nation as a barefaced imposture. Henceforth, mind, heart, and character, are the only titles to consideration, as our Lord has prescribed. Pastors, therefore, must be, above all, experienced Christians, with much faith, hope, and love, who pray in the Holy Ghost, and therefore obtain what they pray for. Laborious students, they must yet be rather men of the world than men of the cloister; of the cottage and the workshop rather than of the drawingroom; not butterflies who have fluttered through a sunny day over a paradise of roses, but soldiers, who in the storm and strife of duty have learned hardihood; not aristocrats, not plebeians, but men who, taken from all ranks, belong to all and sympathize with all; a class who, by their knowledge and wisdom, their virtue and their zeal, have risen to an intellectual and moral nobility; the successors of Luther and Calvin, of Bunyan and Baxter, of Whitfield and Wesley, of Scott and Martyn, the élite of the nation for piety and force."*

r.

MACAULAY'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.†

WE resume our notice of Mr. Macaulay's History, where indeed the history properly begins, with the accession of James II. The view which he takes of the events of this reign and the Revolution of 1688, with which the portion now published concludes, does not materially differ from those of Fox and Mackintosh. His censures are expressed in more impassioned language than they would have thought consistent with the tone of history; but, on the other hand, he confesses more freely than party feeling allowed them to do, the unworthy motives of some who had a share in bringing about the Revolution. The characteristic difference, however, of Mr. Macaulay's, not only from theirs but from all previous English histories, is the amplitude of the narrative and the large intermixture of those details which the historian has generally left to the memorialist and the biographer. The necessity for a change in the manner of handling history, which should give it more life and fulness, was felt by continental writers before our own. Sismondi endeavoured to furnish his readers with that knowledge of manners and opinions which only anecdote and minute description can convey, by the singular project of writing a novel on each great period of his history,-a plan which would probably have failed in any hands, and was sure to do so in his. M. de Barante, in his History of the House of Burgundy, took a better way, by interweaving into his narrative copious extracts from the original chronicles and documents. As he treated of a time the events of which have been fully recorded, -the struggles of the cities of Flanders to obtain their liberty-the English wars in France-the factions of Burgundy and Orleans-the enterprizes of John the Fearless, Philip the Good and Charles the Rash, he was able to unite a philosophical view of the sequence of events with a tale of other times full of contemporary life and reality. How history differs when treated in abstract and in detail will be best judged by an example. Hume, speaking of the Trial of the Bishops, says, "The jury, from what cause is not certainly known, took several hours to deliberate, and kept during so long a time the people in the

most anxious expectation." Lingard's account of the same thing is, "The jury, (for it cannot be objected to this misguided prince that he ever made an attempt to pervert the course of justice*) had been fairly chosen. Differing in opinion among themselves, they left the court and spent the night in loud and violent debate." Now let us see Macaulay:

The

"It was dark before the jury retired to consider of their verdict. solicitor for the Bishops sate up all night with a body of servants on the stairs leading to the room where the jury was consulting. It was absolutely necessary to watch the officers who watched the doors; for those officers were supposed to be in the interest of the crown, and might, if not carefully observed, have furnished a courtly juryman with food, which would have enabled him to starve out the other eleven. Strict guard was therefore kept. Not even a candle to light a pipe was permitted to enter. Some basons of water for washing were suffered to pass about four in the morning. The jurymen, raging with thirst, soon lapped up the whole. Great numbers of people walked the neighbouring streets till dawn. Every hour a messenger came from Whitehall to know what was passing. Voices, high in altercation, were repeatedly heard within the room; but nothing certain was known.

"At first, nine were for acquitting and three for convicting. Two of the minority soon gave way, but Arnold was obstinate. Thomas Austin, a country gentleman of great estate, who had paid great attention to the evidence and speeches, and had taken full notes, wished to argue the question. Arnold declined. He was not used, he doggedly said, to reasoning and debating. His conscience was not satisfied, and he could not acquit the Bishops. 'If you come to that,' said Austin, look at me. I am the largest and strongest of the twelve; and before I find such a petition as this a libel, here I will stay till I am no bigger than a tobacco-pipe.' It was six in the morning before Arnold yielded.”—II. 384, 385.

We know of but one objection to this mode of writing history. Mr. Hallam has called his contemporaries "languid readers" because they are afraid of attacking the sixteen volumes of Sismondi's Italian Republics: history written on Macaulay's scale will swell, we may think, beyond the limits of our libraries, our purses and our lives. It is not, however, all history that can be so written; a very large portion of it must always remain an outline. The almost instantaneous sale of these two volumes is a sufficient proof that the wealth of England can afford a costly literature; and as to the consumption of time, how can we better employ some portion of what the mechanical contrivances of the age have saved for us, than in the study of our own history? We fly from London to Edinburgh between breakfast and supper, while our forefathers took a week to drag from London to York. Is the time gained by this and similar means, all to be given to the pursuit of wealth, and none to that of literature?

