Page images
PDF
EPUB

the management of our benevolent operations. The year past has also been to a considerable extent a year of revivals, especially in our large cities, as Troy, Albany, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Mobile, New Orleans, and others. About one hundred churches, it is believed, have shared in these special manifestations of divine mercy. As these, however, constitute but one eighteenth of the whole number of our churches, there is reason for humility and lamentation, as well as for gratitude, in the above statement. The Assembly also lament that the violation of the Sabbath prevails so extensively in many parts of our country, and enjoin upon all the ministers, sessions and members of the church to use their best endeavours to counteract this evil. With regard to the subject of temperance, fear is entertained lest that important interest is in some parts of our church on the decline, though it seems to be gaining ground in others; and the opinion is expressed that its partial decline is to be ascribed more to the culpable apathy of its friends, than to the opposition of its enemies.

ART. VII.-Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, by T. Babington Macaulay. Boston: Weeks, Jordan & Company, 1840. 2 vols. 12mo. pp. 456 & 496.

To the religious world, Mr. Macaulay is chiefly Known as the son of the late Zachary Macaulay, by whom the Christian Observer was founded and for many years edited, and who during a long life devoted his powers to the abolition of the Slave Trade. To political inquirers, the younger Macaulay is distinguished for his parliamentary services, his civil trusts in India, and his place in the Cabinet. But with men of letters, and we suppose it may be said with posterity, he will be remembered as one of the most brilliant and effective writers among the Edinburgh Reviewers. It may be questioned whether any of that formidable corps have brandished the satiric thong with more trenchant strokes, or any scattered the gems of literature more widely, or any brought out greater wealth from the deep mines of recondite erudition. Mackintosh was more methodical, philosophic and accurate, but he was cold and stiff in the comparison. Sid

ney Smith, certainly a congenial spirit in many respects, is more comic, off-hand, nonchalant and demolishing; but not more witty and far less learned. Brougham, who writes on every topic and is said to know every thing, rises to a height both of argument and invective, which his compeers dare not attempt, but he is always inelegant in his strength, often ill-natured, and sometimes dull. Jeffrey is in our judg ment inferior to no writer of the age. Always natural, always pellucid as crystal, he is never languid or remiss. It would be difficult to find a more witty or a more argumentative writer; but his logic and his pleasantry are inseparable strands of the same cord. His elegance is such as never betrays the touch of art, for he has never written a sentence after a rhetorical recipe. No author is more exempt from mannerism. Macaulay has more fire, more abandon, and yet more art; being a happy admixture of all the rest, lying somewhere between Smith and Jeffrey; graver and loftier than the one, though less chaste and classic and terse and argumentative than the other.

We owe our thanks to the Boston editor and publishers of this Collection. It is produced with that external elegance for which Boston stands alone in this hemisphere. We applaud the spirit which would maintain a literary commnnity between the old and the new world, and we have only to regret that in seeking such an end the genuine English orthography of a great scholar should in some words have been degraded into the schoolmaster-spelling which has been invenin New England. The thought of collecting the Reviews of such a writer was a happy one, and has been carried into effect with regard to several of the other eminent men whom we have named. It is probable that no one of the group has in proportion to the number of his contributions produced so many which have had immediate and continued popularity. The articles on Milton, Byron, Hampden and Bacon were at once attributed to the first minds in Britain, and it was universally conceded that neither Jeffrey nor Smith had ever thrown off a more capital piece of facetious criticism than the review of Croker's Boswell.

When in 1802, the Rev. Sidney Smith commenced the Edinburgh Review, it could little have been expected by the gay circle around him, Jeffrey (who soon became its editor,) Brougham, Brown, Horner and others, that they were erecting an engine, which, after eight and thirty years should still be making its influence felt in every continent; as little that

three of the number should continue in active service through so long a period; or that their places could be supplied by successors so illustrious. No man sets adequate value on printed books in general; but of the energy for good and evil of an established periodical work, few persons have ever formed a remote conception. Such a work, for instance, as the Edinburgh Review, comes statedly and frequently and with a large amount of matter into thousands of families. It is a welcome visiter, and even if it were conducted with only a tithe of the talent which this commands would still form the opinions in letters, politics and religion of a thousand minds. But when we consider that, in connexion with its great rival, it has for the quarter of a century stood at the very head of literary authority, that they have been appealed to as standards of language and style, and that the greatest writers of England and Scotland have contended for the honour of filling their pages, we must acknowledge that no agency connected with the press has been more potent. All the private lucubrations of Jeffrey, Brougham, Mackintosh and Macaulay, all the civil and judicial services of two of them in India and the third in England; all their public measures in cabinet and the senate; all the more elaborate volumes they have written or may write, will probably, even if taken together, fall below the measure of public influence exerted by their hurried contributions to the Edinburgh Review.

