utterly irreconcilable.-With the faith of science it is at variance.-To the spread of education and knowledge it is bitterly opposed. From the sage equally as from the novice it demands the secrets of the life and the heart; and over the domestic sanctuary, the seat of the purest and holiest of our affections, it has exercised, and insists upon exercising, the control of a parent, and it has wielded, and insists upon wielding, the sceptre of a god. Gathering these truths from the work before us, and entertaining the opinion which we do of its transcendent merits, we cannot but record our satisfaction at the rapid and extensive circulation which it has already obtained, and express the wish that it may adorn every library and enlighten every family in the kingdom. And notwithstanding the imperfections which in our eyes it bears, and the errors of opinion which to us it occasionally exhibits, and the hard judgments which it sometimes pronounces against truths which we accept and revere, we would yet wish to see it in an abridged form, diffusing through middle life its great truths and lessons, and we should not object to have it read in our schools, and studied in our universities, as the best history of our Revolution, and the safest expositor of our civil and religious liberties. As Mr. Macaulay's History of England is to be brought "down to a time which is within the memory of men still living," it will no doubt include the chronicle of the Great Revolution, which, at the close of the last century, subverted European dynasties, and which, after being itself subverted, has reappeared with redoubled energy, threatening the extinction, or heralding the improvement, of every political institution. The path of the historian will therefore lie among thorns and quicksands, exposing him to the assaults of vindictive factions-of men rushing headlong to change, or checking the march of that great civilization which the highest oracles have taught us to anticipate. The manner in which Mr. Macaulay has traced his course through the intricacies of our own revolutionary period is the best earnest of his future success; and though we sometimes start at what is perhaps only the shadow of secular leanings, when he refers to conflicting creeds, and treats of ecclesiastical strife, we yet look foward with confidence, and even with delight to his future labors. It is difficult for a statesman embroiled in the politics of his own day, and committed often to party opinions which he does not himself hold, to descant freely and consistently on the events of other times, and to protect those stern decisions which he pronounces for posterity, from the taint of passing interests and contemporary feeling. * Mr. Macaulay has, in our judgment, stood clear of this Scylla and Charybdis of history, and we feel assured that even his political adversaries will not venture to assert that he has chronicled the reign of James II. with the temper of a partisan, or sought to magnify his own political opinions by distorting the facts or suppressing the truths of history. The first volume of the work, which we shall now proceed to analyze, is divided into five chapters. In the first, Mr. Macaulay gives a condensed and elegant sketch of English history from the earliest times to the Revolution in 1660. In the second chapter, he details the leading events in the reign of Charles II. In the third, he describes the state of England at the accession of James II., treating of its statistics, its literature and science, its arts, its agriculture, manufactures and commerce, the state of its towns and villages, and the condition of its population; and in the remaining two chapters, he gives the history of the last of the Stuarts, which is continued and concluded in the five chapters of the second volume. The great event of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity is justly regarded by Mr. Macaulay as the "first of a long series of salutary revolutions" which laid the foundation of that noble constitution by which England has been distinguished from other nations. The predominance of the sacerdotal over the civil power, which marked this early period of our history, and which was continued for a great length of time, he conceives to have been a real blessing to “a society sunk in ignorance, and ruled by mere physical force." Viewing the power of priestcraft as mental, and "that which naturally and properly belongs to intellectual superiority," he pronounces it to be "nobler and better than that which consists merely in corporeal strength; and as the priests were by far the wisest portion of society, he decides "that it was on the whole good that they should be respected and obeyed, and that their dominion in the Dark Ages had been, in spite of many abuses, a legitimate and a salutary guardianship." Even "the spiritual supremacy arrogated by the Pope in the Dark Ages is held to have been