I MACAULAY: THE RHETORICIAN T has been the fashion in these later days to depreciate Macaulay. "A mere rhetori cian" has become almost a cant word in connection with him. Yet in his day he had a more decided and obvious influence on the style of young men of all conditions than any other writer of the nineteenth century. Macaulay's style is the style of the orator adapted to the purposes of the essay writer. He is above all clear and simple. His ideas are neither many nor profound, but they are important of their kind. His special merit is that he illustrates his thought with all the arts of eloquence. His special rhetorical weapon is antithesis and the balanced-sentence structure. This has a simple cadence that readily catches and charms the ear. There is in it not only cadence, but movement, vivacity, and inspiration. We see how the hearer may be swept onward to almost any conclusion by the logical succession of the thoughts coupled with the sweep of the orator's magnetism. The art of eloquence is a fine one, and one well worth cultivating. It was the art made so famous by the speakers in the Athenian agora, and it is to that art wholly that Aristotle's treatise on rhetoric is devoted. Macaulay's methods of adapting the peculiar gifts of the public speaker to written prose are simple. First, the ideas are arranged in logical order, one leading up to and preparing the way for the next, so that the most cursory reader cannot fail to perceive the connection, and he who runs may read. Then all facts and conclusions are stated vividly by means of sharp contrasts, and each important point is repeated in many different ways until the reader has been forced by the mere reading of the words to take sufficient time to let it sink into his mind. The art of proportioning the time and attention to be given to each essential point is one which the orator understands in perfection, but which the writer who is not constantly thinking of his audience usually fails to master. It is nevertheless one of the most important acquirements for every writer who wishes to be effective. In this especially Macaulay is our most useful model. WE THE PURITANS (Essay on Milton) E would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. He that runs may read them; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out. For many years after the Restoration, they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time when the press and the stage were most licentious. They were not men of letters; they were, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learnt. And he who approaches this subject should carefully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule which has already misled so many excellent writers. "Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene." Those who roused the people to resistance, who directed their measures through long series of eventful years, who formed, out of the most unpromising materials, the finest army that Europe had ever seen, who trampled down King, Church, and Aristocracy, who, in the short intervals of |