In order to turn the conversation from a subject so painful, I hastened to add : "I had mine all complete, a short time ago; but as I am not rich, I tried to turn it to some use, and see!"-here the captain uncovered his head, and pointed compla "It seems as if I still saw the Pupils of the Guard, marching through the park, in winter, with their handsome green uni-cently to his leathern cap-"see! this is all I could get in exchange for it.” forms 66 Ma foi!" he cried, interrupting me, THE CHILD AND THE AURORA BOREALIS. THE air is sharp-the cloudless night And crisp and cold the stars look through. Maria, upon thy wondering sight What vision breaks this silent night? Her eyes, so exquisitely clear,. Are raised to heaven. It is not fear, It is not joy; perhaps the twain— Some wish yet undefined as vain, Some quick, unspeakable surprise, That fixes thus her ardent eyes. A vision, never seen before, Now brightening like the coming day, New to her childish gaze the sight- That holds her rosy lips asunder. What can she do?—how freely tell The doubts that in her bosom swell? Come teeming now her memory o'er She thinks perhaps the gates of heaven So, touched with awe, athwart her face A dawning sense, a lesson new, Like summer's bow, or evening star; A. M. W. MACAULAY'S ESSAYS.* Few books, within our recollection, have been looked for with so much interest, or grasped at with so much avidity, as Mr. Macaulay's History. The reason of this is obvious:-Mr. Macaulay had written somewhat largely and acceptably on historical subjects: he was generally understood to be a man of rather liberal and popular principles: he was thought to be a writer of great talent, research and accuracy, of a remarkably discriminating and impartial judgment, and of a most original, brilliant and impressive style; and he was reported to be engaged in a work on that period of which a good history was most wanted. Two large volumes of the work, covering, exclusive of the introductory matter, a period of about three years and eleven months, have at length appeared, and we presume have, if anything, rather surpassed the public expectations. To paraphrase one of Mr. Macaulay's own sentences, he writes ten pages of history where another man writes one, and one of his pages is thought by many to contain as much excellence as another man's ten. Lord Mahon's work, so far as we know, was not heard of by the public until it appeared, and has been little noticed in this country since its appearance. First published in 1844, it has waited five years for republication in America. At length the Messrs. Appleton, one of the best and largest publishing houses in the country, have put it forth in their best style, under the editorial supervision of the able and judicious Professor Reed, of Philadelphia, a man of extensive learning and excellent taste, and one of the fairest, clearest, calmest minds that have lately appeared in the field of American letters. The work could | not have passed to the public through better hands, and but that we dislike the mode of expression, we would add, those hands could not well have been employed on a more acceptable work. Both the editor and the publishers are the more entitled to our thanks, forasmuch as they have performed the task with the prospect of but a remote and slender advantage to themselves: for it could hardly be expected that a work which had waited so long for a publisher should have a very quick or very large sale when published. This fact, however, must not be supposed to indicate a want of taste and appreciation in the public for historical literature. For if Lord Mahon has waited five years to find one publisher, Mr. Macaulay has found three publishers in as many months; and four or five large editions of the latter are likely to be disposed of before the half of one small edition of the former shall have been sold. Nor do the two works differ more in popularity than in temper and style: Lord Mahon uniformly writes like a gentleman, a scholar, and a Christian; Mr. Macaulay writes just like himself; in their views, feelings and dispositions they are almost as unlike as Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine; in short, however much we may respect so high an authority as popular taste, we feel bound to confess, that in the most essential qualities of an historian Lord Mahon seems to us as much better than Mr. Macaulay as he is different from him. Nor is this conclusion taken up lightly and unadvisedly; it is the result of a pretty careful study and comparison of the two works: we know, moreover, that there are a few who agree with us in opinion now; and we have the confidence or the vanity * Essays, Critical and Miscellaneous. By T. Babington Macaulay. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart. 1847. The History of England, from the Accession of James II. By Thomas Babington Macaulay. New York: Harper & Brothers, 82 Cliff street. 1849. In two History of England, from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Paris. By Lord Mahon. Edited by Henry Reed, Professor of English Literature in the University of Pennsylvania. volumes. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 200 Broadway. Philadelphia: George S. Appleton, 164 Chestnut street. 