productive of far more good than evil;" and Mr. Macaulay reaches the climax of his admiration when he expresses his doubt whether a purer religion might not have been found a less efficient agent in accomplishing "that revolution which, in the thirteenth century, put an end to the tyranny of nation over nation, and that revolution which, a few generations later, put an end to the property of man in man. Although we regard these laudations of sacerdotal and papal supremacy, and of the pilgrimages, and sanctuaries, and crusades, and monastic institutions of the Middle Ages, as an oblation to the political liberalism of the hour, and as a stumbling-block at the very threshold of Mr. Macaulay's labors, we yet feel some difficulty in reducing such general assertions into a proposition which can be fairly analyzed. That the ascendency of mental power as a principle of government is superior to "that which consists merely in corporeal strength," or, as elsewhere expressed, to that which governs "by vigor of muscle and by audacity of spirit," is a truth too palpable to be denied. But when we express it in another form, and aver that the government of Popery, as exercised in the Middle Ages, was better than that of a purer faith, and better, too, than that of the muscular and audacious baron, who, in the same age, led his hereditary bondsmen to battle, there is not a Protestant versed in history that will not give it an indignant denial. The mental power to which we do homage in the statesman and lawgiver is essentially different from the mental power of the priest. The one is the efflatus of a god embodied in the sage to bless and elevate his species; the other the spirit of Belial displayed in fraud and imposture--in false legends and in lying miracles. Under the priestly sway, knowledge was placed in bond for the purpose of deception. The vicegerent of Heaven encouraged crime by absolving the criminal, and the moral and mental power which he thus wielded descended unimpaired to his successors, and is potently exercised at this moment over every kingdom in Christian Europe. A purer religion than this-the faith of Luther, or even the faith of Pascal and Arnaud, would doubtless have been a more efficient agent in the civilization of mankind. But even the audacious autocrat exercised a sway more humane and improving than that of the priests. He laid no embargo upon knowledge he put forth no claim to divine power, and he transmitted none to his race. If he fell in battle, a son or a chieftain less warlike than himself was not prevented by his caste from acquiring and diffusing a taste for the arts of peace, and from exercising a milder sway over his serfs. If he returned from conquest, he might import some new ideas from his enemies, or bring back some refined or intellectual captive, or introduce into his fastnesses some instrument or process of civilization. But if the audacious prince was a less humane and enlightened ruler than the priest if the prelate St. Dunstan was a nobler character than the warrior Penda, whence arose the formidable contrast? The priest himself was the cause. He it was that intercepted the rays of civilization and science, which Heaven was gradually shedding over our race. He it was that selfishly converged them into the gloomy crypt of his sanctuary, and dispensed them at an usurious interest in magic and in jugglery, to deceive and enslave mankind. There was indeed a species of learning which emanated from the hierarchy duty free. They not only tolerated but taught the botany of the holy thorn, the osteology of saintly vertebræ, the odontology of the Virgin, and the physiology of St. Januarius' blood; and every monastery and temple had its museum of crowns and vestments, of ropes and chains, of crucifixes and crosses, of teeth and toes, labelled in duplicates and triplicates to establish their mendacious legends. It was thus that knowledge nestled in the monasteries, and thus that science was contraband in the baronial hall. When a Did our narrow space permit us to continue the discussion of this subject, we would present it to our readers under another phase. We would direct their attention to the Chronicles of Arabia, and the noble institutions which, during the Dark Ages, sprang up under the religion of the Crescent. corrupt superstition, as Mr. Macaulay allows it to be, was blighting with its sirocco currents the green buds of secular knowledge, and imprisoning within their fruit-vessel the long ripened seeds of sacred truth, the Caliphs of the East, the depositaries of physical force, and the heroes of many battles, were introducing among the ferocious Saracens the elements of art and science, and establishing schools and academies for the instruction of the children of the Prophet. A Christian physician, unfettered by Mohamedan tests, presided over the academy of Khorasan, composed of men of all countries and creeds. The orthodox