long shall we continue to rank above the philosopher, higher than the
politician, the great artist, be he called dramatist or historian, who
makes us conscious of the divine movement of events, and of our
fathers who were before us. Of course we assume accuracy and labor in
our animated historian; though, for that matter, other things being
equal, I prefer a lively liar to a dull one.

Carlyle is sometimes as irresistible as 'The Campbells are Coming,' or
'Auld Lang Syne.' He has described some men and some events once and
for all, and so takes his place with Thucydides, Tacitus and Gibbon.
Pedants may try hard to forget this, and may in their laboured
nothings seek to ignore the author of 'Cromwell' and 'The French
Revolution'; but as well might the pedestrian in Cumberland or
Inverness seek to ignore Helvellyn or Ben Nevis. Carlyle is
_there_, and will remain there, when the pedant of today has been
superseded by the pedant of to-morrow.

Remembering all this, we are apt to forget his faults, his
eccentricities, and vagaries, his buffooneries, his too-outrageous
cynicisms and his too-intrusive egotisms, and to ask ourselves--if it
be not this man, who is it then to be? Macaulay, answer some; and
Macaulay's claims are not of the sort to go unrecognised in a world
which loves clearness of expression and of view only too well.
Macaulay's position never admitted of doubt. We know what to expect,
and we always get it. It is like the old days of W. G. Grace's
cricket. We went to see the leviathan slog for six, and we saw it. We
expected him to do it, and he did it. So with Macaulay--the good Whig,
as he takes up the History, settles himself down in his chair, and
knows it is going to be a bad time for the Tories. Macaulay's style--
his much-praised style--is ineffectual for the purpose of telling the