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with which Macaulay has completed the part which has already appeared, it does not seem very probable that the original design will ever be accomplished. Its minuteness, however, is one of its chief excellences. Thoroughly versed in all the literature of the period whose history he has undertaken to write, he has been able to illustrate his work with a profusion of interesting details, which produce in the mind of the reader a more vivid impression of life and reality than is usually derived from historical works. The style it is quite unnecessary to praise: always lively and attractive, and never by any chance obscure, it may indeed seem overcharged and exaggerated when compared with the style of Hume, but its warmth is more in accordance with the ardour and impetuosity of the present age. Some of his more violent youthful opinions have been considerably modified, and the greatest pains has been taken in the verification of facts. Only four volumes have yet appeared, but the pleasure with which they have been perused only makes the public the more anxious to have a further instalment of the greatest historical work of our day,

1. BATH AND LONDON IN 1685.

At the head of the English watering-places, without a rival, was Bath. The springs of that city had been renowned from the days of the Romans. It had been, during many centuries, the seat of a bishop. The sick repaired thither from every part of the realm. The king sometimes held his court there. Nevertheless, Bath was then a maze of only four or five hundred houses, crowded within an old wall in the vicinity of the Avon. Pictures of what were considered as the finest of those houses are still extant, and greatly resemble the lowest rag-shops and pothouses of Radcliffe Highway. Even then, indeed, travellers complained of the narrowness and meanness of the streets. That beautiful city, which charms even eyes familiar with the masterpieces of Bramante and Palladio, and which the genius of Anstey and of Smollett, of Frances Burney and of Jane Austen, has made classic ground, had not begun to exist. Milsom Street itself was an open field lying far beyond the walls; and hedgerows intersected the space which is now covered by the Crescent and the Circus. The poor patients, to whom the waters had been recommended, lay on straw in a place which, to use the language of a contemporary physician, was a covert rather than a lodging. As to the comforts and luxuries which were to be found in the interior of the houses of Bath by the fashionable visitors who resorted thither in search of health or amusement, we possess information more complete and minute than can generally be obtained on such subjects. A writer, who published an account of that city about sixty years after the Revolution, has accurately described the changes which had taken place within his own recollection. He assures us that in his younger days the gentlemen who visited the springs slept in rooms hardly as good as the garrets which he lived to see occupied by footmen. The floors of the dining-rooms were uncarpeted, and were coloured brown with a wash made of soot and

small beer, in order to hide the dirt. Not a wainscot was painted. Not a hearth or a chimney-piece was of marble. A slab of common freestone, and fire-irons which had cost from three to four shillings, were thought sufficient for any fireplace. The best apartments were hung with coarse woollen stuff, and were furnished with rushbottomed chairs. Readers who take an interest in the progress of civilization and of the useful arts, will be grateful to the humble topographer who has recorded these facts, and will perhaps wish that historians of far higher pretensions had sometimes spared a few pages from military evolutions and political intrigues, for the purpose of letting us know how the parlours and bedchambers of our ancestors looked.

The position of London, relatively to other towns of the empire, was, in the time of Charles the Second, far higher than at present. For at present the population of London is little more than six times the population of Manchester or Liverpool. In the days of Charles the Second the population of London was more than seventeen times the population of Bristol or of Norwich. It may be doubted whether any other instance can be mentioned of a great kingdom in which the first city was more than seventeen times as large as the second. There is reason to believe that, in 1685, London had been, during about half a century, the most populous capital in Europe. The inhabitants, who are now at least nineteen hundred thousand, were then probably little more than half a million. London had in the world only one commercial rival, now long outstripped, the mighty and opulent Amsterdam. English writers boasted of the forest of masts and yard-arms, which covered the river from the Bridge to the Tower, and of the stupendous sums which were collected at the Custom-House in Thames Street. There is, indeed, no doubt that the trade of the metropolis then bore a far greater proportion than at present to the whole trade of the country; yet to our generation the honest vaunting of our ancestors must appear almost ludicrous. The shipping which they thought incredibly great appears not to have exceeded seventy thousand tons. This was, indeed, then more than a third of the whole tonnage of the kingdom, but is now less than a fourth of the tonnage of Newcastle, and is nearly equalled by the tonnage of the steam-vessels of the Thames. The customs of London amounted, in 1685, to about three hundred and thirty thousand pounds a year. In our time the net duty, at the same place, exceeds ten millions.

