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1856.

Owlcopse.

dows. and the dreary silence of night and nature weighed in the air. Rose wrestled with the bitterness that sprang Her friend had from her great sorrow. been sacrificed, and she had sat in the distance powerless. She would taunt Mr. Brooks with it in the morning; but the rebuking spirit of Ellen rose up before her, seeming to say: "I, the victim, forgave and kissed the hand that Go thou, and do likechastised me.

wise."

Phil's sobs, too, softened her heart. He was bowed down with his loss, and shaken in his views. It was, then, possible for a "woman with a white skin, her own roof over her head, plenty to eat, drink, and wear, servants to wait on her, and civil treatment around her," to be dissatisfied and pine away unto death. He thought of Ellen as he first knew her, a slender girl, yet radiant with life and pleasure, and remembered how long since that look had faded from her face. He loved her very dearly. Oh! he was sure of that! Never a sharp word had passed between them. What had been wanting, then? Phil saw the answer, but dimly, through the murky fog of education, habit, and materialism.

Some say nature is so scrupulous in her economy, that the fishes found in the rivers of dark caves have no eyes. So it was with Phil. Every "useless thing" had been lopped off of him, and he knew it not. He lived happy in his cave, because he had never seen, and it was but natural that the gentle fish with eyes, floating down the current of the stream, should have been drawn toward him by pity and the mystery of hris dim abode. The world is full of these strange attractions.

XX.

Ellen is in the weedy grave-yard; but over her the grass nods and flowers bloom. Years have past; still, on pleasant Sundays, Jim and his grateful wife leave some little token there.

Their cottage, overrun with vines, and standing like an urn in a saucer of gay flowers, graces the hill-side of Mr. Dean's and Jim's farm; for the old man is getting helpless, and Jim is fast winning the farm by his labor. His vigorous form may be seen any day working in the fields, and his voice heard afar in laughter and song. He is no longer

the listless, aimless man of Owicopse;
but the independent owner of Tangle-
vine, free to make or mar what he
pleases. He is still a staunch advocate
of reform and progress; but is careful
to widen his sympathies, to force his
opinions upon no one, and to be leni-
ent to those who differ. His day's
work over, he rides with his wife, gets
up pleasant excursions, visits his neigh-
bors, tends the flowers; or, oftener still,
trundles his little Nelly, puny child, in
the wheelbarrow. As he covers her
carefully and smiles at her, there is a
touching tenderness in his face, and he
seems to see two Ellens.

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Mary," said he, one evening, "I passed Owlcopse to-day, and stopped a moment in the grave-yard to prop a sapling the storm blew down last night. At the foot of Ellen's grave there was a little anemone freshly planted. Who could have put it there?"

"Phil, I suppose," said she dubiously. Jim shook his head, and gave an incredulous sigh.

The next day he heard Mr. Brown had passed in haste through the village.

Mr. Brooks, more gaunt with age, is still visible astride of his stern hobby, trampling down the iniquities of the times; or, when the weather is neither too warm nor cold, driving the cows home, with his long pole and monotoThe neighbors nous "Suke, Suke!"

cite him as a most civil, honest gentleman, and wonder whether he will leave the boys his wealth, or give it all to Missionary and Abolition societies.

Owlcopse is the same dull and bare The abode. No old article of furniture is removed, nor any new added. grass gains ground in the paths, and the hungry wind seeks in vain the nourishing perfume of some stray flower. The vines planted by Mark against the old garden wall have given place to scentless peas. Afar off the sea of grain sleepily nods its heavy head, and plump, sleek cattle browse on the green pastures. The beauty of utility is there; but where is the utility of beauty? Mr. Brooks's hard presence and longer naps say: not here. So does Phil's sad face. So says the gloomy house, ungraced by art or gentle feminine touch. We must adopt Jane's opinion, as confided to a colored sister: that "the owls had hooted it away."

How

CHESTER.

OW charmed we pilgrims from the eager West,
Where only life, and not its scene, is old,
Beside the hearth of Chester's inn at rest,
Her ancient story to each other told!

