a story, with
abundance of details and plenty of colour, and a realistic assurance
that it is no mere make-believe. Macaulay never stops to brood over an
incident or a character, with an inner eye intent on penetrating to the
lowest depth of motive and cause, to the furthest complexity of impulse,
calculation, and subtle incentive. The spirit of analysis is not in him,
and the divine spirit of meditation is not in him. His whole mind runs
in action and movement; it busies itself with eager interest in all
objective particulars. He is seized by the external and the superficial,
and revels in every detail that appeals to the five senses. 'The
brilliant Macaulay,' said Emerson, with slight exaggeration, 'who
expresses the tone of the English governing classes of the day,
explicitly teaches that _good_ means good to eat, good to wear, material
commodity.' So ready a faculty of exultation in the exceeding great
glories of taste and touch, of loud sound and glittering spectacle, is a
gift of the utmost service to the narrator who craves immense audiences.
Let it be said that if Macaulay exults in the details that go to our
five senses, his sensuousness is always clean, manly, and fit for honest
daylight and the summer sun. There is none of that curious odour of
autumnal decay that clings to the passion of a more modern school for
colour and flavour and the enumerated treasures of subtle indulgence.

Mere picturesqueness, however, is a minor qualification compared with
another quality which everybody assumes himself to have, but which is in
reality extremely uncommon; the quality, I mean, of telling a tale
directly and in straightforward order. In speaking of Hallam, Macaulay
complained that Gibbon had brought into fashion an unpleasant trick of
telling a story by implication and allusion. This provoking obliquity
has certainly increased rather than declined since Hallam's day. Mr.
Froude, it is true, whatever may be his shortcomings on the side of
sound moral and political judgment, has admirable gifts in the way of
straightforward narration, and Mr. Freeman, when he does not press too
hotly after emphasis, and abstains from overloading his account with
super-abundance of detail, is usually excellent in the way of direct
description. Still, it is not merely because these two writers are alive
and Macaulay is not, that most people would say of him that he is
unequalled in our time in his mastery of the art of letting us know i