BOOKS.

MACAULAY'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND, VOLUMES THIRD AND FOURTH.* Ti is probable that these two volumes, which have been so widely: and eagerly looked for, may disappoint the expectations .01 their readers. As regards the tone of historical composition, the author has indeed improved. His style is in the main more subdued ; he less frequently indulges in that forced brilliancy and half-swaggering dogmatism which gave an offensive mannerism to his essays. In the search for materiaLs, Mr. Macaulay has had access to national archives some of them inaccessible to previous historians. He has moreover groped extensively among the for- gotten or half-forgotten books and fugitive literature of the time, drawing forth much information as to men, manners, and the con- dition of the country. He has also brought to his task at once a soberer and a larger Judgment. He sees the great qualities of "the hero William" through the phlegmatic manners which obscured them to superficial observers; he brings out the true advantages of the Revolution, and exhibits the real successes of William and the Whigs in its conduct ; he strips off a good deal of the halo whioh ladies and romaneists had thrown over the Highlanders, as well as other characters and events connected with Stuart history. The narrative, however, often drags and in some parts is heavy. Several causes contribute to this effect. The scale is too minute. Two large volumes are occupied with eight years, from the pro- clamation of William and Mary in 1689, to the treaty of Ryswick in 1697. This extension has led the author into particular details, and encouraged a tendency to digression and discussion, which have the effect of tiring the reader. This is especially the ease in home politics, which are expounded at too great a length, with too full a notice of insignificant persons. The pictures of Ireland, and in a lesser degree of Scotland, are very striking, and do credit to the author's indefatigable research, as well as to his skill in selecting- and presenting picturesque details. They are not, how- ever, always well placed ; for they sometimes interrupt the march of events, and have a prominence assigned to them as curiosi- ties rather than as essentials. ' Sometimes, too, they are overdone. Scott puts two sentences into the month of Dugald Dalgetty which distinctly mark the impossibility of 'subjecting the Highlanders to regular discipline : Macaulay fills three or four pages in impres- sing the same idea. The historian, indeed, has had one difficulty to contend- witli that was not easy-to overcome. The most remark- able military events of the period are the siege of. Londonderry and the battles of Killiecrankie and the Boyne; but these have been described, in history- and fiction, in prose and verse, till every reader thinks himself -familiar with the story. We are not sure that Mr. Macaulay, in the siege of Londonderry, equals the im- pression that other narratives have left upon the mind. "The cask long retains the scent which it first receives." Not- withstanding all. his care—and .it is eirident he has taken much care—Mr. Macaulay has hardly risen from the essayist to the his-. torian. With a little more arrangement, these volumes would. have formed a series of long "articles," whereas now- they are a series of broken-up articles. He opens with a chapter on civil. affairs, in which the first rejoicings for. the Revolution and the subsequent reaction in the public and in Parliament are the true theme ; but this is varied in many: ways. There is a good account of the proclamation, pictureaque, but rather belonging,to the chronicle than to history. Then there is a picture of the dif- ferent classes of society, and their feelings and arguments about William, James, and the Revolution ; next some philoeophical re- flections on the discontent that revolutions always breed, and why : and so it goes on—good writing,_ but often out. of place. The se- cond--Chapter Carries the reader to Ireland, and brings down the narrative or events in that country to the relief of Londonderry, and the affair of Newton Butler, in which the adherents of James were routed by the Enniskilleneis. Scotch affairs occupy the next chapter, till the dissolution of the Highland army after the death of 'Viscount Dundee ; when we come back again to the civil affairs of England. -Had each subject been continued till its com- pletion or some natural pause, 'there would have been a succession of payers on the history and times of William. and Mary, the war in Ireland, state of Scottish affairs, and so forth ; wherein. we lave an exceeding ,fulness which' -rather diverts attention from the large events and actors of history to illustrations' of the times. The work is not so.much history as a coramentary,on his- tory; for the author is generally prominent. Indeed, -it goes far- ther than commentary. : At the 'battle of the Boyne, for instance, there is a picture of the landscape as it is now, -with a reference to "Slime Castle, the Minkel' of the Marquess of -Conyngharn," and ahother.picture of haw :it looked then ; a rhetorical ,artifice that has been worn threitabare by novelists and historical topographers.