There may be said to be but one open question respecting the conduct of James II. Dr. Lingard, who has written the history of his reign with great care, not to say art, admits his rashness and folly in

* Dr. Lingard's memory has been treacherous. He has himself related, that before the question of the validity of the Dispensing Power was tried, in the case of Sir Edward Hales (Vol. XIV. p. 105), the King "punished the indocility of four of his judges by their removal, and filled their places by others, of more courtly principles or less scrupulous ambition." Is this not perverting the course of justice?

supposing that he could re-establish the Roman Catholic religion; but he maintains that, in the beginning of his reign at least, he limited his views to the accomplishment of two objects which he called liberty of conscience and freedom of worship-understanding by the former the removal of religious tests; by the latter, the abolition of those penal laws which had been devised for the purpose of preventing any other worship than that of the Established Church. He does not pretend that James was moved to this attempt by any enlightened views of toleration, but that he felt his throne insecure so long as the profession of the Catholic faith should be held to be a disqualification for office. Now it is remarkable that Dr. Lingard does not give a single reference to any passage in James's writings, or any declaration made by him, to the effect that this was all he aimed at, and that his subsequent attacks on the constitution were made, because these reasonable and moderate projects were thwarted by Protestant bigotry. It is a fiction of the advocate which the client would probably have disclaimed. Barillon says that the Catholics would have had the King aim at nothing more than full liberty of conscience for all religions, but that the King was determined not to adopt this plan, till he had tried to établir ses affaires by means of the episcopalians, when he should have nothing to fear from the sectaries.* "He flatters himself that the Anglican Church is so little removed from the Catholic, that it would not be difficult to bring back the greater part of them to declare themselves openly; and he has told me several times that they are Roman Catholics without knowing it." James came to the throne Feb. 6, 1685, and so writes Barillon on the 12th of March in the same year. His Majesty may have been right as to the narrow bounds which divide the two churches, but he had forgotten that there was a question of loaves and fishes between them, far more knotty than that of creeds and ritual. Mr. Macaulay has some admirable observations on the course which James might, and no doubt would, have pursued, if he had aimed at nothing more than securing his own possession of the throne and quietly preparing the way for the complete toleration of the Catholics.

"Had he conformed to the laws, had he fulfilled his promises, had he abstained from employing any unrighteous methods for the propagation of his own theological tenets, had he suspended the operation of the penal statutes by a large exercise of his unquestionable prerogative of mercy, but at the same time carefully abstained from violating the civil or ecclesiastical constitution of the realm, the feeling of his people must have undergone a rapid change. So conspicuous an example of good faith punctiliously observed by a Popish prince towards a Protestant nation, would have quieted the public apprehensions. Men who saw that a Roman Catholic might safely be suffered to direct the whole executive administration, to command the army and navy, to convoke and dissolve the legislature, to appoint the bishops and deans of the Church of England, would soon have ceased to fear that any great evil would arise from allowing a Roman Catholic to be captain of a company or alderman of a borough. It is probable that in a few years the sect so long detested by the nation would, with general applause, have been admitted to office and to parliament.

"If, on the other hand, James should attempt to promote the interest of

* In April of the following year, Barillon again writes, "The King would greatly desire that the Catholics alone should have the liberty of worship."

his church by violating the fundamental laws of his kingdom and the solemn promises which he had repeatedly made in the face of the whole of the world, it could hardly be doubted that the charges which it had been the fashion to bring against the Roman Catholic religion would be considered by all Protestants as fully established. For if ever a Roman Catholic could be expected to keep faith with heretics, James might have been expected to keep faith with the Anglican clergy. To them he owed his crown. But for their strenuous opposition to the Exclusion Bill, he would have been a banished man. He had repeatedly and emphatically acknowledged his obligations to them, and had vowed to maintain them in all their legal rights. If he could not be bound by ties like these, it must be evident that where his superstition was concerned, no tie of gratitude or of honour could bind him. To trust him would thenceforth be impossible; and if his people could not trust him, what member of his church could they trust? He was not supposed to be constitutionally or habitually treacherous. To his blunt manner and his want of consideration for the feelings of others, he owed a much higher reputation for sincerity than he at all deserved. His eulogists affected to call him James the Just. If, then, it should appear that, in turning Papist, he had also turned dissembler and promise-breaker, what conclusion was likely to be drawn by a nation already disposed to believe that Popery had a pernicious influence on the moral character?

