have been total darkness. Now, I am sure, I heard a soft whispering outside my door. I knew that I was in a state of siege. The crisis was come, and, strange to say, I felt myself grow all at once resolute and selfpossessed. It was not a subsidence, however, of the dreadful excitement, but a sudden screwing up of my nerves to a pitch such as I cannot describe. . . . I remained for a space which I cannot pretend to estimate in the same posture, afraid to stir—afraid to remove my eye from the door. A very peculiar grating sound above my head startled me from my watch-something of the character of sawing, only more crunching, and with a faint continued rumble in it utterly inexplicable. It sounded over that portion of the roof which was farthest from the door, towards which I now glided; and as I took my stand under cover of the projecting angle of a clumsy old press that stood close by it, I perceived the room a little darkened, and I saw a man descend and take his stand upon the window stone. He let go a rope, which, however, was still fast round his body, and employed both his hands, with apparently some exertion, about something at the side of the window, which in a moment more in one mass, bars and all, swung noiselessly open, admitting the frosty night air; and the man, whom I now distinctly saw to be Dudley Ruthyn, kneeled on the sill, and stepped, after a moment's listening, into the room. His foot made no sound upon the floor; his head was bare, and he wore his usual short shooting-jacket. I cowered to the ground in my post of observation. He stood, as it seemed to me, irresolutely for a moment, and then drew from his pocket an instrument which I distinctly saw against the faint moonlight. Imagine a hammer, one end of which had been beaten out into a longish tapering spike, with a handle something longer than usual. He drew stealthily to the window, and seemed to examine this hurriedly, and tested its strength with a twist or two of his hand. And then he adjusted it very carefully in his grasp, and made two or three little experimental picks with it in the air. I remained perfectly still, with a terrible composure, crouched in my hiding-place, my teeth clenched, and prepared to struggle like a tigress for my life when discovered. I thought his next measure would be to light a match. I saw a lantern, I fancied, on the window-sill. But this was not his plan. He stole, in a groping way, which seemed strange to me, who could distinguish objects in this light, to the side of my bed, the exact position of which he evidently knew; he stooped over it. Madame was breathing in the deep respiration of a heavy sleep. Suddenly but softly he laid, as it seemed to me, his left hand over her face, and nearly at the same instant there came a scrunching blow; an unnatural shriek, beginning small and swelling for two or three seconds into a yell such as are imagined in haunted houses, accompanied by a convulsive sound, as of the motion of running, and the arms drumming on the bed; and then another blow-and with a horrid gasp he recoiled a step or two, and stood perfectly still. I heard a horrible tremor quivering through the joints and curtains of the bedstead-the convulsions of the murdered woman. was a dreadful sound, like the shaking of a tree and rustling of leaves. Then once more he stepped to the side of the bed, and I heard another of those horrid blows and silence-and another-and more silence-and the diabolical surgery was ended. (From Uncle Silas.) It Song. The autumn leaf was falling At midnight from the tree, When at her casement calling, 'I'm here, my love,' cried he. 'Come down and mount behind me, And rest your little head, 'You've stolen my heart by magic, Has made one life of twain, In deathless peace or pain. 'Our dreamland shall be glowing, If you my bride will be, To darkness both are going, Unless you ride with me. And rest your little head, Before that I be dead.' The edition of the Purcell Papers published in 1880 contains a sympathetic Memoir by A. P. Graves, who has also written a biographical preface to the Poems; and a very charming volume published by Le Fanu's brother William, entitled Seventy Years of Irish Life, bears incidentally much affectionate testimony to the charm of a personality which fascinated all who came in contact with the novelist. Mountstuart Elphinstone (1779-1859),. fourth son of the eleventh Lord Elphinstone, was educated at Edinburgh and Kensington, and entered the Bengal Civil Service in 1795. In 1803. he served with distinction on Wellesley's staff, and was appointed resident at Nagpur; in 1808 he was sent as envoy to Shah Shuja at Cabul; and as resident from 1810 at Poona he ended the Mahratta war of 1817 and organised the newly acquired territory. During his governorship of Bombay (1819-27) he founded the present system of administration, and greatly advanced public education. Returning to England in 1829, he declined. the Governor-Generalship of India, and lived in comparative retirement until his death at Hookwood in Surrey. His well-known History of India: appeared in 1841, has been often reprinted, and. is still the standard popular work on the Mohammedan period. It followed the Persian historian. Ferishta rather closely; but many newer data and conclusions were incorporated in the 1866 edition. by Professor Cowell, and retained in the subsequent editions (7th, 1889). Elphinstone also wrote an Account of Caubul as he saw it during his embassy, as well as a sketch of the Rise of British Power in the East, edited in 1887 by Sir Edward Colebrooke, who had published a Life of him in 1884. Another Memoir by Forrest is prefixed to his Official Writings (1884), and he is the subject of a monograph by Cotton in the 'Rulers of India' series. (1892). Thomas Babington