Whoever examines the maps of London which were published towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second, will see that only the nucleus of the present capital then existed.

The town did not, as now, fade by imperceptible degrees into the country. No long avenues of villas, embowered in lilacs and laburnums, extended from the great centre of wealth and civilization almost to the boundaries of Middlesex, and far into the heart of Kent and Surrey. In the east, no part of the immense line of warehouses and artificial lakes which now spreads from the Tower to Blackwall

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had even been projected. On the west, scarcely one of those stately. piles of building which are inhabited by the noble and wealthy was in existence; and Chelsea, which is now peopled by more than forty thousand human beings, was a quiet country village, with about a thousand inhabitants. On the north, cattle fed, and sportsmen wandered with dogs and guns over the site of the borough of Marylebone, and over far the greater part of the space now covered by the boroughs of Finsbury and of the Tower Hamlets. Islington was almost a solitude, and poets lived to contrast its silence and repose with the din and turmoil of the monster London. On the south, the capital is now connected with its suburb by several bridges, not inferior in magnificence and solidity to the noblest works of the Cæsars. In 1685, a single line of irregular arches, overhung by piles of mean and crazy houses, and garnished, after a fashion worthy of the naked barbarians of Dahomy, with scores of mouldering heads, impeded the navigation of the river.

2. CHARACTER OF WILLIAM, PRINCE OF ORANGE.

The place which William Henry, Prince of Orange Nassau, occupies in the history of England and of mankind is so great, that it may be desirable to portray, with some minuteness, the strong lineaments of his character.

He was now in his thirty-seventh year; but both in body and in mind he was older than other men of the same age. Indeed, it might be said that he had never been young. His external appearance is almost as well known to us as to his own captains and counsellors. Sculptors, painters, and medallists exerted their utmost skill in the work of transmitting his features to posterity; and his features were such as no artist could fail to seize, and such as, once seen, could never be forgotten. His name at once calls up before us a slender and feeble frame, a lofty and ample forehead, a nose curved like the beak of an eagle, an eye rivalling that of an eagle, in brightness and keenness, a thoughtful and somewhat sullen brow, a firm and somewhat peevish mouth, a cheek pale, thin, and deeply furrowed by sickness and by care. That pensive, severe, and solemn aspect could scarcely have belonged to a happy or a good-humoured man. But it indicates, in a manner not to be mistaken, capacity equal to the most ardent enterprises, and fortitude not to be shaken by reverses or dangers. Nature had largely endowed William with the qualities of a great ruler, and education had developed those qualities in no common degree. With strong natural sense and rare force of will, he found himself, when first his mind began to open,, a fatherless and motherless child, the chief of a great but depressed and disheartened party, and the heir to vast and indefinite pretensions, which excited the dread and aversion of the oligarchy then supreme in the United Provinces. The common people, fondly attached during a century to his house, indicated, whenever they saw him, in a manner not to be mistaken,