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• The Hietory of ETIgland'from the Accession of James the Second. By Thomas Babington Macaulay. Volumes III. IV. Published by Longman and Co.

johnson, in his biography of Sprat, compresses the account of the abortive conspiracy to charge that prelate with a plot into a single page : Mr. Macaulay, in his History of England, tells the whole story, including a notice of the chief conspirator. The narrative is interesting as an illustration of the times and its villains, but it belongs rather to the Newgate Calendar than the national history. Foreign affairs are somewhat curtly treated. The fulness spoken of may perhaps originate in a notion' that the Social and popular history of a nation should be written as well as its wars and politics. This is true ; but no direct attempt of the kind is made by Mr. Macaulay. Manners are occasionally indicated ; but the various classes of society apart from politicians —the peasants, the farmers, the squires, the traders, and the various professions whose members did not embark in party or in faction—are left unnoticed, as well as the modes in which they lived and carried on their respective callings. In civil affairs everything bears upon politics or state trials : for although parsons, or lawyers, or writers, or adventurers, may figure in. the pages, they figure.only as connected with politics, and polities that very often led them to the pillory or the gallows—if they had not made an acquaintance with the gaol and the pillory before they turned politicians.

. Apart from the peculiar genius of the author, the striking fea- tures of the book are the pictures of the country as it existed at the time of will& he is writing, and notices of subordinate politi- cal characters, Whether respectable or otherwise, who were well known in their day, but whom history as usually written has left unnoticed. The account of Ireland in .1689, the description of the Popish outbreak and its devastations, the arrival of James and his French allies, the surprise of the French officers at the devastation and barbarism around them, the quarrels and intrigues of the Irish Court, with the bigotry and incapacity of James, strike us as being one of the most valuable and novel parts of the whole. It fills up a gap in history in a,powerful way, at the same time that it pre- sents a striking picture of the barbarism of a whole people, and goes far to explain the feeling that prompted the penal laws. This is the devastation in the three -Provinces, "under Ireland for the

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"The destruction of property which took place within a few weeks would be incredible, if it were not 'attested by witnesses unconnected with each other and attached to very different interests. There is a close and some- times almost a verbal agreement between the descriptions given by Pro- testants, who, during that reign of terror, escaped, at the hazard of their lives, to England, and the descriptions given by the envoys, commissaries, and captains of Lewis. All agreed in declaring that it would take many years to repair the waste which had been wrought in a few weeks by the armed peasantry. Some of the Sevin aristocracy had mansions richly fur- nished, and sideboards gorgeous with silver bowls and chargers. All this wealth disappeared. One house, in which there had been three tiousand pounds' worth of plate, %Vivi left' without a spoon. But the chief riches of Ireland consisted in cattle. Innumerable flocks and herds covered that vast expanse of emerald meadow, saturated with the moisture of the Atlantic. More than one gentleman possessed twenty thousand sheep and four thousand oxen. The freebooters who now overspread the country belonged to a class which was accustomed to live on potatoes and sour whey, and which had always regarded meat as a luxury reserved for the rich. These men at first revelled in beef and mutton, as the savage invaders who of old poured down from .the forests of the North on Italy revelled in Massie and Falernian Wines. The Protestants described with contemptuous disgust the strange glut- tony of their newly-liberated slaves. The carcasses, half raw and half burned td cinders, sometimes still bleeding, sometimes in a state of loathsome decay, were torn to pieces, and swallowed without salt, bread, of herbs. Those maraud- ers who preferred boiled meat, being often in want of kettles, contrived to boil the steer in his own skin: An absurd tragi-comedy is still extant, which was acted ha this and the following year at some low theatre for the amusement of the English populace. A crowd of half-naked savages appeared on the stage, howling a Celtic song and dancing roped .an ox. They then proceeded to cut steaks out of the animal while still alive and to fling the bleeding flesh on the coals. In truth, the barbarity and filthiness of the banquets of the Itapparees was such as the dramatists of Grub Street could scarcely cari- cature. When Lent began, the plunderers generally ceased to devour, but continued to destroy. A peasant would kill a cow merely in order to get a pair of brogues. Often a whole flock of sheep, often a herd of fifty or sixty kine, was slaughtered : the beasts were flayed ; the fleeces and hides were carried away ; and the bodies were left to poison the air. The French Am- bassador reported to his master, that in six weeks fifty thousand horned cattle had been slain in this manner, and were rotting on the ground all over the country. The number of sheep that were butchered during the same time was popularly said to have been three or four hundred thousand."

