Nor, indeed, was his soldiership justly a subject of derision. In every county there were elderly gentlemen who had seen service which was no child's play. One had been knighted by Charles I. after the battle of Edgehill; another still wore a patch over the scar which he had received at Naseby; a third had defended his old house till Fairfax had blown in the door with a petard. The presence of these old Cavaliers, with their old swords and holsters, and with their old stories about Goring and Lunsford, gave to the musters of militia an earnest and warlike aspect which would otherwise have been wanting. Even those country gentlemen who were too young to have themselves exchanged blows with the cuirassiers of the Parliament, had, from childhood, been surrounded by the traces of recent war, and fed with stories of the martial exploits of their fathers and uncles. Thus the character of the English esquire of the seventeenth century was compounded of two elements which we are not accustomed to find united. His ignorance and uncouthness, his low tastes and gross phrases, would, in our time, be considered as indicating a nature and a breeding thoroughly plebeian. Yet he was essentially a patrician, and had, in large measure, both the virtues and the vices which flourish among men set from their birth in high places, and accustomed to authority, to observance, and to self-respect. It is not easy for a generation which is accustomed to find chivalrous sentiments only in company with liberal studies and polished manners to image to itself a man with the deportment, the vocabulary, and the accent of a carter, yet punctilious on matters of genealogy and precedence, and yet ready to risk his life rather than see a stain cast on the honour of his house. It is only, however, by thus joining together things seldom or never found together in our own experience, that we can form a just idea of that rustic aristocracy which constituted the main strength of the armies of Charles I., and which long supported with strange fidelity the interest of his descendants.

When the lord of a Lincolnshire or Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street, he was as easily distinguished from the resident population as a Turk or a Lascar. His dress, his gait, his accent, the manner in which he stared at the shops, stumbled into the gutters, ran against the porters, and stood under the water-spouts, marked him out as an excellent subject for the operations of swindlers and banterers. Bullies jostled him into the kennel. Hackney-coachmen splashed him from head to foot. Thieves explored, with perfect security, the huge pockets of his horseman's coat, while he stood entranced by the splendour of the lord-mayor's show. Money-droppers, sore from the cart's tail, introduced themselves to him, and appeared to him the most friendly gentlemen that he had ever seen. Painted women, the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whatstone Park, passed themselves on him for countesses and maids of honour. If he asked his way to St James's, his informants sent him to Mile End. If he went into a shop, he was instantly discerned to be a purchaser of everything that nobody else would buy-of second-hand embroidery, copper rings, and watches that would not go. If he rambled into any fashionable coffee-house, he became a mark for the insolent derision of fops and the grave waggery of Templars. Enraged and mortified, he soon returned to his mansion; and there, in the homage of his tenants, and the conversation of his booncompanions, found consolation for the vexations and humiliations he had undergone. There he once more found himself a great man; and he saw nothing above him, except when at the assizes he took his seat on the bench near the judge, or when at the muster of the militia he saluted the lord-lieutenant.

The Roman Catholic Church.

as the Roman Catholic Church. The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilisation. No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavinian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century, to the pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth ; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The republic of Venice came next in antiquity. But the republic of Venice was modern when compared with the Papacy; and the republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigour. The Catholic Church is still sending forth to the farthest ends of the world missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustine, and still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila. The number of her children is greater than in any former age. Her acquisitions in the New World have more than compensated for what she has lost in the Old. Her spiritual ascendency extends over the vast countries which lie between the plains of the Missouri and Cape Horn, countries which, a century hence, may not improbably contain a population as large as that which now inhabits Europe. The members of her communion are certainly not fewer than a hundred and fifty millions; and it will be difficult to shew that all other Christian sects united amount to a hundred and twenty millions. Nor do we see any sign which indicates that the term of her long dominion is approaching. She saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St Paul's.*

*This poetical figure has become almost familiar as a household word. It is not original, as has often been pointed out. Horace Walpole, in a letter to Sir H. Mann, says: "At last some curious native of Lima will visit London, and give a sketch of the ruins of Westminster and St Paul's.' Volney, in his Ruins of Empires, had written: Reflecting that if the places before me had once exhibited this animated picture, who, said I to myself, can assure me that their present desolation will not one day be the lot of our own country? Who knows but that hereafter some traveller like myself will sit down upon the banks of the Seine, the Thames, or the Zuyder Zee, where now, in the tumult of enjoyment, the heart and the eyes are too slow to take in the multitude of sensations-who knows but that he will sit down solitary amid silent ruins, and weep a people inurned, and their greatness changed into an empty name?' See also Henry Kirke White, ante, p. 43.

