narrated in the same resonant, rhetorical, unsympathetic, and falsely
emphatic style--this generation would have a very patchwork idea of
past ages and a narrow sense of the resources of our English language.
There is room for both literary schools, and we need teachers of many
kinds. We must not ask of any kind more than they can give. Macaulay
has led millions who read no one else, or who never read before, to
know something of the past, and to enjoy reading. He will have done
them serious harm if he has persuaded them that this is the best that
can be done in historical literature, or that this is the way in which
the English language can be most fitly used. Let us be thankful for
his energy, learning, brilliance. He is no priest, philosopher, or
master. Let us delight in him as a fireside companion.

In one thing all agree--critics, public, friends, and opponents.
Macaulay's was a life of purity, honour, courage, generosity,
affection, and manly perseverance, almost without a stain or a defect.
His life, it was true, was singularly fortunate, and he had but few
trials, and no formidable obstacles. He was bred up in the comfortable
egoism of the opulent middle classes; the religion of comfort,
_laisser-faire_, and social order was infused into his bones. But, so
far as his traditions and temper would permit, his life was as
honourable, as unsullied, and as generous, as ever was that of any man
who lived in the fierce light that beats upon the famous. We know his
nature and his career as well as we know any man's; and we find it on
every side wholesome, just, and right. He has been fortunate in his
biographers, and amply criticised by the best judges. His nephew, Sir
George Trevelyan, has written his life at length in a fine book. Dean
Milman and Mark Pattison have given us vignettes; Cotter Morison has
adorned the _Men of Letters_ series with a delightful and sympathetic
sketch; and John Morley and Leslie Stephen have weighed his work in the