The effect of this devastation by a half-armed and lawless rab- ble, suddenly removed from the pressure 'of control and terror of the law, is specifically exhibited in the march of James to Ulster.

"Since the King was determined to go Northward, Avaux did not choose- to be left behind. The Royal. party set out, leaving Tyrcon- nel charge at Dublin, and arrived at Charlemont on the 13th of April. The journey was a strange one. The country all along the road had been completely deserted by -the industrious population and laid waste by bands of robbers. This,' said one of the French 'is like travelling through the deserts of Arabia.' Whatever effects the co- lonists had been able to remove were at Londonderry or Enniskillen. The rest had been stolen or destroyed. Avaux informed his court that he had not been able to get One truss Of hay for his horses without'sending five or six miles. No labourer dared bring anythino. for sale, lept some marauder should lay hands on it by the way. The Amaasador was put one night into a miserable tap-room full of soldiers smoking, another night into a dis- mantled house without windows or shutters to keep out the rain. At Charle- mont a bag of oatmeal was with great difficulty, and as a matter of favour, procured for the French Legation. There was no wheaten bread except at the table of the King, who had brought a little flour from Dublin, and to whom Avaux had lent a servant who knew how to bake. Those who were honoured • with an invitation to the Royal table had their bread and wine measured out to them. Everybody else, however high in rank, ate horse- corn, and drank water or detestable beer, made with oats instead of barley, and flavoured with some nameless herb as a substitute for hops. Yet report said that the country between Charlemont and Strabane was even more deso- late than the country between Dublin and Charlemont. It was impossible to carry a large stock of provisions. The roads were so bad, and the horses so weak, that the baggage-waggons had all been left far behind. The chief officers of the army were consequently in want of necessaries; and the ill humour which was the natural effect of these privations was increased by the insensibility of James, who seemed not to be aware that everybody about i him was not perfectly comfortable. "On the 14th of April the King and his train proceeded to Omagh. The rain fell ; the wind blew ; the horses could scarcely make their way through the mud and in the face of the storm ; and the road was frequently inter- sected by torrents which might almost be called rivers. The travellers had to pass several fords where the water was breast high. Some of the party • fainted from fatigue and hunger. All around lay a frightful wilderness. In a journey of forty miles Avaux counted only three miserable cabins. Every- thing else was rock, bog, and moor. When at length the travellers reached Omagh, they found it in ruins. The Protestants, who were the majority of the inhabitants, had abandoned it, leaving not a wisp of straw nor a cask of liquor. The windows had been broken; the chimneys had been beaten in ; the very locks and bolts of the doors had been carried away.

"Avaux had never ceased to press the King to return to Dublin ; but these , expostulations had hitherto produced no effect. The obstinacy of James, however, was an obstinacy which had nothing in common with manly reso- lution, and which, though proof to argument, was easily shaken by caprice. He received at Omagh, early on the 16th of April, letters which alarmed him. He learned that a strong body of Protestants was in arms at Strabane, . and that English ships of war had been seen near the mouth of Lough Foyle. In one minute three messages were sent to summon Avaux to the ruinous chamber in which the Royal bed had been prepared. There James, half-dressed, and with the air of a man bewildered by some great shock, an- nounced his resolution to hasten back instantly to Dublin. Avaux listened, wondered, and approved. Melfort seemed prostrated by despair. The tra- vellers retraced their steps, and late in the evening reached Charlemont."

