His Religious Opinions. 25 that of David Hume. Macaulay, in fact, will not entertain any question of religion in any matters of public and general application, with the single exception of an established church; and, as we have seen, he is not solicitous about the special nature of such church, so long as it is simply established by the will of the majority. Like Hume, in truth, there are two things, in a religious sense, which Macaulay cordially hates. Hume names the one superstition' and the other enthusiasm.' Of Macaulay's feelings towards the former we have already seen enough. His notions of the latter are implied in all that he says relative to bigots and fanatics. But nowhere are his thoughts seen clearer than in his account of George Fox, the Quaker, or in his description (Ranke's Popes') of a converted tinker, whom the Roman Church, unlike the Protestant, he says, would have turned to its own service. In these, his cold statement of religious experiences reads like an extract from some medical work pathologically relating the symptoms and progress of some bodily malady. Such things involve a process that seems alien to him; for the most part, he looks on with disgust and scorn, or, at best, with curiosity and compassion. No; all Macaulay's sympathies are with the temporal; and when the subject of religion occurs to be taken up, it is simply viewed as one of the other material interests. It is very characteristic of him to remark, that Catholicism is the most attractive of all superstitions,' and that the Jewish religion, of all erroneous religions, is the least mischievous.' In short, when he says of Danby, His attachment to Episcopacy and the Liturgy were rather political than religious,' the dictum, without straining and without uncharity, might easily receive a wider application. Those of our readers who know anything of the French philosopher Comte, or of his English disciple, Buckle, will, we dare say, have already perceived that the opinions of these 'philosophers' are not only similar, but even constitute a natural termination to those of Macaulay. They, as is well known, would sneer into annihilation all metaphysics and all theology, and would wish to see thought restricted to the observation and registration of phenomena. Well, Macaulay too takes his stand by induction, which just means the observation and registration of phenomena: he too rejects metaphysics; and if he does not wholly reject theology, he restricts it to a province certainly of the narrowest. The very law of necessary connection (borrowed from Hume), by means of which the Comtists seek to transform the manifestations of our intellectual and moral faculties into mere links of the same great chain of cause and effect which physical things obey, seems not without a certain attraction for Macaulay also. Talking of our tendency to regard the Golden Age as left behind us in the past, he says: This is chiefly to be ascribed to a law as certain as the the laws which regulate the succession of the seasons and the course of the trade winds: it is the nature of man to overrate present evil and to underrate present good-to long for what he has not and to be dissatisfied with what he has.' We should be glad to join issue on several of these points, and to discuss them at length, but such is not our present object, and here we have no sufficient space. We content ourselves with saying, for the sake of our own position with the reader, that, while we do not look on the philosophy of the eighteenth century with unmingled satisfaction, we certainly regard that of Messrs. Comte and Buckle with unqualified reprobation and contempt. Further, we think that the functions of government are not of a negative nature only (exclusively restricted to the protection of person and property), but capable of an affirmative application also. Macaulay, indeed, is here in reality at variance with himself; for, in regard to a national church and a national school, he actually concedes to government a function evidently affirmative. We, for our part, see no reason—and we are sure that Lord Macaulay could not have assigned one-why the affirmative function should stop there, and are inclined to believe that, in this connection, there is a science (social science) opening, of which Lord Macaulay, in his own bitter words to Southey, had yet to learn the alphabet.' Again, we believe that physical truth would be an inexplicable and indeed meaningless fragment-so much mere purposeless flotsam-were it not there for, and did it not terminate in, metaphysical truth. Then religion is to us the tap-root of humanity, and all else is but nauci, flocci, minimi, pili. Neither can we allow that metaphysics, morals, and religion are, either severally or collectively, destitute of progress. Very far from that, we believe that the final cause of the world is neither more nor less than such progress, and that history has no theme whatever but, intellectually, morally, and religiously, the enlargement and enfranchisement of the consciousness of man. Progress, however, we do not view as, so to speak, fluent extension; we should name it rather a series of consecutive and accumulative progresses. The history of civilization is a history of civilizations-a history of higher following on lower dispensations; the tree of existence, the Yggdrasil of our Norse forefathers, decays as surely as it grows, but it grows as surely as it decays, and each new growth is larger, fuller, braver than the last. This tree has successively grown up and withered down, in India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Italy; it is now in full leaf in England, but a thousand years hence it may be budding and blossoming elsewhere. We have now obtained for ourselves an insight, more or less clear, more or less complete, into the principles and aim with which Lord Macaulay entered on the arena of life; let us now see how how he, so accoutred and impelled, bore himself, and what were the products of his so guided and directed industry. When Macaulay left college for London in 1825, he carried with him a very complete knowledge of the Greek and Latin classics, as well as a competent acquaintance with the leading literatures of modern Europe. He does not seem to have even attempted to realize to himself an intellectual conception of the Greeks or Romans as human beings, and in relation to universal history; but the literary masterpieces of these peoples were fairly stored in his excellent memory, where his exceedingly sound and discriminating taste had well arranged, shelved, and lettered them. His knowledge of modern literature was also evidently extensive, and, on the whole, exact. The classic Italians, and the French writers of the age of Louis XIV., he had manifestly studied with great care, and discussed in his own mind with great discernment. We have also occasional notices from him of German and Spanish authors, and even a quotation or two in these languages; but though he had indubitably attained to a very considerable and satisfactory conception of the main merits of these literatures, still it appears probable to us that Macaulay could not have justly claimed the title of either a German or a Spanish scholar. Macaulay, in fact, was a man of great