Macaulay. Macaulay was probably the most widely read and most generally popular author of his generation; and though his literary reputation has been seriously assailed since his death, the steady sale of his works conclusively proves that his hold upon the reading public remains almost unshaken. Born on the 25th October 1800, he was the eldest child of Zachary Macaulay, the earnest and disinterested opponent of the slavetrade and of slavery. His childhood was passed at Clapham, the headquarters of the Evangelical sect, of which his father was a prominent member; but the influence of his early surroundings was stronger in the direction of repulsion than of attraction. He was educated at a private school till the age of eighteen, when he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge. His years at Cambridge were the formative period of his life. He was already an eager student of the classics and an omnivorous reader of modern literature. He now acquired self-confidence by familiar intercourse with men of equal intellectual power with himself, and he became prominent as a fluent talker in private society and as a brilliant and ready speaker in the debates of the Union. At the same time he formed those political opinions of which he was to be so consistent a champion, both by voice and pen, in later life. His degree was undistinguished on account of his distaste for mathematics; but he gained prizes for English. verse, a Craven scholarship, and ultimately in 1824 a fellowship at Trinity. Macaulay's subsequent career was vitally affected by the failure of his father's business. At the very outset he was compelled not only to support himself, but to undertake the burden of paying off the creditors and of contributing to the maintenance of the family. He was called to the Bar in 1826, and two years later he was appointed a Commissioner in Bankruptcy. But he was impelled by urgent reasons to supplement his fellowship and his official income by the earnings of his pen. His first contributions, both prose and verse, were made to Knight's Quarterly; but in 1825 he established that connection with the Edinburgh Review which for more than thirty years brought equal fame both to the journal and to its brilliant contributor. The consequent improvement in his finances enabled Macaulay in 1830 to accept from Lord Lansdowne the offer of a seat in Parliament for the borough of Calne. In the great struggle of the Reform Bill the young member played a part of no small importance, and he was rewarded for his services by a post on the Board of Control. Everything seemed to point to a distinguished career in politics, when he was induced by the prospect of permanent freedom from financial difficulties to accept the post of legal adviser to the Supreme Council in India. For four years, 1834-38, Macaulay was in India, where his most important work was associated with the drafting of the penal code and with the organisation of Indian education. He returned to England in 1839, with the intention of devoting himself to the writing of a History of England from the accession of James II. to the early years of the nineteenth century. From this purpose he was for a time distracted, partly by the incessant demands of the editor of the Edinburgh Review, and partly by the temptation to return to political life. He accepted the post of Secretary at War in the Whig Ministry, and was elected to the House of Commons by the city of Edinburgh. The fall of the Ministry in 1841 gave him more leisure, until in 1846 he was once more in office as Paymaster of the Forces. But in 1847 his failure to secure reelection for Edinburgh put an end to his active political life; and though he was triumphantly returned at the head of the poll in 1852, spoke occasionally in the House of Commons in 1852 and 1853, and in 1857 was raised to the House of Lords, he never sought to resume the burden of office; and the last twelve years of his life, clouded as time went on by failing health, were devoted to literary work, and especially to the composition of his History, which had hardly reached the death of William III. when he died, sitting among. his books, on 28th December 1859. There is no great room for dispute about Macaulay's rank as a poet. He does not claim a place among the great poets of the world. He had too little insight into the deeper problems and motives of human life and character to justify such a pretension. His own life was too free from the strongest passions and temptations of humanity to enable him to interpret men's inner nature to themselves. But as a writer of ballads, as a story-teller in verse, he had no superior in his own generation. There is a ring and a rattle about his stanzas which carry away the reader or reciter; and it is no small tribute to Macaulay's grasp of his own limitations that he did not give more time to a species of composition in which he gained such easy and yet well-deserved fame. To intelligent boys and girls, and to all who retain in later life the spirit and sentiment of youth, Macaulay's Lays will always make a strong appeal. It is not easy to choose extracts from narrative poems so widely known, but the stanzas quoted below from 'Horatius' will serve to illustrate the best qualities of Macaulay's verse. Macaulay's speeches are of great interest and importance to the student of his prose style. The whole temper of his mind was oratorical. His speeches are spoken essays; his essays are written speeches. Even his conversation, as contemporary rivals humorously complained, was declamatory. The diffuseness of his writing, the almost excessive emphasis and elaboration with which he made his points and drove them home to his readers, are the result of this oratorical method. In the House of Commons Macaulay was at