"There is nothing new under the sun." The thirty years' neglect and corruption between the Restoration and the Revolu- tion had left the naval and military administration of England as imperfect as forty years of peace had made ours in 1854, with a gross and shockimv° corruption superadded. The difficulties of Schomberg in 1689 were a counterpart of those of Lord Raglan in 1854.

"A few hours before the execution of the chief conspirators, a general muster of the army was held ; and it was observed that the ranks of the English battalions looked thin. From the first day of the campaign, there had been much sickness among the recruits; but it was not till the time of the equinox that the mortality became alarming. The autumnal rains ca Ireland are usually heavy, and this year they were heavier than usual. The whole country was deluged; and the Duke's camp became a marsh. The Enniskillen men were seasoned to the climate. The Dutch were accus- tomed to live in a country which, as a wit of that age said, draws fifty feet of water. They kept their huts dry and clean ; and they had experienced ' and careful officers, who did not suffer them to omit any precaution. But the peasants of Yorkshire and Derbyshire had neither constitutions prepared to resist the pernicious influence nor skill to protect themselves against it. The bad provisions furnished by the commissariat aggravated the maladies generated by the air. Remedies were almost entirely wanting. The sur- geons were few. The medicine-chests contained little more than lint and plasters for wounds. The English sickened and died by hundreds. Even those who were not smitten by the pestilence were unnerved and dejected, and, instead of putting forth the energy which is the heritage of our race, awaited their fate with the helpless apathy of Asiatics. It was in vain that Schomberg tried to teach them to improve their habitations, and to cover the wet earth on which they lay with a thick carpet of fern. Exertion had be- come more dreadful to them than death. It was not to be expected that men who would not help themselves should help each other. Nobody asked and nobody showed compassion. Familiarity with ghastly spectacles pro- duced a hardheartedness and a desperate impiety of which an example will not easily be found even in the history of infectious diseases. The moans of the sick were drowned by the blasphemy and ribaldry of their comrades. Sometimes, seated on the body of a wretch who had died in the morning, might be seen a wretch destined to die before night, cursing, singing loose songs, and swallowing usquebagh to the health of the Devil. When the corpses were taken away to be buried, the survivors grumbled. A dead man, they said, was a good screen and a good stool. Why, when there was so abundant a supply of such useful articles of furniture, were people to be ex- posed to the cold air and forced to crouch on the moist ground ? "

The summary of the opinions on Schomberg affords another pa. mild.

"His conduct was variously judged. Wise and candid men said that he had surpassed himself, and that there was no other captain in Europe who, with raw troops, with ignorant officers, with scanty stores, having to contend at once against a hostile army of greatly superior force, against a yillanous commissariat, against a nest of traitors in his own camp, and against a dis- ease more murderous than the sword, would have brought the campaign to a close without the loss of a flag or a gun. On the other hand, many of those newly-commissioned majors and captains whose helplessness had increased all his perplexities, and who had not one qualification for their posts except personal courage, grumbled at the skill and patience which had saved them from destruction. Their complaints were echoed on the other side of Saint George's Channel. Some of the murmuring, though unjust, was excusable. The parents who had sent a gallant lad in his first uniform to fight his way to glory, might be pardoned if, when they learned that he had died on a wisp of straw without medical attendance, and had been buried in a swamp without any Christian or military ceremony, their affliction made them hasty and unreasonable. But with the ery of bereaved families was mingled an- other cry much less respectable. All the hearers and tellers of news abused the General who furnished them with so little news to hear and to tell. For men of that sort are so greedy after excitement, that they far more readily forgive a commander who loses a battle than a commander who declines one. The politicians, who delivered their oracles from the thickest cloud of to- bacco-smoke at Garraway's, confidently asked, without knowing anything either of war in general or of Irish war in particular, why Schomberg did not fight? They could not venture to say that he did not under- stand his calling. No doubt, he had been an excellent officer; but he was very old. He seemed to bear his years well but his faculties were not what they had been : his memory was failing' and it was well known that he sometimes forgot in the afternoon what he had done in the morning. It may be doubted whether there ever existed a human being whose mind was quite as firmly toned at eighty as at forty. But that Schomberg's in- tellectual powers had been little impaired by years, is sufficiently proved by his despatches, which are still extant, and which are models of official writ- ing; terse, perspicuous, full of important facts and weighty reasons, com- pressed into the smallest possible number of words. In those despatches he sometimes alluded, not angrily, but with calm disdain, to the censures thrown upon his conduot by shallow babblers, who, never having seen any military operation more important than the relieving of the guard at White- hall, imagined that the easiest thing in the world was to gain great victories. in any situation and against any odds, and by sturdy patriots who were con- vinced that one English carter or thresher, who had not yet learned how to load a gun or port a pike, was a match for any five musketeers of King Lewis's household."

