had partly neglected and partly derided him; and the last had loaded him with the flowers of flattery, and placed him on the pedestal of a literary demigod. His Scotch descent and Scotch accent exposed him, in that day, to constant mortifications in English circles; and his correspondence shows how keenly, and for a man of his powers how absurdly, he felt these petty indignities. And so came his hatred of Whiggery; which, we verily believe, he detested even more because it was English, than because it was Puritanical. He loved to exalt the Stuarts, because every line he wrote in their praise magnified the old race of Scottish princes, and sent a stab to the heart of that constitution of which Englishmen boasted so loudly. The slights he had endured from persons he never would call his countrymen,' disgusted him with the very name of that liberty which they had so constantly on their lips: while the brilliancy and gaiety, and polite incense which he met with at Paris, charmed him with arbitrary power. Any one who compares the earlier with the later editions of his history, and with the course of his intervening life, will see how these feelings, as they deepened in intensity, were more and more reflected in his work.

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Indeed, so thoroughly did Hume's Jacobite views arise from what he wished that history should have been, rather than from what he knew it to be, that in his later editions the facts which he narrates often stand in singular, and occasionally even absurd contrast to the reflections he draws from them. The real defect of his history, in truth, is seldom in the narrative. The events which occurred in the reigns of Charles and James II. are, for the most part, told fairly enough; but they are accompanied by deductions the very reverse of what an unbiassed reader would draw from them. paints a tyrant but writes a very different name under the picture. Thus, after describing vividly the profligate vileness of the Court and times of Charles II., he chooses to sum up his character with a panegyric on the courtliness of his demeanour, in which view he was the most amiable and engaging of men.' His reign, he acknowledges, was dangerous to his people, and dishonourable to himself;' but then-this was to be imputed 'to the indolence of his temper,-a fault which, however unfor'tunate in a monarch, it is impossible for us to regard with great severity.' He starts in his history of James the Second, by stating plainly that he never was sincere in his intentions of governing constitutionally; and yet he never speaks of the opposition he met with from Parliament, but as the stolid disobedience of an ill-conditioned and stiff-necked generation,

In

on which moderation and clemency were thrown away. short, the impression he conveys, with infinite dexterity and skill, is, that the fancied liberty, and vaunted constitutional rights for which our fathers struggled, were, after all, weak and pernicious delusions. To please the vulgar, he occasionally speaks in the vulgar tongue, of royal encroachment and oppression; but discloses very plainly his own persuasion, that to the enlightened and philosophic mind the objects pursued were but empty bubbles, and their champions bigots or impostors. But all this is done with such consummate ability he puts out his strength so adroitly on the conclusions he would draw, and passes over the narrative of inconvenient facts with so light a hand, that his deluded reader strays with him, unconscious of his wander ing, till he finds with surprise the destination he has reached.

Hume at first found these views of English history in the shade -nursed only in the country retreats, or the Highland fastnesses of the too loyal Jacobites. But they soon became anything but unpalatable to the ruling spirit and principles of the Court of George the Third. It was very speedily perceived, when all danger from the exiled family was over, that a subdued praise of their virtues, and some gentle censure of their unruly subjects, might not prove without its effect on the administration of the House of Hanover. It was during the period when Hume's influence was culminating to its zenith, that the influence of the Crown, in the words of Parliament, had increased and was 'increasing.' With the growth of that new Prerogative of influence and corruption, which sprang like a sapling from the levelled oak, there grew throughout the nation also, in deference to courtly views, a certain admiration of those principles of kingly power which Hume had rendered fashionable. Even the doctrine of passive obedience began again to show its bruised and distorted head; and during the loyal mania which the French Revolution and the glorious diatribes of Burke produced-that most costly fit of intoxication in which a nation ever indulgedthe homage to prerogative became intense, and amid the crash of empires Hume retained an undisputed throne.

We had hardly recovered from this expensive delirium, when another and almost more seductive guide again led the whole nation captive. With personal predilections stronger probably than those of Hume himself, our great Magician of Romance gave a local and abiding reality to the received perversions of history; and threw over them that dangerous charm which his unrivalled genius alone could bestow. Our recent history, in fact, has been obscured by the pen of Walter Scott, just as the Wars of the Roses lie entombed under the dramatic fables of Shakspeare. In truth, with all his wonderful and enchanting endowments,

Scott was a fervent worshipper of rank and power: nobility and ancient blood were to him the types of a superior order of humanity; Royalty was a sacro-sanct, mysterious idol. Considering his warm and kindly heart, and intimate acquaintance with the habits, wants, and virtues of the lower orders, it is wonderful how little is to be found in his pages of generous sympathy with the struggles of an oppressed people, or of pride in the liberty of that country, the manners and history of which he has illustrated in his immortal fictions. His predilections always lean to the monarch, however arbitrary-his antipathies rest with the people, however greatly wronged. Nos numerus "sumus' is the feeling ever predominant in his mind when he speaks of the commonalty; and we believe he would have reverenced the chair which held the graceless Charles at the Tillietudlem breakfast, with devotion quite as genuine as that which he ascribes to Lady Margaret Bellenden. Thus, whether it be the misguided Mary, or the profligate Charles, or the bloody persecuting Claverhouse, there is always a glitter of romance thrown round them by his brilliant pen, quite sufficient to cast all their faults into the shade; while he cannot describe the persecutions of the Covenanters without smothering sympathy by ridicule. His Cavaliers, in short, however worthless, are always attractive; his Roundheads, however meritorious, are absurd or repulsive. Yet the delineation, in its details, is so true to nature, if not to fact, that it is impossible to resist the impressions made by it.