his best. He gained the ear of the House on his first appearance, and he never lost it. The report that 'Macaulay is up' always brought members hurrying from the library, the smoking-room, and the lobby. Yet the limitations of his oratory are as obvious as those of his poetry, and spring from the same causes. He could command an endless supply of telling and sonorous phrases, which he poured forth with a fluency that made him the despair of reporters; he was never at a loss for a striking illustration; his arguments were always well marshalled and transparently clear. Yet he lacked the subtle sympathy and the electrical force of a really great orator; he could convince, but he could not enchant; and it is difficult to believe that he could ever have reached the first rank as a debater. His speeches are so coherent and so level in their uniform merit that it is as hard to find extracts from them as from his poems. Perhaps his most famous speeches are those on the Reform Bill hardly be denied. But there are at least twenty, including all those on English history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which are immortal. The Essays will probably continue to have fifty readers for every one who reads through the more ambitious History. This preference is to be justified on literary grounds. The form of the essay, a brilliant dissertation rather than an essay proper as the term was understood by Bacon and Hume, was Macaulay's THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. After a Photograph by Claudet. (16th December 1831) and on the Maynooth grant (14th April 1845), from which passages are given below. No contributions to historical literature have ever achieved such immediate and lasting popularity as the Essays which Macaulay wrote for the Edinburgh Review. Of these, twenty-two were published before his departure for India, three during his residence in the East, and eleven after his return. With them may be reckoned the five biographies which he contributed in his later years to the Encyclopædia Britannica, one of which, that on William Pitt, is as perfect in its way as anything Macaulay ever wrote. That these Essays, forty-one in all, are of unequal merit was inevitable; and that some of them would never have been republished if any one else had written them will own invention, and it has been imitated ever since. For such an essay, giving a graphic picture of a period, or a character, or a career, Macaulay's style was preeminently suited. Its rather metallic resonance, its rhetorical antitheses, its occasional faults of taste and emphasis, sometimes weary or even irritate the reader of a long continuous narrative; but they were well fitted to arrest the attention of the most jaded reader of a solid quarterly. And it is as literature, not as history, that the Essays deserve their reputation. As Macaulay himself says of Temple: 'The style of his essays is on the whole excellent, almost always pleasing, and now and then stately and splendid. The matter is generally of much less value.' It is true that Macaulay's Essays have a real historical interest and value as giving the views of an eminent student upon subjects to which he had given much time and thought; but they are not, and they never professed to be, serious contributions to human knowledge. Volumes have been written to prove the inaccuracy of the Essays on Bacon and on Warren Hastings; and equally serious inaccuracies, or even the absence of all adequate research, might be easily proved in the case of other essays. But such elaborate confutation is unnecessary and not a little ridiculous. The most learned and accurate of men would hesitate to write articles for any popular review if every statement was to be as careful and precise as if he were writing for a select circle of scholars and specialists. As a historian Macaulay must be judged, not by the Essays, nor by the first two chapters of the History, which are prefatory and scarcely more solid than the Essays, but by his account of the reigns of James II. and William III. And in forming an estimate we must remember what was Macaulay's deliberate aim in writing history. We have it in his own words. 'History, at least in its state of ideal perfection, is a compound of poetry and philosophy. It impresses general truths on the mind by a vivid representation of particular characters and incidents.' 'A truly great historian would reclaim those materials which the novelist has appropriated.' 'I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies.' His avowed intention was to combine the picturesqueness of the historical novel with the accuracy of the historian; his models were Thucydides and Sir Walter Scott. History in his mind must be above all things pictorial and dramatic; it must bring the characters and their actions on the stage all the accessories in the way of scenery and subordinate personages must be supplied by the writer. And he unquestionably succeeded in his aim. Carlyle with a few impressive touches may paint isolated scenes even more vividly than Macaulay, but he cannot produce such a uniform and continuous pageant. Some may hold that Macaulay's supreme art as a scene-shifter is never sufficiently concealed, that the machinery by which the puppets are worked is too obvious; others may doubt whether the pictorial conception of history is the highest or even in the end the truest; but no one can deny that Macaulay had a perfectly clear conception of the object which he desired to attain, and that he showed himself a perfect master of the means by which it could be achieved. It is inevitable that in such a scheme the reader must be left in large measure to draw his own conclusions from the events which are described. It is a lengthy process to apply the methods of