practical perspicacity, and we do not believe that he would have willingly carried one ounce more weight than was necessary to his purpose. We find him, for example, contented to remain with but slender mathematical acquirements; and nowhere is there the slightest evidence that he ever troubled his head about Egypt's place in universal history, the Hindoo Vedas, the origin of society in Central Asia, the migration of the tribes, or the philological relations of Turan and Iran. The preference of Italian and French to German and Spanish, then, is in complete harmony with our general Humian theory; and we can easily believe that any study of these latter languages resulted fully as much from the set of the times as from expectation of help towards his peculiar object. But, besides these literary and academic stores, even in 1825, Macaulay had already made great progress in the study of English history and politics, especially during those reigns that were characterized by the growth and evolution of what are named constitutional principles. Indeed, so engrossed is he in this study, that in his very first article of any note (Milton, Ed. Rev., 1825), he cannot resist the temptation to intercalate an historical summary. Analogous but more extended historical summaries followed in the Hallam, the Hampden, the Burleigh, and others. So very similar, indeed, are these summaries, and so frequently do they recur, that one gets to feel a little surprise at the favour that allowed even a Macaulay to insert and re-insert, and yet again insert, insert, what was mainly nothing more than the rifaccimento of an old material. The history' would lead us to suppose, as we have already shown, that a certain reaction really had taken place in Macaulay against the Calvinism of his friends. There is no evidence of this, however, in the early essays. It is possible, indeed, that the studies and experiences of the university may have taught him to regard the system of religious thought under his father's roof as biassed and narrow; but nowhere can we find any evidence of a youthful, a poetic, or aristocratic revolt against it. His clear, sound judgment sees well where he is placed, and what his friends are worth to him; he remains on the best terms with them, he supports their views, he makes speeches for them, but still he takes up his own position calmly in the centre, as that constitutional Whig which his historical studies recommend to him. The same clear, practical judgment that has decided his choice leads him. again to perceive that it is wisest for him, once having chosen, to declare himself. Accordingly, he is quite open in his avowal that he would be first an Englishman and then a Whig,' and he takes his side in the most public and unhesitating fashion. The young man, who has such friends and connections, who has distinguished himself so much at college, who has spoken so well at Abolition meetings, who has written such capital articles in the 'Edinburgh,' who is so manifestly a true Whig that he knows more about Whig history and can give better expression to Whig principles than the very best Whig among them, is not long left without public employment. He is made a Commissioner of Bankruptcy, and so early as 1830 a seat in Parliament is found for him. He enters Parliament at a most important crisis too. The great Reform Bill is in the agonies of gestation, and the Whigs are troubled with the most natural solicitudes. The young man of thirty is too sagacious not to discern all the possibilities of the position. He is possessed, withal, of such vigour of will as enables him to convert his perceptions into deeds. He throws himself, though new to the house, completely into the situation. He becomes one of the leading supporters of Government. Indeed, his services are soon such that, in less than four years, a most lucrative appointment is found for him-an appointment so lucrative that in three years he is able to return from India, where he held it, the recipient of an opulent and lordly income. Macaulay is not yet thirty-eight, then, and we already see how well the aim he set himself has thriven with him. His practical experience of Parliament and of India is an incalculable gain to him in his vocation of historian. All this time, too, his studies on the one concentrated subject have never slackened. We can trace their progress in the series of essays already more than once referred referred to. Indeed, these studies seem thoroughly ripe now, and even the execution of his design largely accomplished. What a happy prospect gilds all the west for him at the early age of thirty-eight-he has wealth, he has position, he has honour, he has even in a goodly state of forwardness the one work which was to be the business and the pleasure of his life.' Nought remains for him but, in the midst of leisure, in the midst of all the agrémens of the most choice society in the world, a member of Parliament even, for he may make the duties light, that he finish his work, that he build the temple, and transform to enclosed chapels those gorgeous Clives and magnificent Hastingses. Accordingly such is the position that we see him assume for the remainder of his days. And in such position he is able to do such services to the Whigs, and gain such honour in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen, that in 1857 a patent of nobility is conferred on him. But, alas! the labours, that wore now the look of pastime and recreation rather than drudgery and penance, and to the termination of which he might, so far as his age was concerned, look not too presumptuously forward, were destined to be snapped asunder in the midst, and remain for ever a fragment merely. On the 28th day of December, 1859 (just fifty-nine years of age), Lord Macaulay died, and the continuation of Hume remains itself to be continued. Some of his too ardent admirers have not scrupled to claim for Lord Macaulay the first place as orator, poet, essayist, and historian. This claim, so put, we think insupportable. These admirers themselves describe the speeches of Lord Macaulay as but spoken essays; and they give, besides, such an account of the deficiency of his voice and the stiffness of his action as demonstrates the nullity of their own claim, so far as the orator is concerned. For our part we find the speeches to read exceedingly well, and we cannot admit that they have only the character of spoken essays. On the contrary, we find in them not the mere fluent continuousness of writing, but the energetic interruptedness, and, as it were, the successive hammer-strokes of actual speech. On this head it will suffice to say, however, that they are wellworded pieces of excellent generalization and clear judgment. The Whigs, though probably sometimes quivering with misgivings that he was going too far, must, on the whole, have been much enlightened and very much gratified by those admirable expositions of their own principles. In regard to the Lays of Ancient Rome,' the Times' writes thus: As a poet, at a time when it was supposed that nothing new could be invented, he struck out a style, the enchantment of which is felt by all ages and all conditions alike, which has no prototype in ancient, no parallel in modern times; which unites the |