The holly-wreath and dial's moon-orbed face,
The Gothic tankard, crown'd with beaded ale,
The faded aquatint of Chevy Chace,

And heir-loom bible, harmonized the tale.

Then roamed we forth as in a wond'rous dream,
Whose visions truth could only half eclipse;
The turret shadows living phantoms seem,
And mill-sluice brawl the moan of ghostly lips.
Night and her planet their enchantments wove,
To wake the brooding spirits of the past;
A Druid's sickle glistened in the grove,
And Harold's war-cry died upon the blast.

The floating mist that hung on Brewer's hill,

(While every heart-beat seemed a sentry's tramp,) In tented domes and bannered folds grew still,

As rose the psalm from Cromwell's wary camp.

From ivied tower, above the meadows sere,

We watched the fray with hunted Charles of yore, When grappled puritan and cavalier,

And sunk a traitor's throne on Rowton moor.

We tracked the ramparts in the lunar gloom,
Knelt by the peasants at St. Mary's shrine;
With his own hermit mused at Parnell's tomb,
And breathed the cadence of his pensive line.

Beneath a gable mouldering and low,

The pious record we could still descry, Which, in the pestilence of old De Foe,. Proclaimed that here death's angel flitted by.

At morn the venders in the minster's shade,
With gleaming scales and plumage at their feet,
Seemed figures on the canvas of Ostade,

Where mart and temple so benignly meet.

Of Holland whispered then the sullen barge,
We thought of Venice by the hushed canal,
And hailed each relic on time's voiceless marge-
Sepulchral lamp and clouded lachrymal.

The quaint arcades of traffic's feudal range,
And giant fossils of a lustier crew;

The diamond casements and the moated grange,
Tradition's lapsing fantasies renew.

The oaken effigies of buried earls,

A window blazoned with armorial crest,
A rusted helm, and standard's broidered furls,
Chivalric eras patiently attest.

Here William's castle frowns upon the tide;
There holy Werburgh keeps aerial sway,
To warn the minions who complacent glide,
And swell ambition's retinue to-day.

Once more we sought the parapet, to gaze,
And mark the hoar-frost glint along the dales;
Or, through the wind-cleft vistas of the haze,
Welcome afar the mountain-ridge of Wales.
Ah, what a respite from the onward surge
Of life, where all is turbulent and free,
To pause awhile upon the quiet verge
Of olden memories, beside the Dee!

MR

MACAULAY'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.*

R. MACAULAY, if not the greatest, is certainly the most fortunate of historians.

When, after years of assiduous preparation, during which he had acquired a brilliant reputation, as well in the world of politics as in that of letters, he undertook to treat a theme worthy his best powers, he found the grandest period of English, and, indeed, of modern history, yet unattempted by any writer of claims equal to his own.

The first volumes of his projected work, in which he announced the great principles which were to govern his investigations, and gave the world assurance of the splendid and vigorous handling which his subject would receive, were published at a moment when the stir of revolution throughout Europe invited the attention, not of England alone, but of the civilized world to the writer, who promised a profound examination, and a triumphant justification of the steps by which the British people had passed into the great highway of political progress, and of liberal development.

Multiplied editions at home, and innumerable reproductions abroad, soon attested the strength and vividness of the impression which the new history had made upon the thinking world. "My book," says Gibbon, speaking of his first volume, was on every table, and almost on every toilette. I am at a loss how to describe its success, without betraying the vanity of the writer." But where Gibbon published

66

his hundreds, Macaulay counted his thousands; his stately octavos jostled the romances in the circulating library, and stimulated friendly reviewers to the extreme of enthusiasm, and provoked the partisan antagonists of the author to ebullitions such as are usually excited only by the slashing audacity of the pamphlet, or the Parthian impertinences of the leading article.

His good fortune in the choice of his theme, and in the moment of publication, would, however, have little availed the brilliant candidate for the fourth place upon the bench of British historians, had he not been thoroughly trained to the task he aspired to achieve.

