is _layman_--a supple figure which he models into
what he thinks the most striking attitude, and dresses up with the
gaudiest colours and most fantastical draperies.

It is very difficult to condense into any manageable space the proofs of
a general system of accumulating and aggravating all that was ever,
whether truly or falsely, reproached to the Tories, and alleviating
towards the Whigs the charges which he cannot venture to deny or even to
question. The mode in which this is managed so as to keep up some show
of impartiality is very dexterous. The reproach, well or ill founded,
which he thinks most likely to damage the character of any one he
dislikes, is repeated over and over again in hope that the iteration
will at last be taken for proof, such as the perfidy of Charles I, the
profligacy and selfishness of Charles II, the cold and cruel stupidity
of James, the baseness of Churchill, the indecent violence of Rochester,
the contemptible subserviency of his brother, Clarendon, and so on
through a whole dictionary of abuse on every one whom he takes or
mistakes for a Tory, and on a few Whigs whom for some special reasons of
his own he treats like Tories. On the other hand, when he finds himself
reluctantly forced to acknowledge even the greatest enormity of the
Whigs--corruption--treason--murder he finds much gentler terms for the
facts; selects a scapegoat, some subaltern villain, or some one whom
history has already gibbeted, "to bear upon him all their iniquities,"
and that painful sacrifice once made, he avoids with tender care a
recurrence to so disagreeable a subject....

After so much political detail it will be some kind of diversion to our
readers to examine Mr. Macaulay's most elaborate strategic and
topographical effort, worked up with all the combined zeal and skill of
an ex-Secretary-at-War and a pictorial historian--a copious description
of the battle of Sedgemoor. Mr. Macaulay seems to have visited
Bridgwater with a zeal worthy of a better result: for it has produced a
description of the surrounding country as pompous and detailed as if it
had been the scene of some grand strategic operations--a parade not
merely unnecessary, but absurd, for the so-called battle was but a
bungling skirmish. Monmouth had intended to surprise the King's troops
in their quarters by a midnight attack, but was stopped by a wide and
deep trench, of which he was not apprised, called Bussex Rhine, behind
which the King's arm