Of the curious but lesser characters who appear in this history, the Nonjurors are the most fitly introduced, because they come in episodically—like a gallery of portraits which we can pass if we do not like to enter, not like a person who stands in the way. One of the best-known names and not the least curious character is Dodwell.

"In parts Collier was the first man among the Nonjurors. In erudition the first place must be assigned to Henry Dodwell, who, for the unpardon- able crime of having a small estate in Mayo, had been attainted by the Popish Parliament at Dublin. He was Camdenian Professor of Ancient History in the University of Oxford, and had already acquired considerable celebrity by chronological and geographical researches: but, though he never could be persuaded to take orders, theology was his favourite study. He was doubtless a pious and sincere man. He had perused innumerable volumes in various languages, and had indeed acquired more learning than his slender faculties were able to bear. The small intellectual spark which he possessed was put out by the fuel. Some of his books seem to have been written in a madhouse, and, though filled with proofs of his immense read- ing, degrade him to the level of James Naylor and Ludowick Muggleton. He began a dissertation intended to prove that the law of nations was a divine revelation made to the family which was preserved in the ark. He published a treatise in which he maintained that a marriage between a member of the Church of England and a Dissenter was a nullity, and that the couple were, in the sight of Heaven, guilty of adultery. He defended. the use of instrumental music in public worship, on the ground that the notes of the organ had a power to counteract the influence of devils on the spinal marrow of human beings. In his treatise on this subject, he remarked that there was high authority for the opinion that the spinal marrow, when decomposed, became a serpent. Whether this opinion were or were not correct, he thought it unnecessary to decide. Perhaps, he said, the eminent men in whose works it was found had meant only to express figuratively the great truth, that the Old Serpent operates on us chiefly through the spinal marrow. Dodwell's speculations on the state of human beings after death are, if possible, more extraordinary still. He tells us that our souls• are naturally mortal. Annihilation is the fate of the greater part of man- kind, of heathens, of Mahometans, of unchristened babes. The gift of im- mortality is conveyed in the sacrament of baptism : but to the efficacy of the sacrament it is absolutely necessary that the water be poured and the words pronounced by a priest who has been ordained by a bishop. In the natural course of things, therefore, all Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, and Quakers, would, like the inferior animals, cease to exist. But Dodwell was far too good a Churchman to let off Dissenters so easily. He informs them, that, as they have had an opportunity of hearing the gospel preached, and might but for their own perverseness have received eptscopahan baptism, God will, by an extraordinary act of power, bestow immortality on them, in order that they may be tormented for ever and ever."

The author says nothing of his former blunder about Penn and the Maids of Honour, if blunder after all it really was. But he brings strong charges against the eminent Quaker, not only as regards his veracity, but his consistent belief in his own dogmas.