that they regarded him as their rightful head. The able and experienced ministers of the republic, mortal enemies of his name, came every day to pay their feigned civilities to him, and to observe the progress of his mind. The first movements of his ambition were carefully watched; every unguarded word uttered by him was noted down; nor had he near him any adviser on whose judgment reliance could be placed. He was scarcely fifteen years old when the domestics who were attached to his interest, or who enjoyed any share of his confidence, were removed from under his roof by the jealous government. He remonstrated with energy beyond his years, but in vain. Vigilant observers saw the tears more than once rise in the eyes of the young state-prisoner. His health, naturally delicate, sank for a time under the emotions which his desolate situation had produced. Such situations bewilder and unnerve the weak, but call forth all the strength of the strong. Surrounded by snares in which an ordinary youth would have perished, William learned to tread at once warily and firmly. Long before he reached manhood, he knew how to keep secrets; how to baffle curiosity by dry and guarded answers; how to conceal all passions under the same show of grave tranquillity. Meanwhile he made little proficiency in fashionable or literary accomplishments. The manners of the Dutch nobility of that age wanted the grace which was found in the highest perfection among the gentlemen of France, and which, in an inferior degree, embellished the Court of England; and his manners were altogether Dutch. Even his countrymen thought him blunt. To foreigners he often seemed churlish. In his intercourse with the world in general, he appeared ignorant or negligent of those arts which double the value of a favour, and take away the sting of a refusal. He was little interested in letters or science. The discoveries of Newton and Leibnitz, the poems of Dryden and Boileau, were unknown to him. Dramatic performances tired him and he was glad to turn away from the stage and to talk about public affairs, while Orestes was raving, or while Tartuffe was pressing Elvira's hand. He had, indeed, some talent for sarcasm, and not seldom employed, quite unconsciously, a natural rhetoric,-quaint, indeed, but vigorous and original. He did not, however, in the least affect the character of a wit or of an orator. His attention had been confined to those studies which form strenuous and sagacious men of business. From a child, he listened with interest when high questions of alliance, finance, and war were discussed. Of geometry he learned as much as was necessary for the construction of a ravelin or a hornwork. Of languages, by the help of a memory singularly powerful, he learned as much as was necessary to enable him to comprehend, and answer without assistance, everything that was said to him, and every letter which he received. The Dutch was his own tongue. He understood Latin, Italian, and Spanish. He spoke and wrote French, English, and German,— inelegantly, it is true, and inexactly, but fluently and intelligibly. No qualification could be more important to a man whose life was

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to be passed in organizing great alliances, and in commanding armies assembled from different countries.

His physical organization was unusually delicate. From a child he had been weak and sickly. In the prime of manhood his complaints had been aggravated by a severe attack of small-pox. He was asthmatic and consumptive. His slender frame was shaken by a constant hoarse cough. He could not sleep unless his head was propped by several pillows, and could scarcely draw his breath in any but the purest air. Cruel headaches frequently tortured him. Exertion soon fatigued him. The physicians constantly kept up the hopes of his enemies by fixing some. date, beyond which, if there were anything certain in medical science, it was impossible that his broken constitution could hold out. Yet, through a life which was one long disease, the force of his mind never failed, on any great occasion, to bear up his suffering and languid body. He was born with violent passions and quick sensibilities; but the strength of his emotions was not suspected by the world. From the multitude, his joy and his grief, his affection and his resentment, were hidden by a phlegmatic serenity which made him pass for the most cold-blooded of mankind. Those who brought him good news could seldom detect any sign of pleasure. Those who saw him after defeat looked in vain for any trace of vexation. He praised and reprimanded, rewarded and punished, with the stern tranquillity of a Mohawk chief; but those who knew him well, and saw him near, were aware that under all this ice a fierce fire was constantly burning. It was seldom that anger deprived him of power over himself; but when he was really outraged, the first outbreak of his passion was terrible. It was indeed scarcely safe to approach him. On these rare occasions, however, as soon as he regained his self-command, he made such ample reparation to those whom he had wronged as tempted them to wish that he would go into a fury again. His affection was as impetuous as his wrath. Where he loved, he loved with the whole energy of his strong mind. When death separated him from what he loved, the few who witnessed his agonies trembled for his reason and his life. To a very small circle of intimate friends, on whose fidelity and secresy he could absolutely depend, he was a different man from the reserved and stoical William whom the multitude supposed to be destitute of human feelings. He was kind, cordial, open, even convivial and jocose, would sit at table many hours, and would bear his full share in festive conversation.1

3. THE COMMITTAL OF THE SEVEN BISHOPS TO THE TOWER.

The Bishops were repeatedly sent out into the antechamber, and repeatedly called back into the council-room. At length James

1 The reader may compare with this character of William, drawn from study and fancy, the character already given by Burnet from long personal knowledge; the difference of the style at the beginning of the eighteenth and middle of the nineteenth centuries will be very apparent.