Mussulmans indeed murmured at the liberality of their princes, but the Arabian youth resorted to the gymnasium, and neither his academies nor his colleges were denounced as godless. Such were the labors of Almamon. With a 66 vigor of muscle, and an audacity of spirit" not inferior to that of any of the captains of his age, he drew his sword against his enemies, but he returned it to its scabbard, more eager than before for the instruction and civilization of his subjects. As if conscious of the weakness of his position, Mr. Macaulay re-states his heresy with modifying expressions, and contents himself with the affirmation, "that that superstition (namely, the Catholic) cannot be regarded as "unmixedly noxious" which creates an aristocracy altogether independent of race, and compels the hereditary master to kneel before the spiritual tribunal of the hereditary bondsman." To the proposition in this form we willingly assent. There is no superstition unmixedly noxious--no institution, either social or political, in which something innocuous may not be found. Even in slavery, the climax of institutional baseness, we may contrast the African in chains, braving the horrors of the middle passage, with the slave spending the rest of his life under the roof of a kind and even a Christian master. Among the causes by which England was, at an early period, advantageously distinguished from most of the neighboring countries, Mr. Macaulay, in a very interesting pasage, mentions the relation in which the nobility stood to the commonalty : "There was," he says, "a strong hereditary aristocracy, but it was of all hereditary aristocracies the least insolent and exclusive. It had none of the invidious character of a caste. It was con [April, sult a class into which his own children must descend. * * * The constitution of the House of Commons tended greatly to promote the salutary intermixture of classes. The knight of the and the shopkeeper. On the same benches on shire was the connecting link between the baron which sat the goldsmiths, the drapers, and grocers who had been returned to Parliament by the commercial towns, sat also members who, in any other country, would have been called noblemen, hereditary lords of manors, entitled to hold courts, and to bear coat armor, and able to trace back an honorable descent through many generations. great lords. Others could boast even of royal Some of them were younger sons and brothers of blood. At length the eldest son of an Earl of Bedford, called, in courtesy, by the second title of his father, offered himself as candidate for a seat in the House of Commons, and his example was followed by others. Seated in that House, the heirs of the grandees of the realm naturally behumble burgesses with whom they were mingled. came as zealous for its privileges as any of the Thus our democracy was, from an early period, the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic in the world; a peculiarity which has lasted down to the present day, and which has produced many important moral and political effects."-Vol. i, pp. 38-40. After briefly referring to the government of the Plantagenets and Tudors, Mr. Macaulay treats of the Reformation and its consequences. He finds it difficult to whether say England owes more to the Roman Catholic admits that, religion or to the Reformation, and yet he freedom, and for all the blessings which pofor political and intellectual litical and intellectual freedom have brought stantly receiving members from the people, and in their train, she is chiefly indebted to the constantly sending down members to mingle with great rebellions of the Laity against the the people. Any gentleman might become a Priesthood." The origin and peculiar charpeer. The younger son of a peer was but a gen-acter of the English Church, and the relatleman. Grandsons of peers yielded precedence tion in which it stood to the State, next passes to newly made knights. The dignity of knight- under review. He points out the advantages hood was not beyond the reach of any man who could by diligence and thrift realize a good estate, which the Crown derived from an establishor who could attract notice by his valor in a bat- ment which inculcated the doctrine of pastle or a siege. It was regarded as no disparage- sive obedience, and describes the indignation ment for the daughter of a duke, nay, of a royal of the Puritans when they saw 66 an instituduke, to espouse a distinguished commoner. *** Good blood, indeed, was held in high respect; but tion younger by many years than themselves, and which had under their own eyes gradubetween good blood and the privileges of the peer-ally received its form from the passions and age, there was most fortunately for our country no necessary connexion. Pedigrees as long, and interests of a Court, begin to mimic the lofty scutcheons as old, were to be found out of the style of Rome." House of Lords as in