Twenty years of study and of action had made him familiar with the materials of history, the machinery of politics, and the motives of men.

The columns of the Edinburgh Review bear witness to the assiduity with which he had explored the archives of England.

The Edinburgh Review owed its wide and wonderful influence, in no slight measure, to the frequent use which its contributors made of the historical essay-a form of composition really introduced by them into English literature.

The title of some work was always prefixed to these essays, as a text always goes before a sermon; but the connection, always in the one case as so often in the other, was merely one of position. And, among the gifted and daring writers who wielded so powerfully this new literary engine, Mr. Macaulay early

*The History of England, from the Accession of James II. By THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. Vols. III and IV. New York: Harper & Brothers.

distinguished himself as the most brilliant and effective. His collected essays, on subjects drawn from English history, would cover the most exciting and important portion of his country's annals.

He discussed the magnificent reign of Elizabeth in his panegyric of Burleigh and his prosecution of Bacon. From John Hampden and Milton, he passed to Dryden, and Sir William Temple; from Walpole to Chatham, and from Clive to Warren Hastings.

Meanwhile, he had labored at the oar, while the ship of state was plunging and reeling through the great tempest of 1830. Returned to Parliament for a borough distinguished among the rotten for utter rottenness, he had won, by his maiden speech, a place in the front ranks of the reformers. The city of Leeds had rewarded his devotion to the good cause by electing him to a more honorable representation; and his party had proved their sense of his importance, by giving him a position in the Indian government, which insured his future independence. On his return from his eastern post of honor and of profit, Edinburgh had welcomed him to her political graces; and Lord Melbourne had confided the war-office to his care. And of all the wealth of experience and learning which he had acquired in this crowded and active career, Mr. Macaulay was completely master.

His most prominent intellectual quality is a certain decision and clearness of mind, which enables him to discern at once the availability of every fact which comes in his way.

No woman is a better economist than he; he finds a use for every rag and scrap of chronicle, however unpromising in less gifted eyes; and his quickness of perception is admirably seconded by executive faculties the most prompt and vigorous.

We wish we could add that those faculties, in their turn, always exhibited the salutary control of yet higher powers. But Mr. Macaulay's mind furnishes us rather with the image of a splendid despotism than with that of a well-ordered, constitutional government. He goes forth into the field of rhetoric, conquering and to conquer, and too often disdains alike the humdrum counsels of impartiality and the chastening suggestions of taste. Splendid and flattering as his success has been, it would have been not less brilliant, and cer

tainly would have given fairer promise of enduring worth, had his great work been distinguished from his lesser essays by a more convincing calmness of tone, and by subtler felicities of state

ment.

Macaulay's conversation, Sidney Smith used to say, lacked only one thing to make it perfectly delightful : "a few splendid flashes of silence." How often has this pregnant and witty commentary recurred to our minds, as we passed on from gorgeousness to gorgeousness, from passionate eulogy to angry vituperation, along the sounding sentences of the historian.

Between the political philosophy of Hume and that of Macaulay, no comparison can be instituted; for the living historian surpasses his predecessor as much in the extent of his views as in the abundance of his resources. But Macaulay, with all his eloquence (perhaps, indeed, because of all his eloquence), cannot hope to keep so high a place among the classic writers of the English language as must be accorded to Hume. Exuberant, vehement, glowing, picturesque, the style of Macaulay wearies sooner with its flaming antithesis than does the style of Hume, with its elegant composure. Macaulay, in fact, always writes like a candidate who has an election to carry; Hume, like a gentleman, addressing gentlemen. though (as in this instance) the candidate may happen to be of our own party, and the principles he advocates our own most cherished convictions, it is still quite impossible for us to prefer declamation to force, gesticulation to expression, denunciation to satire, or the racking rhythmus of an ejaculatory style to the easy and natural movement of sentences, which follow each other rather like the waves of a stream, than like explosions of musketry.