These volumes do not contain a page of dulness. The author has contrived on every subject to keep up that effervescence of genius and healthy spring of animation which writers, by profession are apt to lose. He seems never, if we may use the expression of Hannah More, to write after he is weary, and hence he does not weary his readers. The ra pidity with which topic after topic arises before the mind leaves no room for exhaustion. The brilliants are moreover real, and the sparkle is that of the mine rather than the shop. It would be hard to point out a writer whose learning is so diversified or so much at his command, or who lays the profoundest vaults of heathen and chivalric lore under more successful contribution; and this not to overload, but to cheer and beautify his work. In one respect, Mr. Macaulay had the advantage of his associates, as he enjoyed the full benefit of a complete English education. But it is not every Cantabrigian, even though like Mr. Macaulay he may have gained the Chancellor's medal, or come out senior-wrangler, who could write so familiarly of every department of learning

and science. The pursuits of authors, it has been said, may be gathered from their illustrations. Those of Mr. Macaulay must be various indeed, for he whirls us with a delightful rapidity, from allusion to allusion, now showing his intimacy with the text of scripture, now with the most uncommon classics, with the fables of the east, and the romances and poems of the middle ages; being equally at home in the ancient and the modern schools; and then surprising us with the happiest allusions to the laboratory, the cabinet, and the play-house. In a word, he is an author who knows how to turn his capital with amazing rapidity, to show all his wealth, and to do so with an air of genteel negligence which even Horace Walpole might have envied. When it is considered that this exuberance of allusive learning is displayed not in mere entertainments of taste, but in setting forth some of the highest subjects which can occupy the pen of the critic, the ease and even playfulness of the manner are still more remarkable. The topics are not those indeed of abstruse philosophy or party politics, but belong chiefly to the department of history and biography; but history and biography of such a dignity, and such relations, that they bring into review some of the gravest questions for the man of taste, the statesman, and the moralist. Mr. Macaulay writes as a friend of liberty and a friend of religion. He has indeed been one of the ablest champions of the reformed ministry, and there are few of his articles, upon whatever subject, which do not show most plainly his zeal for civil and religious freedom. Hence he is the declared enemy of all servile and high-church principles, of all tyrants and persecuting priests. All things considered, therefore, the cause of human and Christian rights will not lose by the free circulation of these tracts; and we wish we could have seen among them the Review of Gladstone on Church and State, in which the same pen (we doubt not) holds up to merited ridicule the pretensions to apostolical succession, with such a union of learning, raillery, and dialectic, as has seldom been displayed in the controversy.

The articles upon Hampden, Chatham, Hallam, Mirabeau, and especially the celebrated review of Milton, are fraught with discussions of these and kindred matters. In the treatise last mentioned the author rises to his highest flight. There are few things in English literature of more serene dignity and graceful pomp and tragic pathos, than a large

portion of this article. The fame of the Puritans may, with certain exceptions, be trusted in such hands:

"We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. He that runs may read them; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to point them out. For many years after the Restoration, they were the theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time when the press and the stage were most licentious. They were not men of letters; they were as a body unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and the public would not take them under its protection. They were therefore abandoned, without reserve to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff postures, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learnt.

"Those who roused the people to resistance-who directed their measures throughja long series of eventful yearswho formed, out of the most unpromising materials, the finest army that Europe had ever seen-who trampled down king, church, and aristocracy-who, in the short intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion, made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of the earth, were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their absurdities were mere external badges, like the signs of free-masonry, or the dresses of friars. We regret that these badges were not more attractive. We regret that a body, to whose courage and talents mankind has owned inestimable obligations, had not the lofty elegance which distinguished some of the adherents of Charles I., or the easy good breeding for which the court of Charles II. was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, we shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the specious caskets, which contain only the Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix our choice on the plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure.

"The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior VOL. XII. No. 3.

56

« PreviousContinue »