it. There were new men who bore the highest titles. There were untitled men well known to have been descended from knights who had broken the Saxon ranks at Hast-mined that they should be persecuted. Persecuings, and scaled the walls of Jerusalem. * *** There was, therefore, here no line like that which in some other countries divided the patrician from the plebeian. The yeoman was not inclined to murmur at dignities to which his own children might rise. The grandee was not inclined to in "Since these men," (the Puritans,) says Mr. Macaulay, "could not be convinced, it was deter tion produced its natural effects upon them. It found them a sect; it made them a faction. To their hatred of the Church was now added hatred of the Crown. The two sentiments were intermingled, and each embittered the other. The opinions of the Puritan concerning the relation of ruler and subject were widely different from those that were inculcated in the homilies. His favorite divines had both by precept and example encouraged resistance to tyrants and persecutors. His fellow Calvinists in France, in Holland, and in Scotland, were in arms against idolatrous and cruel princes. His notions, too, respecting the government of the State, took a tinge from his notions regarding the government of the Church. Some of the sarcasms which were popularly thrown on Episcopacy, might without much difficulty be turned against royalty; and many of the arguments which were used to prove that spiritual power was best lodged in a synod, seemed to lead to the conclusion that temporal power was best lodged in a parliament. Thus, as the priest of the Established Church was from interest, from principle, and from passion, zealous for the royal prerogatives, the Puritan was from interest, from principle, and from passion, hostile to them."Vol. 1, pp. 60, 61. a spiritual guide like Archbishop Laud, fanatical and malignant, and the unrelenting persecutor of non-conforming piety, it was no wonder that the Sovereign was hated by his people. Tyranny, civil and ecclesiastical, prevailed. Obsequious judges sacrificed law and equity at the will of their monarch, and the Star Chamber and the High Commission, "guided chiefly by the violent spirit of the Primate, and freed from the control of Parliament, (which had not been convoked for eleven years,) displayed a rapacity, a violence, a malignant energy, which had been unknown to any former age." By such agencies the opponents of the Government were imprisoned, pilloried, and mutilated. The whole nation was agitated and incensed. The persons and liberties of Englishmen were imperilled; and such was the general despair, that men who feared God, and would have obeyed a righteous king, quitted the found an asylum in the trans-atlantic wilds. country which they loved, and sought and Amid forests which the hand of man had neither planted nor reared-under the shel On the death of Elizabeth in 1603, the crowns of Scotland and England were united in the person of James I, a mean and pusillanimous prince, a presumptuous pedant, and a stickler for the divine right of kings. His son, Charles I, while he surpassed his father in understanding, surpassed him also in big-stretched back into primeval times-within otry. Adopting the political theories of his sire, he strove to carry them into practice; and in attempting to convert the government of England into a despotism, and to establish Episcopacy in Scotland, he lost at once his life and his crown. "It would be unjust," says Mr. Macaulay, "to deny that Charles had some of the qualities of a good, and even of a great prince. He wrote and spake, not like his father, with the exactness of a professor, but after the fashion of intelligent and well-educated gentlemen. His taste in literature and art was excellent, his manner dignified though not gracious, his domestic life without blemish. Faithlessness was the chief cause of his disasters, and is the chief stain on his memory. He was, in truth, impelled by an incurable propensity to dark and crooked ways. It may seem strange that his conscience, which on occasions of little moment was sufficiently sensitive, should never have reproached him with this great vice. But there is reason to believe that he was perfidious, not only from constitution and from habit, but from principle. He seems to have learned from the theologians whom he most esteemed, that between him and his subjects there could be nothing of the nature of a mutual contact; that he could not, even if he would, divest himself of his despotic authority; and that in every promise which he made there was an implied reservation that such promise might be broken in case of necessi ty, and that of the necessity he was the sole judge." -Vol. i, pp. 83, 84. of the oak and the pine, whose pedigree the reach of the Indian's tomahawk, and in the jungle ringing with the cries of the beasts of prey, did the aristocracy of England's faith lay the foundation of the cities of the West, and give birth to a race of freemen, to avenge on a future generation of their oppressors the wrongs of their fathers. 