And

But while we are convinced that the final verdict of criticism will not assign to Mr. Macaulay's history that rank in the literature of his country to which the ambition of the author aspires, we are also inclined to the belief that the faults themselves of his style, by contributing to the present popularity of his work, have rendered good service to the cause which he has most at heart.

For this glory, at least, will forever be conceded to Mr. Macaulay-that he was the first writer of acknowledged popularity and power who told the

story of the English Revolution in the spirit of liberty, and of true political wisdom.

Hume, who carried his history no further than the fall of James II., was by no means so unfair to the agents in that great event as he is usually supposed to have been. He had no love to spare for liberal politicians as such, nor had he any great faith in the virtue of public men; but he was by no means a blind worshiper of rank and royalty, and Macaulay himself can add nothing to the concise sentence in which Hume sums up the achievements of the Prince of Orange; "he saved his own country from ruin; he restored the liberties of these kingdoms; he supported the general independence of Europe."

But Hume was a Scotchman, and, with all his philosophy, one of the proudest of men.

As a Scotchman, he had suffered constant mortification in English society; and he shared the aversion of William III. for "the uncourtly humors of the English." The Stuarts were of his own race; and we have his own words for it, that "it is not altogether without example, that a man may be guided by national prejudices who has ever been little biased by private and personal friendship."

Moreover, the Stuarts were unfortunate, and we have evidence enough in Hume's treatment of the captious, irritating Rousseau (were such evidences elsewhere wanting), that those who suffered, whether by their own fault or at the hand of fortune, must always have engaged his interest.

By whatever motives influenced, it is certain that the mind of Hume had conceived very slighting notions of the men and the objects of the Revolution of 1683, and that he had no conception of the gigantic importance to England and the world of that great era.

Sir Walter Scott, who, next to Hume, has wielded the strongest influence in forming the historical opinions and sympathies of the living generation, was a still more dangerous guide. What Hume was not, Scott was-a worshiper of pomps and pedigrees. He delighted to believe himself the representative of a great race, and every real representative of a great race was sanctified in his eyes.

His large, and warm, and generous heart sympathized profoundly, too,

VOL. VII.-17

with the gallant gentlemen and fair women who had suffered so much of old in the defense of the idols which he still revered, and the calamities of the cavaliers lent an additional holiness to the chrism of the Stuart kings.

His genius led us all captive for years; and it would at this day be no difficult thing to find many an ardent, high spirited American boy, who hates the Puritans with the hatred of a Peveril of the Peak, and sighs like a Babington or a Douglas, over the sorrows of the beautiful Mary.

Fascinated by the spell of these powerful writers, the public sympathies have been more than naturally inclined towards the royal house that fell, and, in its fall, carried down the evil genius of Britain. Even more than naturally. we say, for it was natural that, even without the aid of a Hume or a Scott, the popular feeling should be enlisted with something like tenderness in behalf of a family so steadily unfortunate. The heart of the people is not always grateful, even to the Nemesis active in their own defence.

Men and races, conspicuous for their miserable fate, will always command at least as much of compassion as of condemnation. Let us not rashly quarrel with the ordinance by which heaven has established this necessity in the nature of man. Of testimonies to its existence, history is full, and we know none more striking than is afforded by the story of the Highlanders, as Mr. Macaulay himself has told it in the first of the two new volumes which he has just given to the world, after six years of patient preparation on his part, and impatient expectation on the part of the public. In the seventeenth century the Highlanders were regarded by the Saxons as savages. The citizens of Edinburgh held the race in equal abhorrence with the citizens of London. The ancestors of the poet who painted such fair pictures of Ellen of Loch Lomond, skimming the silver surface of the waves in her slim shallop, would have been sickened at the sight of Roderick Dhu, the cattle thief, and his barelegged barbarian daughter.

Of the Highland princes, with their bards and their orators and their guards, less was known in the capital of Britain than of the Indian kings of America, or the khans of Tartary.

The sketch which Macaulay gives us

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