dignity or effect. The desperate state of our army abroad is in part known. No man more highly esteems and honours the English troops than I do. I know their virtues and their valour; I know they can achieve anything but impossibilities; and I know that the conquest of English America is an impossibility. You cannot, my lords, you cannot conquer America. What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst; but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing and suffered much. You may swell every expense, accumulate every assistance, and extend your traffic to the shambles of every German despot; your efforts are for ever vain and impotent —doubly so, indeed, from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your enemies, to overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty. If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms—never, never, never! LORD MACAULAY: 1800-1859. The Progress of England. From "Essay on Sir James Mackintosh." Thomas Babington Macaulay, historian, essayist, and poet, was the son of Zachary Macaulay, a famous anti-slavery man in his day, and a strict Presbyterian. His works, of which the "Essays" are very much the most valuable, evince a great power of sonorous language (especially in invective), and a very wide reading, rather than any great depth of thought. He views history chiefly from the standpoint of a Puritan, and a worshipper of William III. : yet, when even large allowance has been made for this, there remain such a vigorous grasp of situations, such a picturesqueness of detail, such a splendid power of language, as cannot fail to place him far above any ordinary narrator of facts. THE history of England is emphatically the history of progress. It is the history of a constant movement of the public mind, of a constant change in the institutions of a great society. We see that society, at the beginning of the twelfth century, in a state more miserable than the state in which the most degraded nations of the East now are. We see it subjected to the tyranny of a handful of armed foreigners. We see a strong distinction of caste separating the victorious Norman from the vanquished Saxon. We see the great body of the population in a state of personal slavery. We see the most debasing and cruel superstition exercising boundless dominion over the most elevated and benevolent minds. We see the multitude sunk in brutal ignorance, and the studious few engaged in acquiring what did not deserve the name of knowledge. In the course of seven centuries the wretched and degraded race have become the greatest and most highly civilized people that ever the world saw; have spread their dominion over every quarter of the globe; have scattered the seeds of mighty empires and republics over vast continents of which no dim intimation had ever reached Ptolemy or Strabo;* have created a maritime power which would annihilate in a quarter of an hour the navies of Tyre, Athens, Carthage, Venice, and Genoa together; have carried the science of healing, the means of locomotion and correspondence, every mechanical art, every manufacture, everything that promotes the convenience of life, to a perfection which our ancestors would have thought magical; have produced a literature which may boast of works not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us; have discovered the laws which regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies; have speculated with exquisite subtilty on the operations of the human mind; have been the acknowledged leaders of the human race in the career of political improvement. The history of England is the history of this great change in the moral, intellectual, and physical state of the inhabitants of our own island. There is much amusing and instructive episodical matter; but this is the main action. To us, we will own, nothing is so interesting and delightful as to contemplate the steps by which the England of Domesday Book, the England of the Curfew and the Forest Laws, the England of crusaders, monks, schoolmen,† astrologers, serfs, outlaws, became the England which we know and love, the classic ground of liberty and philosophy, the school of all knowledge, the mart of all trade. * Ptolemy, surnamed Soter, or the Preserver, ruler of Egypt (323-285 B.C.), and Caius Strabo (2nd century B.C.) were both writers of history. † A name given to the pedantic scholars of the revival of learning. WILLIAM SHAKSPERE: 1564-1616. Henry VIII. Wolsey was dismissed from power October 17, 1529. He had ruled England for fifteen years with a haughty, despotic sceptre; he was as unprincipled as he was able, and his whole life was a gambler's throw for the highest prize-the Papacy; still, with all his faults, there was much real patriotism in him, and he must ever be reckoned as one of England's great men. In this extract notice that he who had been so thorough an actor all his life is, perhaps half unconsciously, most theatrical in his downfall, and would fain persuade himself that he is more sinned against than sinning. The pomp of the language and the pageantry of this play have always rendered it one of the most popular; but its truest merit lies in the depicting of the meek sorrows and virtuous distress of the pure-minded, loving Queen Katharine. ACT III. SCENE II.-Antechamber to the King's Apartment. Wol. So farewell to the little good you bear me. More pangs and fears than wars or women have ; * A common grammatical license of the day, when the subjects followed the verb. + The ruin they cause. And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, Never to hope again. Enter CROMWELL, amazedly. Why, how now, Cromwell? What, amazed Crom. I have no power to speak, sir. * At my misfortunes? can thy spirit wonder Crom. Wol. How does your grace? Never so truly happy, my good Cromwell. A peace above all earthly dignities, Why, well; A still and quiet conscience. The king has cured me, A load would sink a navy, too much honour : † O, 'tis a burden, Cromwell, 'tis a burden, Too heavy for a man that hopes for heaven. Crom. I am glad your grace has made that right use of it. Wol. I hope I have: I am able now, methinks,‡ Out of a fortitude of soul I feel, To endure more miseries, and greater far Than my weak-hearted enemies dare offer. Crom. The heaviest, and the worst, God bless him! Is your displeasure with the king. Wol. Crom. The next is, that Sir Thomas More is chosen Wol. That's somewhat sudden : But he's a learned man. May he continue Long in his highness' favour, and do justice For truth's sake, and his conscience; that his bones, + A load that would sink a navy, viz. too much honour. it seems to me; think was an impersonal verb in old English. May have a tomb of orphans' tears wept on 'em !* Crom. That Cranmer is return'd with welcome, Wol. That's news indeed. Last, that the lady Anne, Whom the king hath in secrecy long married, Only about her coronation. Wol. There was the weight that pull'd me down. O Cromwell, The king has gone beyond me; all my glories In that one woman I have lost for ever: No sun shall ever usher forth mine honours, Or gild again the noble troops that waited Upon my smiles. Go, get thee from me, Cromwell, I am a poor fallen man, unworthy now To be thy lord and master: Seek the king ; That sun, I pray, may never set! I have told him I know his noble nature,-not to let Thy hopeful service perish too good Cromwell, O, my lord, Crom. Wol. Cromwell, I did not think to shed a tear Out of thy honest truth to play the woman. Let's dry our eyes: and thus far hear me, Cromwell ; * Them in early English was hem, and the h was frequently dropped. + An anachronism. Anne Boleyn was married to Henry VIII. January 25, 1533. Talk. § Make use of me. || Needs = of necessity. An old adverbial genitive of need. |