66 At this emergency the insane bigotry of the King and the Primate took the fatal step which led to their ruin. In the "mere wantonness of tyranny, and with a criminal contempt of public feeling, they resolved to force upon Scotland a liturgy more popish than that of England, and to this rash attempt," as Mr. Macaulay justly observes, our country owes her freedom." A riot took place at the first exhibition of the hated ceremonial. The nation rose to arms. The Scots marched into Yorkshire. The English troops ford to pieces," and the hapless King was were ready to tear the hated Strafcompelled to abandon his arbitrary purpose, and to call to his aid the wisdom of Parliament. The Star Chamber and the High Commission were abolished; the dungeons and prisons were thrown open; the wicked counsellors of the wicked King were impeached. Strafford was imprisoned, and afterwards executed; Laud was sent to the 66 Tower, tried by the Lords, and executed ; * With a counsellor like the Earl of Straf*Mr. Macaulay has omitted to mention the trial ford, cruel and imperious in his nature, and | and execution of Laud. and the Lord Keeper Finch saved himself by | he thought as little of making England flight. great, as he did of making its people free. Without the guidance of faith, he cared little about religion; and without the restraints of conscience, he cared less about morality. "He had," says Mr. Macaulay, "received from nature excellent parts and a happy temper. His education had been such as might have been expected to develop his understanding, and to form him to the practice of every public and private virtue. He had passed through all the varieties of fortune, and had seen both sides of human na In order to pacify our justly indignant countrymen, Charles visited Scotland in 1641, and put his sign-manual to an act declaring episcopacy to be contrary to the Word of God! The enemies of prelacy were thus encouraged to oppose it; and when the Parliament re-assembled in October 1641, it was split into two formidable parties, the Cavaliers and Roundheads-the faction of the King and of the people. In the one were marshalled the Roman Catholics-the frivo-ture. He had, while very young, been driven lous votaries of pleasure, "who affected gallantry, splendor of dress, and a taste in the lighter arts"-together with the poets, the painters, and the stage-players, down to the rope-dancer and the Merry-Andrew." In the other were combined the members of the English Church who were still Calvinistic, the Protestant non-conformists, the municipal corporations, with their merchants and shopkeepers, the small rural freeholders, headed by a "formidable minority of the aristocracy, including the rich and powerful Earls of Northumberland, Bedford, Warwick, Stamford, and Essex." The rebellion of the Roman Catholics in Ulster gave strength to the popular party. The remonstrance of the Commons against the royal policy, the base impeachment of the five leaders of the House, and the attempt of Charles in person to seize them by armed force, within the walls of Parliament, inflamed the zeal of the Whigs, brought down upon the perfidious King the execration of his people, and forced him to fly from his stormy capital, to return only to a harsh and terrible doom. The story of the civil war, and the Protectorate of Cromwell--of the trial and execution of Charles I. as "a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy" of the march of General Monk and the army to London--of the restoration of Charles II., and of his triumphal return to the throne of his fathers, is briefly and eloquently told by Mr. Macaulay. The reign of the restored monarch had an auspicious commencement. Recalled by the consent of opposing factions, and regarded with a romantic interest from his personal sufferings and adventures, an opportunity was afforded for exhibiting the noblest virtues of a king, and embalming a righteous prerogative in the affections and liberties of his people. But it was otherwise decreed. Charles had neither the head nor the heart of a prince. Without the ambition of fame, forth from a palace to a life of exile, penury, and "It is creditable to Charles's temper that, ill as he thought of his species, he never became a misanthrope. He saw little in man but what was hateful. Yet he did not hate them. Nay, he was so far humane that it was highly disagreeable to him to see their sufferings or to hear their complaints. * * *The facility of Charles was such as has perhaps never been found in any man of equal sense. He was a slave without being a dupe. Worthless men and women, to the very bottom of whose hearts he saw, and whom he knew to be destitute of affection for him, and undeserving of his confidence, could easily wheedle |