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thousand tributary rills of anguish, and, in one wild swollen wave, hurries at last over the precipice. Nevertheless, we do not think that he has been altogether successful. First, the play is by far too long. It is nearly as long as are the events described. Secondly, the characters are too numerous. It is a Trongate he has set before us, with hundreds of common figures moving upon it--not a quiet Edinburgh street, with a few noble men and women pacing quietly along, and yet with their steps tuned to the music of Destiny. Thirdly, the incidents are too thick and bustling. It is a succession of petty tragedies, rather than a single great one. Fourthly, there is too much death. It is a bloody bustle. He swims his Trongate in blood. All stab, and everybody dies. together, it is rather a glorious tumult of passion, warfare, force, and fate, than a great, stern, collected tragedy. In "Lear," every vein and artery points to the bruised and broken heart which is the centre of the convulsed framework. In "Wold," unity has evidently been sought for, but not so evidently attained. The author has indulged himself in superfluities of description, and luxuries of horror, which weaken the torrent

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of the tale, and blunt the axe of the tragedy, which falls, at last, dull and heavy.

In proof of the poetical power scattered throughout, we quote the following words of Afra, the night-raven of the story-a girl, by the way, who had been injured and orphaned by the house of Wold:

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As if yon cloud (hush, now!) would burst asunder,

Riven by the flaming wedges of the thunder.
No;

Not in vain,

'Tis passing off, heavy and slow, yet off.
The time's not yet-twill come.
Wold,
Have I gone round about thee, winding the curse
Close round about thee.
I walk around thee, Wold,
A seeming, simple thing; but serried spears
Of ranged men, nor walls of brass, with towers
Of blue-ribbed steel, could better hem thee in
Than does the coil of these poor naked feet,
Going around thee thus, and shutting thee
Close up with the doom: not a child's innocent

head

Of all Wold's house-not a mouse could get out."

We are reluctant to part, after such a comparatively curt intercourse with one of the few really true, original, and great poets of our day-one who ranks with Bayly, Tennyson, Browning, and a few others, as a man of a cultured, yet independent vein-owing to nature much, to popularity little, to clique or coterie nothing at all. He has "cast his bread upon the waters, and will find it after many days." This book of his may be long have the hardihood to break through the a hermit-stream, only known to those who embowering branches and thick brushwood which surround its waters, but must by-andby, as its meek yet strong current flows forward, shine forth into the light of universal appreciation.

PAUL JONES.

AN advertisement has appeared in the London papers for the heirs of the celebrated Paul Jones. He died in Paris in 1792; and the administrator of his estate in America, where Paul Jones was Commodore of the navy, now calls upon his heirs to transmit their claims for adjudication, that they may participate in a late decision of Congress, granting 50,000 dollars to the heirs of Paul Jones. The Chevalier, as he is called, left

no children, but in his will consigned (says the Dumfries Standard) all his property to his two sisters and their children. The widow of one of these sisters' sons now resides in America, and there are numerous descendants of the other sister, many of whom reside in this district. These are, no doubt, the legal heirs of Paul Jones, and we understand they have lodged their claims accordingly.

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From the British Quarterly Review.

T. B. MACAULAY-HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

1. The History of England, from the Accession of James II. By T. B. MACAULAY. Vols. 1 and 2. London, 1848.

2. Essays contributed to the Edinburgh Review. By T. B. MACAULAY. 3 vols.

MACAULAY has a great name in contemporary literature. He has the rare privilege of a popularity which in no respect derogates from his dignity as a serious writer. Captivating young ladies, amusing stupid officers in a club-room, setting young critics on the hopeless task of imitating him, he preserves all the while the character of a dignified writer appealing to the most cultivated audience. He has made his reputation by reviews; and this reputation is as extensive as if he had been a popular novelist. Nor have these reviews owed their celebrity to the piquancy of politics, or to the fierce partisanship of polemics. Their value is not factitious. He has not lampooned the government; nor has he alarmed the church. Historical and biographical essays, treated purely as matters of literature, have won for him his spurs.

It becomes an interesting subject of inquiry to ascertain by what qualities this success has been achieved, and to assign, if possible, the positive value of these writings. If you examine closely, you will observe that this brilliant and fascinating writer has in a very small degree the qualities which usually distinguish great writers, although he undoubt edly possesses a rare combination of qualities. No one can say that he is endowed with a lofty imagination; with remarkable humor or wit; with dramatic power; with deep thought, or close and pressing logic. He is not a poet, nor a wit, nor a thinker. What is he, then? A rhetorician. The rhetoricians do not take the highest rank; but Macaulay takes the highest rank among rhetoricians. He has imagination enough, wit enough, and logic enough, to make a rare expositor of other men's thoughts-to paint striking pictures-to popularize a truth and to leave a question clearer in every

mind. The clearness of his exposition and the charm of his style are unrivalled. But, after all, it is only exposition and style; it is not discovery, it is not addition to our knowledge that we are called upon to admire.

