Later, being in love with another, sure not to marry her if his birth remained under a cloud in the eyes of the world, absolved by his benefactress, whose son he had saved, entreated by her to resume the nam which belonged to him, he smiled sweetly, and gravely replied:

"It was settled twelve years since, by my dear lord's bedside," says Colonel Esmond. "The children must know nothing of this. Frank and his heirs afte him must bear our name. 'Tis his rightfully; I have not even a proof of that mar riage of my father and mother, though my poor lord, on his deathbed, told me that Father Holt had brought such a proof to Castlewood. I would not seek it when I was abroad. I went and looked at my poor mother's grave in her convent. What matter to her now? No court of law on earth, upon my mere word, would deprive my Lord Viscount and set me up. I am the head of the house, dear lady; but Frank is Viscount of Castlewood still. And rather than disturb him, I would turn monk, or disappear in America."

'As he spoke so to his dearest mistress, for whom he would have been willing to give up his life, or to make any sacrifice any day, the fond creature flung herself down on her knees before him, and kissed both his hands in an outbreak of passionate love and gratitude, such as could not but melt his heart, and make him feel very proud and thankful that God had given him the power to show his love for her, and to prove it by some little sacrifice on his own part. To be able to be stow benefits or happiness on those one loves is sure the greatest blessing conferred upon a man-and what wealth or name, or gratification of ambition or vanity, could compare with the pleasure Esmond now had of being able to confer some kindness upon his best and dearest friends?

"Dearest saint," says he, "purest soul, that has had so much to suffer, that has blest the poor lonely orphan with such a treasure of love. "Tis for me to kneel, not for you: 'tis for me to be thankful that I can make you happy. Hath my life any other aim? Blessed be God that I can serve you!"'1

These noble tendernesses seem still more touching when contrasted with the surrounding circumstances. Esmond goes to the wars, serves a party, lives amidst dangers and business, judging revolutions and politics from a lofty point of view; he becomes a man of experience, well informed, learned, provident, capable of great enterprises, possessing prudence and courage, harassed by his own thoughts and griefs, ever sad and ever strong. He ends by accompanying to England the Pretender, halfbrother of Queen Anne, and keeps him disguised at Castlewood, awaiting the moment when the queen, dying and won over to the cause, should declare him her heir. This young prince, a Stuart, pays court to Lord Castlewood's daughter Beatrix, whom Esmond loves, and gets out at night to join her. Esmond, who waits for him, sees the crown lost and his house dishonoured. His insulted honour and outraged love break forth in a superb and terrible rage. Pale, with set teeth, his brain fired by four nights of anxieties and watches, he preserves his clear mind, his restrained tone, and explains to the prince with perfect etiquette, with the respectful coldness of an official messenger, the folly which the prince has committed, and the villany which the prince has

The History of Henry Esmond, bk. iii. ch. ii.

contemplated. The scene must be read to see how much superiority and passion this calmness and bitterness impiy:

“What mean you, my lord?" says the Prince, and muttered something about a guet-à-pens, which Esmond caught up.

"The snare, Sir," said he, "was not of our laying; it is not we that invited you. We came to avenge, and not to compass, the dishonour of our family." "Dishonour! Morbleu! there has been no dishonour," says the Prince, turn. ing scarlet, "only a little harmless playing."

"That was meant to end seriously."

"I swear," the Prince broke out impetuously, "upon the honour of a gentleman, my lords ".

"That we arrived in time. No wrong hath been done, Frank," says Colonel Esmond, turning round to young Castlewood, who stood at the door as the talk was going on. "See! here is a paper whereon his Majesty hath deigned to commence some verses in honour, or dishonour, of Beatrix. Here is 'Madame' and 'Flamme,' 'Cruelle' and 'Rebelle,' and 'Amour' and 'Jour,' in the Royal writing and spelling. Had the Gracious lover been happy, he had not passed his time in sighing." In fact, and actually as he was speaking, Esmond cast his eyes down towards the table, and saw a paper on which my young Prince had been scrawling a madrigal, that was to finish his charmer on the morrow.

"Sir," says the Prince, burning with rage (he had assumed his Royal coat unassisted by this time), "did I come here to receive insults?"

