if vibrating between facts
that every one knows and consequences which nobody can believe. We are
satisfied that whoever will take, as we have been obliged to do, the
pains of sifting what Mr. Macaulay has produced from his own mind with
what he has borrowed from others, will be entirely of our opinion. In
truth, when, after reading a page or two of this book, we have occasion
to turn to the same transaction in Burnet, Dalrymple, or Hume, we feel
as if we were exchanging the glittering agility of a rope-dancer for
gentlemen in the attire and attitude of society. And we must say that
there is not one of those writers that does not give a clearer and more
trustworthy account of all that is really historical in the period than
can be collected from Mr. Macaulay's more decorated pages. We invite our
readers to try Mr. Macaulay's merits as an historian by the test of
comparison with his predecessors.

* * * * *

Every great painter is supposed to make a larger use of one particular
colour. What a monstrous bladderful of _infamy_ Mr. Macaulay must have
squeezed on his palette when he took to portrait-painting! We have no
concern, except as friends to historical justice, for the characters of
any of the parties thus stigmatized, nor have we room or time to discuss
these, or the hundred other somewhat similar cases which the volumes
present; but we have looked at the authorities cited by Mr. Macaulay,
and we do not hesitate to say that, "as is his wont," he has, with the
exception of Jeffries, outrageously exaggerated them.

We must next notice the way in which Mr. Macaulay refers to and uses his
authorities--no trivial points in the execution of a historical work--
though we shall begin with comparatively small matters. In his chapter
on manners, which we may call the most remarkable in his book, one of
his most frequent references is to "Chamberlayne's State of England,
1684." It is referred to at least a dozen or fourteen times in that
chapter alone; but we really have some doubt whether Mr. Macaulay knew
the nature of the book he so frequently quoted. Chamberlayne's work, of
which the real title is "_Angliae_ [or, after the Scotch Union, _Magnae
Britanniae_] _Notitia, or the Present State of England_" [or _Great
Britain_], was a kind of periodical publication, half history and half
court-calendar. It was first published in 1669, and new editions or
reprints, with new dates, were issued, not