Let us hope that our endeavor to characterize his writings will not be misunderstood. Our object is critical, not polemical; we do not wish to depreciate, but to analyze. If the term rhetorician carries with it some contemptuous associations, we disclaim them here. We would employ another term, if another term would as well express our meaning. Our admiration for Macaulay is hearty and unfeigned; but, because we attempt to explain it, let no one say—

"C'est médire avec art,

C'est avec respect enfoncer le poignard." A lark is admired for its own qualities, not for the predatory qualities of an eagle; to say that it cannot sweep the sky with untiring wing, gaze upon the sun, or carry off a lamb in its talons, is not to throw a slur on its capacities. Had Macaulay come before us in the character of a poet or a philosopher, there would have been contempt in styling him a rhetorician; but, making his appearance as an expositor, there can be no contempt in saying that the kind of exposition he adopts is the rhetorical kind.

The first

Let us examine these writings. thing we remark is the absence of new ideas. Not only has he brought no addition to our stock, but he has not even revived old principles fallen into undeserved neglect, and which might still serve as guiding lights. In one word, there is nothing in these essays which marks out the writer as a teacher. Not a new fact, not a discovery, not even an intimation of where discoveries are to be made, will you detect in these brilliant pages. He

is an expositor, not a seeker. His learning is vast, incalculable; few men have read so much, and fewer remember so well what they have read. But the strength of his memory absorbs the vital powers of his brain: it is either the cause or the effect of his want of original power; the cause, if its activity keeps down the activity of other faculties; the effect, if the indolence of other faculties admits of its activity being uncontrolled. Explain it how you will, there can be no dispute as to the fact of his mind being occupied with arranging the materials gleaned from books, rather than with furnishing the materials of which books are made.

Connected with this is the deficiency of speculative power which we have next to notice. There is no trace here of a mind which has wrestled with doubt-of a mind which has striven with eagerness and sincerity to penetrate the mysterious problems which have from all time pressed themselves upon the attention of mankind. We do not blame him for not being a metaphysician, for not having published theological speculations, and added his erroneous system to the errors of thousands. Every writer is not bound to be a philosopher; even a thoughtful writer is not bound to propose a definite system. But no man can be a great writer who is not a thinker who has not in his time profoundly meditated on those problems which are of all time. No man speaking to men can exercise any durable influence over them unless he has like them doubted, like them struggled, and like them believed.

Do we not all live encompassed by mysteries which we know we cannot penetrate, and which irresistibly call upon us to penetrate them? Do we not acknowledge the profound words of Göthe, that man is not born to solve the mystery of existence; but he must nevertheless attempt it, in order that he may learn how to keep within the limits of the knowable? These struggles leave their traces even on the serenest minds, and are reflected in the clearest style. Where shall we seek a better instance than Göthe, who certainly avoided anything like dogmatic exposition, but whose slightest writings give intimations of "a soul that speaketh from the everlasting deeps." No man who has thought, writes without suggesting thought. The style of a boy or of a woman who has had little experience of life is not more distinct from that of a man whom experience has modified, than is the style of ordinary men from those who have yielded up their souls to patient meditation.

Macaulay's mind seems constitutionally unfit for meditation. Mystery is to him mere darkness. All sense of the infinite is deficient in him. That which is finite, visible, and palpable he can understand and can occupy himself about; that, and that only. Abstract questions, when they do not excite his scorn, are at the best too remote from him to admit of his turning his mind in their direction. His mind is eminently concrete. Things group themselves before it into pictures, thoughts consolidate themselves into axioms. All that is wavering, indeterminaté, and refuses to group itself in this distinct way, is to him as if it were not. Beyond the Pillars of Hercules his mental geography places chaos: the undiscovered, undiscoverable, consequently uninteresting, bourne.