"To confer them, may it please your Majesty," says the Colonel, with a very low bow, “and the gentlemen of our family are come to thank you."

"Malédiction!" says the young man, tears starting into his eyes with helpless rage and mortification. "What will you with me, gentlemen?"

"If your Majesty will please to enter the next apartment," says Esmond, pre serving his grave tone, "I have some papers there which I would gladly submit to you, and by your permission I will lead the way;" and taking the taper up, and backing before the Prince with very great ceremony, Mr. Esmond passed into the little Chaplain's room, through which we had just entered into the house :-" Please to set a chair for his Majesty, Frank," says the Colonel to his companion, who wondered almost as much at this scene, and was as much puzzled by it, as the other actor in it. Then going to the crypt over the mantel-piece, the Colonel opened it, and drew thence the papers which so long had lain there.

"Here, may it please your Majesty," says he, "is the Patent of Marquis sent over by your Royal Father at St. Germain's to Viscount Castlewood, my father: here is the witnessed certificate of my father's marriage to my mother, and of my birth and christening; I was christened of that religion of which your sainted sire gave all through life so shining example. These are my titles, dear Frank, and this what I do with them: here go Baptism and Marriage, and here the Marquisate and the August Sign-Manual, with which your predecessor was pleased to honour our race." And as Esmond spoke he set the papers burning in the brazier. "You will please, sir, to remember," he continued, "that our family hath ruined itself by fidelity to yours; that my grandfather spent his estate, and gave his blood and his son to die for your service; that my dear lord's grandfather (for lord you are now, Frank, by right and title too) died for the same cause; that my poor kinswoman, my father's second wife, after giving away her honour to your wicked perjured race, sent all her wealth to the King, and got in return that precious titl that lies in ashes, and this inestimable yard of blue riband. I lay this at your feet, and stamp upon it: I draw this sword, and break it and deny you; and had

you completed the wrong you designed us, by Heaven I would have driven it through your heart, and no more pardoned you than your father pardoned Moamouth."'i

Two pages later he speaks thus of his marriage to Lady Castlewood:

"That happiness, which hath subsequently crowned it, cannot be written in words; 'tis of its nature sacred and secret, and not to be spoken of, though the heart be ever so full of thankfulness, save to Heaven and the One ear alone to one fond being, the truest and tenderest and purest wife ever man was blessed with. As I think of the immense happiness which was in store for me, and of the depth and intensity of that love which, for so many years, hath blessed me, I own to transport of wonder and gratitude for such a boon--nay, am thankful to have been endowed with a heart capable of feeling and knowing the immense beauty and value of the gift which God hath bestowed upon me. Sure, love vincit omnia, is imineasurably above all ambition, more precious than wealth, more noble than name. He knows not life who knows not that he hath not felt the highest faculty of the soul who hath not enjoyed it. In the name of my wife I write the completion of hope, and the summit of happiness. To have such a love is the one blessing, in comparison of which all earthly joy is of no value; and to think of her, is to praise God.'

A character capable of such contrasts is a lofty work; it is to be remembered that Thackeray has produced no other; we regret that moral intentions have perverted these fine literary faculties; and we deplore that satire has robbed art of such a talent.

X.

Who is he; and what is the value of this literature of which he is one of the princes? At bottom, like every literature, it is a definition of man; and to judge it, we must compare it with man. We can do so now; we have just studied a mind, Thackeray himself; we have considered his faculties, their connections, results, their different degrees ; we have under our eyes a model of human nature. We have a right to judge of the copy by the model, and to shape the definition which his romances lay down by the definition which his character furnishes

The two definitions are contrary, and his portrait is a criticism ca his talent. We have seen that in him the same faculties produce the beautiful and the ugly, force and weakness, success and failure; hat moral reflection, after having provided him with every satirical power, debases him in art; that, after having spread through his contemporary novels a tone of vulgarity and falseness, it raises his historical novel to the level of the finest productions; that the same constitution of mind teaches him the sarcastic and violent, as well as the modulated and simple style, the bitterness and harshness of hate with the effusions and delicacies of love. The evil and the good, the beautiful and the ugly, the repulsive and the agreeable, are then in him but remoter effects, of slight importance, born of changing circumstances, derived

The History of Henry Esmond, bk. iii, ch. xiii.