"The conduct of Penn was scarcely less scandalous. He was a zealous and busy Jacobite; and his new way of life was even more unfavourable than his late way of life had been to moral purity. It was hardly possible to be at once a consistent Quaker and a courtier : but it was utterly impossible to be at once a consistent Quaker and a conspirator. It is melancholy to relate that Penn, while professing to consider even defensive war as sinful, did everything in his power to bring a foreign army into the heart of his own country. He wrote to inform James that the adherents of the Prince of Orange dreaded nothing so much as an appeal to the sword, and that, if ' England were now invaded from France or from Ireland, the number of Royalists would appear to be greater than ever. Avaux thought this letter so important, that he sent a translation of it to Lewis. A good effect, the shrewd Ambassador wrote, had been produced, by this and similar communi- cations, on the mind of King James. His Majesty was at last convinced that he could recover his dominions only sword in hand. It is a curious fact, that it should have been reserved for the great preacher of peace to produce this conviction in the mind of the old tyrant. Penn's proceedings had not escaped the observation of the Government Warrants had been out against him; and he had been taken into custody ; but the evidence against him had not been such as would support a charge of high treason: he had, as with all his faults he deserved to have, many friends in every party; he therefore soon regained his liberty, and returned to his plots.

"Among the letters which the Government had intercepted was one from James to Penn. That letter, indeed, was not legal evidence to prove that the person to whom it was addressed had been guilty of high treason ; but it raised suspicions, which are now known to have been well founded. Penn was brought before the Privy Council, and interrogated. He said very truly, that he could not prevent people from writing to him, and that he was not accountable for what they might write to him. He acknowledged that he , was bound to the late King by ties of gratitude and affection which no change of fortune could dissolve. 'I should be glad to do him any service in his private affairs : but I owe a sacred duty to my. country ; and therefore I was never so wicked as even to think of endeavouring to bring him back.' This was a falsehood ; and William was probably aware that it was so. He was unwilling, however, to deal harshly with a man who had many titles to respect, and who was not likely to be a very formidable plotter. He there- fore declared himself satisfied, and proposed to discharge the prisoner. Some of the Privy Councillors, however, remonstrated ; and Penn was required to give bail."

The conduct of jasies at the battle of the Boyne is not one of the many passages to be found where great and drudging research has brought together forgotten facts and vivified them by vigorous I genius ; for the behaviour of James was well enough known. It may be taken as an example of the writer's estimate of one of the greatest figures in the piece.

Whether James had owed his early reputation for valour to accident and flattery, or whether, as he advanced in life, his character underwent a change, may be doubted. But it is certain that, in his youth, he was gene- rally believed to possess, not merely that average measure of fortitude which qualifies a soldier to go through a campaign without disgrace, but that high and serene intrepidity which is the virtue of great commanders. It is equally certain that, in his later years, he repeatedly, at conjunctures such as have often inspired timorous and delicate women with heroic courage, showed a pusillanimous anxiety about his personal safety. Of the most powerful motives which can induce human beings to encounter peril, none was wanting to him on the day of the Boyne. The eyes of his contempo- raries and of posterity, of friends devoted to his cause and of enemies eager to witness his humiliation, were fixed upon him. He had, in his own opin- ion, sacred rights to maintain and cruel wrongs to revenge. He was a king, come to fight for three kingdoms. He was a father, come to fight for the birthright of his child. He was a zealous Roman Catholic, come to fight in the holiest of crusades. If all this was not enough, he saw, from the secure position which he occupied on the height of Donore, a sight which, it might have been thought, would have roused the most torpid of mankind to emu- lation. He saw his rival, weak, sickly, wounded, swimming the river, struggling through the mud, leading the charge, stopping the flight, grasp- ing the sword with the left hand, managing the bridle with a bandaged arm. But none of these things moved that sluggish and ignoble nature. He watched, from a safe distance, the beginning of the battle on which his fate and the fate of his race depended. When it became clear that the day was going against Ireland, he was seized with an apprehension that his flight might be intercepted, and galloped towards Dublin. He was escorted by a body-guard under the command of Sarsfield, who had, on that day, had no opportunity of displaying the skill and courage which his enemies allowed that he possessed. The French auxiliaries, who had been employed the whole morning in keeping William's right wing in check, covered the flight of the beaten army. They were indeed in some danger of being broken and swept away by the torrent of runaways, all pressing to get first to the pass of Duleek, and were forced to fire repeatedly on these despicable allies. The retreat was, however, effected with less loss than might have been expected. For even the admirers of William owned that he did not show in the pur- suit the energy which even his detractors acknowledged that he had shown in the battle. Perhaps his physical infirmities, his hurt, and the fatigue which he had undergone, had made him incapable of bodily or mental ex- ertion. Of the last forty hours he had passed thirty-five on horseback. f3chomberg, who might have supplied his place, was no more. It was said in the camp that the King could not do everything, and that what was not (lone by him was not done at all."