This is so remarkable a trait in his mind that we were led to examine his earliest efforts, to see if in them no traces of youthful speculation could be found. His first articles appeared in 1824. Charles Knight established a magazine (Knight's Quarterly Magazine) to which Mackworth Praed, Moultrie, Barry St. Leger, M. D. Hill, and other young and able writers, contributed. Macaulay's contributions were his famous songs of the Huguenots and songs of the civil war, together with prose essays on Mitford's Greece, the Athenian Orators, Dante, Pe trarch, and a Conversation between Milton and Cowley on the Civil War. The subjects, no less than their treatment, are indicative of the future historical essayist. Not a trace of the thinker is visible. Just free from college, forming his opinions at a time when the great questions would be most likely to vex his mind, at a time when the future statesman and the future merchant are troubled with misgivings which seldom revisit them in the turmoil of after-life, we see Macaulay as calm and untroubled-as comfortable in his immunity from doubt-as if he had already (to use the language of Sartor Resartus) passed through the everlasting Nay into the everlasting Yea.

Macaulay has read the writings of numerous philosophers-what has he not read?but he has never thought them. A more signal proof of incapacity for scientific or philosophic speculation was never given by so able a man, than he gave in his brilliant article on Bacon. We do not allude to its looseness of reasoning-for all men reason loosely at times; nor to the particular mistakes--for the most accurate writers fall into strange errors;—we allude to the tone of the whole article, and its radical miscon

ception of the nature and purpose of philoso- | angry." This is humorously said; but as phy. To believe him, the ancients troubled an argument against ancient philosophy it is themselves with philosophy out of sheer de- frivolous. He mistakes the nature of civilisire for intellectual amusement: it was a sort zation. Railroads, representative governof mental chess, to stimulate their ingenuity.ments, old port, tender mutton, and MackinHe never for an instant seems to suspect that tosh capes, are excellent things, no doubt, these men had any sense of the mystery and greatly conducive to comfort. But the which encompassed them, and which solicit- thoughts of men are more potent still. ed a solution. He seems to have overlooked Thought rules the world. Thought shapes the terrible questions forced upon man, of civilization. And is thought only powerful What am I? Whence came I? What do I when it applies itself to use to practical here? Whither do I go? He does not conmaterial comforts? Is its potency lost as ceive that these men were obliged to specusoon as it descends into the deepest regions, late that the very nature of their minds as soon as it aspires to the highest? No forced these inquiries upon them. He says one has read history who can say so. Alin so many words that the only use of these though the speculations of ancient philosoinquiries was the intellectual activity which phers may not have solved the problems, they fostered. "We have no doubt that the yet they were the best solutions which the ancient controversies were of use in so far wisdom of that age afforded. They constituas they served to exercise the faculties of the ted a vital element in the civilization from disputants, for there is no controversy so idle which our own is but a consequence and a that it may not be of use in this way. But development. Even on the low and vulgar when we look for something more-for some- ground of utility to which Macaulay brings thing which adds to the comforts or allevi- the question, the utility of ancient philoates the calamities of the human race, we sophy is quite as demonstrable as that of are forced to own ourselves disappointed." Bacon. A reasonable acquaintance with the What profound misconception of human na- filiation of ideas through various generations ture and of history is betrayed in that one would suffice to show that the very speculasentence! That which alleviates the calami- tions which Macaulay ridicules were necessary ties of the human race is, doubtless, a price- preparations for those speculations he adless boon; but the calamities are not solely mires. If Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle physical. If man did live by bread alone-- had not lived, Bacon would have been a Pyif his comforts were the sole objects of his thagorean or a Platonist, exerting himself to desire then indeed railroads, good houses, solve insoluble problems, and might have inwarm clothing, wholesome food, and a sana- curred the satire of some conservative Aristary commission, would be the grand objects tophanes for absurd "air-galloping and quesof human ingenuity. There is, however, a tioning the sun." suspicion vaguely floating about, that man has a soul. If this be so; if the soul of man be only worth as much attention as his body; if the widening of human intelligence be only as important as the clothing of human feet; what shall we think of the following argument? He quotes from Seneca the assertion that philosophy does not consist in manufacturing material comforts, but lies deeper than such drudgery. "It is not her office to teach men how to use their hands; the object of her lessons is to form the soul. We shall be told next that the first philosopher was a shoemaker." This passage excites Macaulay's risibility, and he remarks: "For our own part, if we are forced to make our choice between the first shoemaker and the author of the three books On Anger,' we pronounce for the shoemaker. It may be worse to be angry than to be wet. But shoes have kept millions from being wet, and we doubt whether Seneca ever kept anybody from being

αεροβατῶ καὶ περιφρονῶ τον ἥλιον.

