ould have been to him an
abomination. He despised the poetry of his own age, with its involved
sentences, its obscurity, and its strange metres. His own poetry was as
direct as Homer, as simple as Chaucer, and as graphic as Scott.

In 1859, Macaulay contrived to visit once more the English lakes and the
western highlands, where he was received with great veneration, being
recognized everywhere on steamers and railway stations. But his
cheerfulness had now departed, although he made an effort to be
agreeable. In December of this year he ceased writing in his diary. The
physicians pretended to think that he was better, but fainting fits set
in. On Christmas he said but little, and was constantly dropping to
sleep. His relatives did not seem to think that he was in immediate
danger, but the end was near. He died without pain, and was buried in
Westminster Abbey on the 9th of January, 1860, having for pall-bearers
the most illustrious men in England. He rests in the Poet's Corner, amid
the tombs of Johnson and Garrick, Handel and Goldsmith, Gay and Addison,
leaving behind him an immortal fame.

And what is this fame? It is not that of a philosophical historian like
Guizot, for his History is not marked by profound generalizations, or
even thoughtful reflections. He was not a judicial historian like
Hallam, seeking to present the truth alone; for he was a partisan, full
of party prejudices. Nor was he an historian like Ranke, raking out the
hidden facts of a remote period, and unveiling the astute diplomacy of
past ages. Macaulay was a great historical painter of the realistic
school, whose pictures have never been surpassed, or even equalled, for
vividness and interest. In this class of historians he stands out alone
and peerless, the most exciting and the most interesting of all the
historians who have depicted the manners, the events, and the characters
of a former age,--never by any accident dull, but fatiguing, if at all,
only by his wealth of illustration and the over-brilliancy of his
coloring. He is the Titian of word-painting, and as such will live like
that immortal colorist. Critics may say what they please about his
rhetoric, about his partial statements, about his want of insight into
deep philosophical questions; but as a painter who made his figures
stand out on the historical canvas with unique vividness, Macaulay
cannot fail to be regarded, as long as the English language is spoken or
written, as one of the