The reader of The Fortunes of Nigel is familiar with one of the various privileged places that were a nuisance to the Metropolis— the Savoy, the Mint, and Whitefriars. - Perhaps the picture of Alsatia is lighter and more vivid in the story of the novelist than in the condensed and laboured picture of the historian : the Savoy and its doings are better. "Another bill which fared better ought to be noticed as an instance of the slow but steady progress of civilization. The ancient immunities enjoyed by some districts of the capital, of which the largest and the moat infamous was Whitefriars, had produced abuses which could no longer be endured. The Templars on one aide of Abatis, and the citizens on the other, had long been calling on the Government and the Legislature to put down so mon- strous a nuisance. Yet still, bounded on the West by the great school of English jurisprudence, and on the East by the great mart of English trade, stood this labyrinth of squalid, tottering houses, close packed, every one, from 'cellar to cock-loft, with outcasts whose life was one long war with society. The best part of the population consisted of debtors who were in fear of bailiffs. The rest were attorneys struck off the roll, witnesses who carried straw in their shoes as a sign to inform the public where a false oath might be procured for half-a-crown, sharpers, receivers of stolen goods, clippers of coin, forgers of bank-notes, and tawdry women, blooming with paint and brandy, who, in their anger, made free use of their nails and their scissors, yet whose anger was less to be dreaded than their kindness. "With these wretches the narrow alleys of the sanctuary swarmed. The rattling of dice, the call for more punch and more wine, and the noise of blasphemy and ribald song, never ceased during the whole night. The bench- ere of the Inner Temple could bear the scandal and the annoyance no longer. They ordered the gate leading into Whitefriars to be bricked up. The Alsatians mustered in great force, attacked the workmen, killed one of them, pulled down the wall, knocked down the Sheriff who came to keep the peace, and carried off his gold chain which, no doubt, was soon in the melt- ing-pot. The riot was not suppressed till a company of the Foot Guards arrived. This outrage excited general indignation. The Cab indignant at the outrage offered to the Sheriff, cried loudly for justice. Yet, so difficult was it to execute any process in the dens of Whitefriars, that near two years elapsed before a single ringleader was apprehended. "The Savoy was another place of the same kind, smaller indeed, and less renowned, but inhabited by a not less lawless population. An unfortunate tailor, who ventured to go thither for the purpose of demanding payment of a debt, was set upon by the whole mob of cheats, ruffians, and courtesans. He offered to give a full discharge to his debtor and a treat to the rabble; but in vain. He had violated their franchises; and this crime was not to be pardoned. He was knocked down, stripped, tarred, feathered. A rope was tied round his waist. He was dragged naked up and down the streets, amidst yells of A bailiff! a bailiff!' Finally he was compelled to kneel down and to curse his father and mother. Having performed this ceremony, he was permitted—and the permission was blamed by many of the Savoy- ards—to limp home without a rag upon him. The Bog of Allen, the passes of the Grampians, were not more unsafe than this small knot of lanes, sur- rounded by the mansions of the greatest nobles of a flourishing and en- lightened kingdom. " At length 1 in 1697, a bill for abolishing the franchises of these places passed both Houses, and received the Royal assent. The Alsatians and Sa- voyards were furious. Anonymous letters, containing menaces of assassina- tion, were received by Members of Parliament who had made themselves conspicuous by the zeal with which they had supported the bill : but such threats only strengthened the general conviction that it was high time to destroy these nests of knaves and ruffians. A fortnight's grace was allowed ; and it was made known that, when that time had expired, the vermin who had been the curse of London would be unearthed and hunted without mercy. There was a tumultuous flight to Ireland, to France, to the Colonies, to vaults and garrets in lees notorious parts of the capital ; and when, on the prescribed day, the Sheriff's officers ventured to cross the boundary, they found those streets where, a few weeks before, tha cry of A writ!' would have drawn together a thousand raging bullies and vixens, as quiet as the cloister of a cathedral."