In this way grew up, among the free people of this land, something too like contempt for the ancestors who gained our liberties, and romantic sympathy for those who would have destroyed them. From the absurd impression that such opinions are fashionable and genteel, courtly and servile writers still pervert the truth of history; and the youth of our country are daily imbued with false narrative, and principles as false. And yet, how childish, mean, and degrading should such sentiments now appear! When we look round on the great panorama of Europe, and trace in the history of almost all its nations the analogous chain of experience through which we have passed the same transition from the feudal to the industrial state-the same struggle by the crown for supremacy, and by the people for protection and security-and mark that, merely for want of such a timely contest as our forefathers raised and won, the efforts of Europe for constitutional liberty have ever been one stormy sea of gulph and billow, undulating between rampant prerogative and unrestrained license-how contemptible is it for men who should have outgrown the silly

fancies of boyhood, to assume the poor affectation of despising all that has made this island of ours so secure and tranquil, and to worship that brazen-footed monster, for its homage to which the nations of the Continent are even at present suffering such bitter retribution. It would have been quite as rational, dignified, and manly, for the Roman republicans to have reviled the elder Brutus, and to have deified Tarquin the Proud-or for our Transatlantic brethren to hold an annual feast to commemorate, and lament the loss of, the threepenny tax on tea. Now one great triumph which Mr. Macaulay has gained for this and for future generations is, that he has dispersed for ever this brood of distempered fancies. From the broad and searching light of truth which he has poured in, they have shrunk and crept away, never more to profane that sacred temple of constitutional liberty:

'Celerique fugâ sub sidera lapsæ

Semesam prædam et vestigia foeda relinquunt.'

He has brought back the public mind, with a bold and irresistible grasp, to sound, wholesome, English views of the great crisis of our constitutional rights, cleansing our history from the mass of rubbish and falsehood by which it had been obscured, and sweeping into eternal forgetfulness the sickly sentiment which still hung round the memory of a race of incorrigible kings. He has restored the much-abused term of loyalty to its true signification-allegiance to the laws and constitution and high magistracy of the realm; and extinguished, as we hope and believe for ever, the childish adoration of the mere abstraction or impersonation of royalty. There may be many opinions on our author's views of English history, and of his mode of illustrating or enforcing them. Some of his facts may be questioned, some authorities doubted, some deductions controverted or challenged; but these unworthy and degrading phantoms, which amused or misled the last generation, have fled, like ghosts at daybreak, to haunt us no more.

6 Peor and Baalim

Forsake their temples dim!

With that twice batter'd god of Palestine,' &c.

The potent exorcism has at length driven the unclean spirits finally away and from the last haunts of Jacobite servility and superstition,

The parting Genius is with sighing sent.'

No English historian will, we believe, attempt again to offer up incense on the subverted altar of the Stuarts.

This task, long called for, it has been reserved for Mr. Macaulay to accomplish: and had the work no other merit, this would be sufficient of itself to ensure his reputation, and to challenge the gratitude of his country. He has brought, indeed, many qualifications to the task which are seldom found united. He had, of course, great resources at his command, not only in the published works of his predecessors, and in the collected materials of two of the most distinguished of them, who had left their tasks unfinished, but other channels also were laid open to him both here and on the Continent. In short, we believe him to have had the materials of a true history as thoroughly in his power as it was possible for any one to have. But there are other presumptions in favour of his accuracy. To the use of these advantages he brings a memory singularly clear, retentive, and precise, and deep and varied stores of general learning; and having staked his fame-not one to be lightly risked on such a venture on the character of this history, we doubt not that in a point so attainable as accuracy in what he relates, he is as immaculate as an author can be on such a scale. Indeed we are confident that, however searching, or even malicious, the examination, he will be found by far the most correct, even in minute details, of all the writers who have published on this period of our history. And, last of all, he adds to these recommendations the remarkable advantage of being able to meet his antagonists on equal ground, - by a power of composition in all respects as effective as Hume, or Burke, or Scott. It is this which has made his present volumes so timely a contribution to our national literature. Though the work of a scholar, they are not a mere work for scholars; there were such previously, in which the true story of the Revolution was more faithfully than effectively told. But this is a book to read one that every body will read, and understand, and remember; and which will consequently permeate and leaven all society. It has at last brought the controversy on this subject to the right issue; and we are much mistaken if the victory has not been gained, and that conclusively, already.

The story, thus vividly and agreeably told, brings out, in clear and unquestionable light, one or two great leading truths, which we do not think have been any where so strikingly exhibited. The first of these is, the utter incapacity, obstinacy, and personal worthlessness of the exiled family; and the fact that this, if it did not lie at the root of all the political troubles of the time, rendered them far more alarming and inevitable. There seems to have been a natural taint in the blood, which no danger could repress, or discipline remove. From the first they