1849. Essays, p. 171. to think the number will increase. The book has nothing savoring of "a nine-days' wonder;" without any of the qualities that ordinarily make men mad, it has come forth silently, and, we venture to predict, will silently make its way. Though but little if any longer than Mr. Macaulay's two volumes, it covers a period of nearly fifty years; and that, too, without any appearance of incompleteness or want, or a sacrifice of any matter that would add to the real interest or value of the work. But though about the same length as Macaulay's two volumes, it is a book which one would naturally be much longer in reading, because it never puts one in a hurry; abounding in inculcations to linger and contemplate and reflect, it seldom if ever leaves on the mind that sense of positivenesss which men are more apt to crave than to be the better or wiser for having. But Mr. Macaulay's popularity and Lord Mahon's merit entitle them to a pretty thorough examination at our hands; and such an examination we shall now proceed to give them, as far as our time and space and ability will permit. We shall endeavor to discuss their respective qualities with tolerable candor and moderation; though we freely acknowledge an aversion to the one and an attachment to the other, which may more or less bias and disqualify our judgment concerning them; and we shall deeply regret, if, through prejudice or prepossession, we should lay ourselves open to any such impeachment of temper or of statement as we shall feel obliged to urge against one of them. We have thus taken care to indicate in the outset, "the gross and scope of our opinion," to the end that if any determined admirers of Mr. Macaulay should chance upon this article, they may know from the beginning what they have to expect. Attention was first drawn to Mr. Macaulay in this country, by an article on Milton, published in the Edinburgh Review in 1825. Most of the author's admirers whom we have met with, dated their admiration from the reading of this article; to this they commonly appealed in justification of the high praise which it became fashionable to bestow upon him. It cannot be denied that there is much in the article well adapted to produce such a result. A very small logic wielded with surprising agility, that master-weapon of special pleading, whereby readers are easily made to think they understand the things they do not; a fearless leaning to his own understanding, and scorning of all who do otherwise, which is often mistaken for the confidence of certain truth; a cheap and ostentatious mannerism of style, which keeps the author always in view, and the reader always thinking, what a splendid writer he is !" a dashing, off-hand, superficial ingenuity of phrase, which it requires little culture, less time, and no thought to appreciate; a skillful puppet-show of illustrations which is sometimes called poetry, and which, from its rapidity of movement, leaves on the mind a half-impression of life; and an habitual settling of long-disputed questions, as if there were, and could be, no dispute about them, which naturally encourages some readers in mistaking their own wishes and prejudices for wise and just conclusions; these things, together with a remarkable absence of those moral and intellectual qualities which invite the reader to linger and reflect, and pause and suspend his judgment, and remeasure his ground, and question his premises, and distrust his opinions, and moderate his censures; all these things sufficiently explain why the article on Milton should have won for its author so quick and wide a popularity. That college boys and boarding-school misses, and sophomores of all ages and sexes should rise from such a piece of reading fully convinced that they knew far more of English history than Clarendon and Hume, was to be expected. And it was equally natural that they should entertain pretty tall notions of the writer who had given them so much knowledge at so little cost. When, for example, the critic informs us, with characteristic modesty, that "Hume hated religion so much that he hated liberty for having been allied with religion;" many would, of course, think there could no longer be any doubt why the historian "had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. and the Earl of Strafford." By the way, Mr. Hume informs us, in the life of himself, prefixed to his history, that at one time he almost despaired of the success of his work, the publisher having of Boswell's Life of Johnson, published in Dr. Johnson, I recommend my . .' told him that only forty-five copies of | in popularity, was that on Croker's edition it were sold in a year, and he having "scarcely heard of one man in the three kingdoms, considerable for rank or letters, that could endure the book, except the Primate of England, Dr. Herring, and the Primate of Ireland, Dr. Stone.' Now if to the remark just quoted Mr. Macaulay had added, that it was probably for the same cause, namely, hatred of religion, that when the historian was thus despairing of his immortal work, "these dignified prelates separately sent him messages not to be discouraged," he would have nearly reached the spirit of his more mature performances. But, notwithstanding this slight defect, we can easily see how the article in question, even if no more like it had come from the same source, might well enough have lived very fast and died pretty soon. But the latter part of this effect was happily prevented by a succession of papers written with increasing cleverness and effrontery, evincing the same arrogance of temper, the same keen, cold intellectual virulence, the same hardness and hollowness of heart, and made up of the same monotonous smartness and brilliancy; yet coming at such intervals that the admiring readers had time to rest and recover from the monotony of one before they entered upon that of another. All these things considered, it seems rather unkind in Mr. Macaulay to come out as he has done in the preface to the English edition of his Essays, telling us, "No attempt has been made to remodel any of the pieces which are contained in these volumes. Even the criticism on Milton, which was written when the author was fresh from college, and which contains scarcely a paragraph such as his matured judgment approves, still remains overloaded with guady and ungraceful ornament." 