and fortuitous qualities, not essential and primitive, diverse forms which diverse streams trace in the same bed. So it is with other men. Doubtless moral qualities are of the first rank; they are the motive power of civilisation, and constitute the nobleness of the individual; society exists by them alone, and by them alone man is great. But if they are the finest frit of the human plant, they are not its root; they give us our value, but do not constitute our elements. Neither the vices nor the virtues ɔf man are his nature; to praise or to blame him is not to know him; approbation or disapprobation does not define him; the names of good or bad tell us nothing of what he is. Put the robber Cartouche in an Italian court of the fifteenth century; he would be a great statesman. Transport this nobleman, stingy and narrow-minded, into a shop; he will be an exemplary tradesman. This public man, of inflexible probity, is in his drawing-room an intolerable coxcomb. This father of a family, so humane, is an idiotic politician. Change a virtue in its circumstances, and it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard the same quality from two sides; on one it is a fault, on the other a merit. The essential of man is found concealed far below these moral badges; they only point out the useful or noxious effect of our inner constitution: they do not reveal our inner constitution. They are safety lamps or railway-lights attached to our names, to warn the passer-by to avoid or approach us; they are not the explanatory table of our being. Our true essence consists in the causes of our good or bad qualities, and these causes are discovered in the temperament, the species and degree of imagination, the amount and velocity of attention, the magnitude and direction of primitive passions. A character is a force, like gravity, weight, or steam, capable, as it may happen, of pernicious or profitable effects, and which must be defined otherwise than by the amount of the weight it can lift or the havoc it can cause. It is therefore to ignore man, to reduce him, as Thackeray and English literature generally do, to an aggregate of virtues and vices; it is to lose sight in him of all but the exterior and social side; it is to neglect the inner and natural element. You will find the same fault in English criticism, always moral, never psychological, bent on exactly measuring the degree of human honesty, gnerart of the mechanism of our sentiments and faculties; you will find the same fault in English religion, which is but an emotion or a discipline; in their philosophy, destitute of metaphysics; ar.d if you ascend to the source, according to the rule which derives vices from virtues, and virtues from vices, you will see all these weaknesses derived from their native energy, their practical education, and that sort of severe and religious poetic instinct which has in time past made them Protestant and Puritan.

VOL IL

80

CHAPTER III.

Criticism and History.-Macaulay.

I The vocation and position of Macaulay in England.

11. His Essays— Agreeable character and utility of the style-C pinions-Philosophy. Wherein it is English and practical-His Essay on Bacon -The true object, according to him, of the sciences--Comparison of Bacon with the ancients.

III. His criticism-Moral prejudices-Comparison of criticism in France and England-Why he is religious-Connection of religion and Liberalism in England-Macaulay's Liberalism-Essay on Church and State.

IV. His passion for political liberty-How he is the orator and historian of the Whig party-Essays on the Revolution and the Stuarts.

V. His talent-Taste for demonstration-Taste for development-Oratorical character of his mind-Wherein he differs from classic orators-His estimation for particular facts, experiment on the senses, personal reminiscences-Importance of decisive phenomena in every branch of knowledge-Essays on Warren Hastings and Clive.

VI. English marks of his talent-Rudeness-Humour-Poetry.

VII. His work-Harmony of his talent, opinion, and work—Universality, unity, interest of his history-Picture of the Highlands-James I. in Ireland -The Act of Toleration-The Massacre of Glencoe-Traces of amplification and rhetoric.

VIII. Comparison of Macaulay with French historians-Wherein he is classicalWherein he is English-Intermediate position of his mind between the Latin and the Germanic mind.

I

SHALL not here attempt to write the life of Lord Macaulay. It can only be related after twenty years, when his friends shall have put together all their recollections of him. As to what is public now, it seems to me useless to recall it: every one knows that his father was an abolitionist and a philanthropist; that our Macaulay passed through a most brilliant and complete classical education; that at twenty-five his essay on Milton made him famous; that at thirty he entered Parliament, and took his standing there amongst the first orators; that he went to India to reform the law, and that on his return he was appointed to high offices; that on one occasion his liberal opinions in religious matters lost him the votes of his constituents; that he was re-elected amidst universal congratulations; that he continued to be the most celebrated