The history, at least as handled from the historian's point of view, does not admit of much pathos, nor is Macaulay's genies greatly inclined to the tender. The death of Mary with its effect upon William is one of the few touching passages, and with that sadly solemn scene we close our extracts.

" buring two or three days there were many alternations of hope and fear. The physicians contradicted each other and themselves in a way which suf- ficiently indicates the state of medical science in that age. The disease was measles : it was scarlet fever : it was spotted fever : it was erysipelas. At one moment some symptoms, which in truth showed that the case was almost hopeless, were hailed as indications of returning health. At length all doubt was over. Radcliffe's opinion proved to be right. It was plain that the Queen was sinking under small-pox of the most malignant type. "All this time William remained night and day near her bedside. The little couch ou which he slept when he was in camp was spread for him in the antechamber ; buthe scarcely lay down on it. The sight of his mi- sery, the Dutch Envoy wrote, was enough to melt the hardest heart. No- thing seemed to be left of the man whose serene fortitude had been the won- der of old soldiers on the disastrous day of Landen, and of old sailors on that fearful night among the sheets of ice and banks of sand on the coast of Goree. The very domestics saw the tears running unchecked down that face, of which the stern composure had seldom been disturbed by any triumph or by any defeat. Several of the prelates were in attendance. The King drew Burnet aside, and gave way to an agony of grief. There is no hope,' he cried. 'I was the happiest man on earth; and I am the most miserable. She had no fault ; none : you knew her well, but you could not know, nobody but myself could know, her goodness.' Tenison undertook to tell her that she was dying. He was afraid that such a communication, abruptly made, might agitate her violently, and began with much manage- ment. But she soon caught his meaning, and, with that gentle womanly courage which so often puts our bravery to shame, submitted herself to the will of God. She called for a small cabinet in which her most important papers were locked up, gave orders that, as soon as she was no more' it should be delivered to the King, and then dismissed worldly cares from her mind. She received the eucharist, and repeated her part of the office with unimpaired memory and intelligence, though in a feeble voice. She observed that Tenison had been long standing at her bedside, and, with that sweet courtesy which was habitual to her, faltered out her commands that he would sit down, and repeated them till he obeyed. After she had received the sacra- ment she sank rapidly, and uttered only a few broken words. Twit,. she tried to take a last farewell of him whom she had loved BO truly and entirely : but she was unable to speak. He had a succession of fits, so alarming that his Privy Councillors, who were assembled in a neighbouring room, were apprehensive for his reason and his life. The Duke of Leeds, at the request of his colleagues, ventured to assume the friendly guardianship of which minds deranged by sorrow stand in need. A few minutes before the Queen expired, William was removed, almost insensible, from the sick room."

When the first two volumes of this work appeared, just seven years ago,f we remarked upon the length to which it would extend if carried out upon the existing scale. That scale has rather increased than diminished, if regard be had to the historical importance of the respective subjects and the length of the introductory survey of English history which opened the first volume. At the present rate of proceeding, every decade will require three large volumes to ex- hibit it, and those three volumes will require something like ten years to compose. The life of man might perhaps suffice to read the thirty volumes needed to bring down the history to the French Revolution of 1789; but can Mr. Macaulay hope to live to write them ?

t Spectator, Dec. 9, 1843; page 1186.