This deficiency of speculative or meditative power robs Macaulay's writing of durable influence. It is a characteristic we were bound to exhibit at length, because it is of all the most important. Far be it from us to affix the epithet shallow to such a man. There is no epithet more recklessly thrown about. It is so easy to declare that those who have not puddled in our mud are "showy but shallow." It gives us a cheap air of profundity, invests us with judicial gravity and consequence. It lends a sort of false lustre to our stupidity, and seems to transmute our leaden dullness into gold. How significant, that with us the epithet 'showy' is invariably contemptuous! It is imagined that a writer's pretensions are forever settled if he be called 'showy;' his works must be tinsel or they would not glitter! Does it never occur to the critic that

We demur, therefore, to the epithet shallow applied to Macaulay, because it is an epithet of contempt; and contempt is not the tone to be adopted towards a writer of his pretensions. On the other hand, we cannot speak of his mind as deep. The truth appears to us to be this. It is not a meditative, not a creative mind; but it is a mind of considerable activity, gifted with fine faculties. It is a lambent fire perpetually playing about the surfaces of things, and beautifully illuminating them. It has more activity than force; and its activity is, so to speak, all on the surface. Perhaps we shall render our meaning intelligible if we take the analogy presented by a man of great nervous sensibility but no depth of feeling; the kind of man who will weep over a dead ass and neglect his dying mother; whose sympathy is easily excited by woes, imaginary and real; but whose benevolence ends with his tears. Such men are not rare. The sympathy they express is wrongly stigmatized as hypocrisy; the tears they shed are unfeigned; but they are tears excited by a quick sensibility, which goes no deeper than the surface. Their nerves are excitable, but their selfishness arrests all feeling at the surface, and contents itself with tears in lieu of acts. What these men are morally, Macaulay seems to be intellectually. His sense of beauty is keen, but not deep; his enthusiasm has no central fire; his convictions want depth, and, as a consequence, his eloquence, with all its apparent earnestness, wants force. The surface of his mind is large and active; but its regions below remain untroubled. The consequence is, that he has no influence on his age. He flatters the indolence of his readers; he does not stimulate their minds. He delights; he does not inspire. In reading him, we do not feel that his soul is speaking from its depths to the depths of ours.

gold has greater lustre and greater solidity | in polemics, yet seldom fighting for great than tinsel? Does he never ponder on the truths; captivating by the grace, and dazfact that the showiest writers in our language zling by the gorgeousness, of his diction, have been Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Milton, and and leaving upon the reader's mind no more Burke; writers not usually classed among durable impression than that which a splenthe shallowest ? did spectacle leaves upon the mind of a theatrical audience. Carlyle, rugged, mystical, abrupt, immethodical, unmusical, vehement, scornful, sarcastic, sardonic, and humorous; rich also in pictures; inordinately fond of paradox, but profoundly serious; striving at all times to see into the depths of things; disdainful of ordinary rules of composition, disdainful of all elegancies, graces, and shams of life and of literature; forever appealing to the soul of man, and bidding him remember that he is in the presence of the Infinite; sternly recalling those awful facts of life which frivolity endeavors to gloss over; fiercely preaching the imperative nature of duty and of earnestness; speaking in prophet tones to a heedless generation; mingling the quaintest imagery and wildest buffoonery with the saddest pathos and the dreariest gloom; a sceptic yet a prophet; amidst alternate laughter and alternate tears, alternate exhortation and alternate contempt, he does not dazzle, he provokes; he does not captivate, he inspires; and the impression he leaves upon the mind is various and abiding, as that left by a tragedy of Shakspeare. As specimens of literature, in the limited sense of the word, Macaulay's writings are immeasurably superior; but if literature be something more than the amusement of cultivated intellects, something more than an intellectual luxury, for the dissipation of leisure hours, Carlyle's superiority is unmistakable. Macaulay has delighted thousands. This is no slight thing, and we should be the last to undervalue it. But he has materially bettered no one. He has deepened no man's convictions, he has given fresh strength to no human soul. His influence on his generation has been null. Carlyle, though scorned by many for his offenses against literary taste, and though dreaded by others for his reckless treatment of great questions, has, nevertheless, produced a visible influence on the minds of his contemporaries; he has given a direction to their thoughts, and has suggested so much thought that he is rightfully regarded as a teacher. This fact there is no gainsaying. Think what we may of the influence, be it evil or be it good, it is there. We could name more than one distinguished ornament of the church whose rise has been rendered impossible because of the Carlyle "taint." We

Compare him with Carlyle. Two more opposite men cannot be named in the same breath. Macaulay, clear, definite, elegant, eloquent, methodical; crowding his pages with antitheses and illustrations; more solicitous about the fall of a period than about the accuracy of his assertion; grouping details into a picture; fond of paradox, yet never probing beneath the surface; expert

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