Mrs Barbauld had shadowed forth the same idea:
With duteous zeal their pilgrimage shall take,
From the blue mountains on Ontario's lake,
With fond adoring steps to press the sod,
By statesmen, sages, poets, heroes trod.
Pensive and thoughtful shall the wanderers greet
Each splendid square and still, untrodden street ;
Or of some crumbling turret, mined by time,
The broken stairs with perilous step may climb.
And when 'midst fallen London, they survey
The stone where Alexander's ashes lay,

On the success of the History and other works of Lord Macaulay, information will be found in the life of the historian by his nephew, Mr Trevelyan. 'Within a generation of its first appearance, upwards of 140,000 copies of the History will have been printed and sold in the United Kingdom alone. It has been translated into nearly all European languages, and been unprecedentedly popular. In a journal kept by the historian we read, under date of March 7, 1856:

'Longman came, with a very pleasant announcement. He and his partners find that they are overflowing with money, and think that they cannot invest it better than by advancing to me, on the usual terms of course, part of what will be due to me in December. We agreed that they shall pay twenty thousand pounds into Williams's Bank next week. What a sum to be gained by one edition of a book! I may say, gained in one day. But that was harvest day. The work had been near seven years in hand. The cheque is still preserved as a curiosity among the archives of Messrs Longman's firm. The transaction,' says Macaulay, is quite unparalleled in the history of the book-trade.'*

We have referred to Macaulay's wonderful memory and stores of knowledge (ante, page 429). On this subject we may quote a passage from a journal kept by his sister, Margaret Macaulay:

con

'I said that I was surprised at the great accurracy of his information, considering how desultory his reading had been. "My accuracy as to facts," he said, "I owe to a cause which many men would not confess. It is due to my love of castlebuilding. The past is in my mind soon structed into a romance. With a person of my turn, the minute touches are of as great interest, and perhaps greater than the most important events. Spending so much time as I do in solitude, my mind would have rusted by gazing vacantly at the shop windows. As it is, I am no sooner in the streets than I am in Greece, in Rome, in the midst of the French Revolution. Precision in dates, the day or hour in which a man was born or died, becomes absolutely necessary. A slight fact, a sentence, a word, are of importance in my romance. Pepys's Diary formed almost inexhaustible food for my fancy. I seem to know every inch of Whitehall. I go in at Hans Holbein's Gate, and come out through the matted gallery. The conversations which I compose between great people of the time are long, and sufficiently animated; in the style, if not with the merits, of Sir Walter Scott's. The old parts of London, which you are sometimes surprised at my knowing so well, those old gates and houses down by the river, have all played their part in my stories." He spoke, too, of the manner in which he used to wander about Paris, weaving tales of the Revolution, and he thought that he owed his command of language greatly to this

habit.'

assimilating printed matter at first sight. To the end of his life, Macaulay read books faster than other people skimmed them, and skimmed them as fast as anyone else could turn the leaves.' His vast erudition, his painstaking care as a literary workman, and his hatred of all cant, affectation, and injustice, have been depicted by his biographer. His journals and letters disclose his true nobility of soul, his affection for his sisters, his support of his parents, and his generous selfsacrificing character and independence of spirit, equally conspicuous in adversity and prosperity.

volumes!

HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE.

The History of Civilisation, by HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE (1822-1862), was a portion of a great work designed by its author to extend to fourteen Four were published between 1857 and 1864. They were the result of twenty years' study-the fruit of a speculative genius of no common order, but containing many rash generalisations and doctrinaire views. The public opinion concerning them seems to have subsided into Macaulay's estimate: 'Buckle, a man of talent and of a great deal of reading, but paradoxical and incoherent. He is eminently an anticipator, as Bacon would have said. He wants to and he has not the excuse which Aristotle had of make a system before he has got the materials, having an eminently systematising mind.' The book reminded Macaulay of the Divine Legation of Warburton (see vol. i. of this work, page 772) -that huge structure of paradox and learning. Mr Buckle was the son of a London merchant,

and was born at Lee in Kent. He was an amiable enthusiastic student.

Proximate Causes of the French Revolution.

Looking at the state of France immediately after the death of Louis XIV., we have seen that his policy having reduced the country to the brink of ruin, and having destroyed every vestige of free inquiry, a reaction became necessary; but that the materials for the reaction could not be found among a nation which for fifty years had been exposed to so debilitating a system. This deficiency at home caused the most eminent Frenchmen to turn their attention abroad, and gave rise to a sudden admiration for the English literature, and for those habits of thought which were then breathed into the wasted frame of French society, an peculiar to the English people. New life being thus eager and inquisitive spirit was generated, such as had not been seen since the time of Descartes. The upper classes, taking offence at this unexpected movement, attempted to stifle it, and made strenuous efforts to destroy that love of inquiry which was daily gaining ground. To effect their object, they persecuted literary men with such bitterness as to have made it evident that the intellect of France must either relapse into its former servility, or else boldly assume the defensive. Happily for the interests of civilisation, the latter alternative was adopted; and in or about 1750, a deadly struggle began, in which those principles of liberty hitherto been supposed only applicable to the church, which France borrowed from England, and which had were for the first time applied to the state. Coinciding with this movement, and indeed forming part of it, other circumstances occurred of the same character. Now it was that the political economists succeeded in proving that the interference of the governing classes had inflicted great mischief even upon the material interests of the country; and had by their protective