66 Call you that backing your friends?" Nevertheless, we acknowledge for once our entire consent with Mr. Macaulay; we fully agree with him that the piece in question is worthless; and we thought so long before his own opinion on the subject was published. For vices of style we believe it has never been surpassed; for vices (or are they virtues?) of temper it has probably been surpassed only by some of his later pieces. Next, perhaps, to the article on Milton VOL. III. NO. V. NEW SERIES. One would think a man ought to be pretty sure he is right before he goes ahead after this fashion. Yet, if our lexicon does not lie, nothing in Greek is more certain than that the word Svyro may be used "in the sense which Mr. Croker ascribes to it," and that as high an authority as Euripides, (Hercules Furens, 491,) has used it in that sense, all scholars are agreed except Dindorf. Now we know not what may be the custom in England, having never been to school there; but it is more customary here to flog schoolboys for insulting and browbeating their fellows, than for such mistakes as the one thus charged upon Mr. Croker. Here is another specimen from our accomplished author. "Mr. Croker tells us that the great Marquis of Montrose was beheaded in Edinburgh, in 1650. There is not a forward boy in any school in England who does not know that the Marquis was hanged. The account of the execution is one of the finest passages in Lord Clarendon's History. We can scarcely suppose that Mr. Croker has never read that sage; and yet we can scarcely suppose that any person who has ever perused so noble and pathetic a story, can have utterly forgotten all its most striking circumstances."t pas The passage of Lord Clarendon alluded to is before us; where we find the sen tence against the great Marquis running as follows, the italics being our own: "That he was, on the morrow, being the one and twentieth of May, 1650, to be carried to Edinburgh cross, and there to be hanged upon a gallows thirty foot high, for the space of three hours, and then to be taken down, and his head to be cut off upon a scaffold, and hanged on Edinburgh tollbooth; his legs and arms to be hanged up in other public towns of the kingdom, and his body to be buried at the place where he was executed, except the kirk should take off his excommunication; and then his body might be buried in the common place of burial." A few lines after, the noble historian informs us, that having first "pronounced his damnation," "the next day they executed every part and circumstance of that barbarous sentence, with all the inhumanity imaginable; and he bore it with all the courage and magnanimity, and the greatest piety, that a good Christian could manifest." Now, in some respects, the beheading of the Marquis after he was dead, seems to us a more striking and memorable circumstance than the hanging him. For who that has ever read this pathetic story, would not be most likely to remember that noblest part of the noblest speech we ever read, where the heroic Marquis told his bloodthirsty enemies, that "he was prouder to have his head set upon the place it was appointed to be, than he would be to have had his picture hang in the king's bed-chamber; that he was so far from being troubled that his four abs were to be hanged in four cities of the kingdom, that he heartily wished he had flesh enough to be sent to every city in Christendom, as a testimony of the cause for which he suffered." ""* While on this subject we may as well notice a singular instance of inaccuracy that occurs in the History. Speaking of ancient Britain, he says: "There was one province in our island, in which, as Procopius had been told, the ground was covered with serpents, and the air was such that no man could inhale it and live. To this desolate region the spirits of the departed were ferried over from the land of the Franks at midnight. A strange race of fishermen performed the ghastly office. The speech of the dead was distinctly heard by the boatman; their weight made the keel sink deep in the water, but their forms were invisible to mortal eye. Such were the marvels which an able historian, the contemporary of Belisarius, of Simplicius, and of Trebonian, gravely related in the rich and polite Constantinople, touching the country in which the founder of Constantinople had assumed the imperial purple."* Now, unless we be sadly misinformed, this is a strange bundle of mistakes. For the passage of Procopius alluded to has nothing to do with the island of Great Britain, or any province of it. On the contrary, Procopius locates the serpents in an island called Brittia; not in any province of it, but in the whole island; and adds withal the story of Charon's ferry; but, instead of relating it "gravely," prefaces his account with a distinct statement that he does not believe it; but says so many have told him of it, that he might seem ignorant of the state of Brittia, should he omit it. Procopius, indeed, often speaks of Great Britain as Britannia, and in one of his works, (Bell. Va.) he gives a full account of the revolt of Britannia from the Romans, and of the election of Constantine as emperor by the soldiers then on service in that island. From all which it would seem that he regarded Brittia and Britannia as two distinct places; and accordingly he elsewhere says, "The island of Brittia is in the ocean, not more than 200 stadia from the shore, opposite the mouths of the Rhine, between Britannia and Thule." However erroneous, therefore, Procopius may have been in his geography, it seems pretty clear, that to his mind Brittia, with its serpents, and ghosts, and malaria, Iwas not the island where the soldiers elected Constantine to the empire. return to the article on Johnson and Boswell. To Mr. Macaulay has several other remarks on Mr. Croker, equally amiable with those already quoted. After alleging against * Vol. I, p. 5. London Athenæum, Feb. 17, 1849. See, * History of the Rebellion, p. 742. Oxford, however, Gibbon, Decline and Fall, chap. xxxviii, near the close. 1843. |