"On these grounds many of the most eminent Roman Catholics of that age, and among them the supreme pontiff, were of opinion that the interest of their church in our island would be most effectually promoted by a moderate and constitutional policy. But such reasoning had no effect on the slow understanding and imperious temper of James. In his eagerness to remove the disabilities under which the professors of his religion lay, he took a course which convinced the most enlightened and tolerant Protestants of his time that those disabilities were essential to the safety of the State. To his policy the English Roman Catholics owed three years of lawless and insolent triumph, and a hundred and forty years of subjection and degradation."-II. 10, 11.

The jest which was current against James at the Court of Louis XIV., that he had lost three kingdoms for a mass, was meant by the libertines who uttered it as an expression of the deepest contempt, and yet it attributes to him a merit to which he has little claim-the sacrifice of his crown to his conscience. There could be no extraordinary sensibility of conscience in a Roman Catholic who could receive inauguration to his kingly office from the hands of a Protestant archbishop and by a Protestant ritual, and promise to preserve the government in Church and State as it was established at his accession. He was the victim as much of his blind impatience to free himself from the restraints which the constitution imposed on the royal power, as of his religious bigotry. His proceedings in Scotland before his accession shew his stern and arbitrary temper; he hated the Habeas Corpus Act as much as the Test, and could no more have been at ease on a constitutional than a Protestant throne. The subserviency of the Church in the beginning of his reign, the failure of the schemes of Argyle and Monmouth, led him to fancy himself on the point of grasping the absolute power which he coveted. Fortunately, by his double treachery to the constitution. and the religion of his country, he united all parties in opposition to him. His outrageous and insane proceedings in Ireland and in the matter of Magdalen College, are related with his usual spirit by Mr. Macaulay.

The resistance of the Church of England to the arbitrary measures

of James, is one of the brighter portions of her history. After some vacillation in his policy, the monarch determined to forego the luxury of persecuting his Dissenting subjects, thinking that by securing their favour, he could plunder the hierarchy and yet be safe from rebellion. The change was suspiciously sudden. Mr. Macaulay thus describes the state of things immediately before the Declaration of Indulgence:

"All the special dispensations which he had granted had been granted to Roman Catholics. All the laws which bore hardest on the Presbyterians, Independents and Baptists, had been for a time severely executed by him. While Hales commanded a regiment, while Powis sate at the council-board, while Massey held a deanery, while breviaries and mass-books were printed at Oxford under a royal licence, while the host was publicly exposed in London under the protection of the pikes and muskets of the foot-guards, while friars and monks walked the streets of London in their robes, Baxter was in gaol; Howe was in exile; the Five-Mile Act and the Conventicle Act were in full rigour; Puritan writers were compelled to resort to foreign or to secret presses; Puritan congregations could meet only by night or in waste places, and Puritan ministers were forced to preach in the garb of colliers or of sailors."-II. 203, 204.

The Declaration of Indulgence was, no doubt, an infringement of the constitution. But, in 1687, the Nonconformist had little reason to love the constitution. Mr. Macaulay is happy in his description of the thoughts of Dissenters at this crisis:

"It could scarcely be hoped that the Protestant Nonconformist, separated from his countrymen by a harsh code harshly enforced, would be inclined to dispute the validity of a decree which relieved him from intolerable grievances. A cool and philosophical observer would undoubtedly have pronounced that all the evil arising from all the intolerant laws which parliaments had framed, was not to be compared to the evil which would be produced by a transfer of the legislative power from the parliament to the sovereign. But such coolness and philosophy are not to be expected from men who are smarting under present pain, and who are tempted by the offer of immediate ease. A Puritan divine could not, indeed, deny that the dispensing power now claimed by the crown was inconsistent with the fundamental principles of the constitution. But he might perhaps be excused if he asked, What was the constitution to him? The Act of Uniformity had ejected him, in spite of royal promises, from a benefice which was his freehold, and had reduced him to beggary and dependence. The Five-Mile Act had banished him from his dwelling, from his relations, from his friends, from almost all places of public resort. Under the Conventicle Act his goods had been distrained, and he had been flung into one noisome gaol after another among highwaymen and housebreakers. Out of prison, he had constantly had the officers of justice on his track; had been forced to pay hush-money to informers; had stolen, in ignominious disguises, through windows and trap-doors, to meet his flock; and had, while pouring the baptismal water, or distributing the eucharistic bread, been anxiously listening for the signal that the tipstaves were approaching. Was it not mockery to call on a man thus plundered and oppressed to suffer martyrdom for the property and liberty of his plunderers and oppressors? The declaration, despotic as it might seem to his prosperous neighbours, brought deliverance to him. He was called upon to make his choice, not between freedom and slavery, but between two yokes; and he might not unnaturally think the yoke of the King lighter than that of the Church."-II. 214, 215.

That, under these circumstances, the Dissenters should waver, Mr. Macaulay admits is no reproach to them. We must not quote his description of the persuasives and promises by which the Anglican