the belief of his friends, but was hardly
admitted by opponents. His biographer has really lifted the question out
of the range of controversy. He wrote for truth, but of course for truth
such as he saw it; and his sight was colored from within. This color,
once attached, was what in manufacture is called a mordant; it was a
fast color: he could not distinguish between what his mind had received
and what his mind had imparted. Hence, when he was wrong, he could not
see that he was wrong; and of those calamities which are due to the
intellect only, and not the heart, there can hardly be a greater....

However true it may be that Macaulay was a far more consummate workman
in the manner than in the matter of his works, we do not doubt that the
works contain, in multitudes, passages of high emotion and ennobling
sentiment, just awards of praise and blame, and solid expositions of
principle, social, moral, and constitutional. They are pervaded by a
generous love of liberty; and their atmosphere is pure and bracing,
their general aim and basis morally sound. Of the qualifications of this
eulogy we have spoken, and have yet to speak. But we can speak of the
style of the works with little qualification. We do not indeed venture
to assert that his style ought to be imitated. Yet this is not because
it was vicious, but because it was individual and incommunicable. It was
one of those gifts of which, when it had been conferred, Nature broke
the mold. That it is the head of all literary styles we do not allege;
but it is different from them all, and perhaps more different from them
all than they are usually different from one another. We speak only of
natural styles, of styles where the manner waits upon the matter, and
not where an artificial structure has been reared either to hide or to
make up for poverty of substance.

It is paramount in the union of ease in movement with perspicuity of
matter, of both with real splendor, and of all with immense rapidity and
striking force. From any other pen, such masses of ornament would be
tawdry; with him they are only rich. As a model of art concealing art,
the finest cabinet pictures of Holland are almost his only rivals. Like
Pascal, he makes the heaviest subject light; like Burke, he embellishes
the barrenest. When he walks over arid plains, the springs of milk and
honey, as in a march of Bacchus, seem to rise beneath his tread. The
repast he serves is always sumptuous, but it seems t