the cinematograph to history, and Macaulay took five volumes to complete the animated picture of some sixteen years. But the machinery would hardly work at all if at every turn it was necessary to explain not only that the event took place in a particular way, but also the why and the wherefore of each occurrence. Lack of philosophic insight is not the only charge which is brought against Macaulay. He is also accused of excessive party-spirit and of inaccuracy resulting from the use of uncritical methods. The first of these charges has been enormously exaggerated. That Macaulay was a Whig, that he admired William III., and that he thoroughly approved of the principles of the Revolution nobody disputes. It is neither possible nor wholesome for a man to write as if he had no opinions of his own. But it cannot be contended that Macaulay is deliberately unfair, or that he set himself to write, not a history, but a political pamphlet. Within the permissible and easily recognisable limits of political inclination he distributes praise and blame with praiseworthy fairness. It is less easy to disprove the assertion that he was violently prejudiced against individuals, as Shaftesbury, Penn, and Marlborough; but his diatribes against them are quite independent of party-spirit. In fact, Shaftesbury was the founder and first leader of the Whigs, and Marlborough in his later life became their intimate ally. The second charge is perhaps the most formidable. It is not that Macaulay neglected his authorities, but that he used them in an uncritical way; that he deliberately rejected the systematic analysis of sources which was inculcated and practised by Von Ranke and other eminent contemporaries. Macaulay had read everything that was accessible at the time on the period which he treated. That he did not do more was probably due to the extraordinary memory which too often saved him from the necessity of abstract thought. All his information was collected, sorted, and fused together in his mind. He adjusted the evidence and drew his conclusions not so much by the processes of reason as by a sort of instinct. It is not a method that could be safely recommended to every student of the past; but it is marvellous how successful it was in Macaulay's case. Considering the scale on which he worked, inaccuracy in occasional details was inevitable; yet those which have been detected by malevolent critics are comparatively few and unimportant. On the other hand, there is a subtle inaccuracy in Macaulay's methods of statement which is almost as serious a fault as actual blunders. His extreme precision and his excessive emphasis are often in themselves misleading. Two instances must suffice. The House of Commons was more zealous for royalty than the king, more zealous for episcopacy than the bishops.' 'To the seared consciences of Shaftesbury and Buckingham the death of an innocent man gave no more uneasiness than the death of a partridge.' Such assertions, which might be indefinitely multiplied, go much further than could be justified by any authority. In fact, Macaulay is a great artist in black and white rather than a great colourist; and the most delicate shading, a process in which he did not excel, can never supply the place of the infinite gradations of colour, and of those neutral tints which may not produce such brilliant pictures, but are nevertheless predominant in human history. From 'Horatius.' But with a crash like thunder And a long shout of triumph When first he feels the rein, Rejoicing to be free; And whirling down in fierce career, Alone stood brave Horatius, But constant still in mind; Thrice thirty thousand foes before, And the broad flood behind. 'Down with him!' cried false Sextus, With a smile on his pale face. 'Now yield thee,' cried Lars Porsena, 'Now yield thee to our grace.' Round turned he, as not deigning Those craven ranks to see; Nought spake he to Lars Porsena, To Sextus nought spake he; But he saw on Palatinus The white porch of his home; And he spake to the noble river That rolls by the towers of Rome. 'O Tiber! Father Tiber ! To whom the Romans pray, A Roman's life, a Roman's arms, Take thou in charge this day!' So he spake, and speaking sheathed The good sword by his side, And with his harness on his back, Plunged headlong in the tide. No sound of joy or sorrow Was heard from either bank; But friends and foes in dumb surprise, With parted lips and straining eyes, Stood gazing where he sank; And when above the surges They saw his crest appear, All Rome sent forth a rapturous cry, And even the ranks of Tuscany Could scarce forbear to cheer. Parliamentary Reform. We support this Bill. We may possibly think it a better Bill than that which preceded it. But are we therefore bound to admit that we were in the wrong, that the Opposition was in the right, that the House of Lords has conferred a great benefit on the nation? We saw-who did not see?-great defects in the first Bill. But did we see nothing else? Is delay no evil? Is prolonged excitement no evil? Is it no evil that the heart of a great people should be made sick by deferred hope? We allow that the changes which have been made are improvements. . . . There probably never was a law which might not have been amended by delay. But there have been many cases in which there would have been more mischief in delay than benefit in the amend ments. The first Bill, however inferior it may have been in its details to the present Bill, was yet herein far superior to the present Bill, that it was the first. If the first Bill had passed, it would, I firmly believe, have produced a complete reconciliation between the aristocracy and the people. It is my earnest wish and prayer that the present Bill may produce this blessed effect; but I cannot say that my hopes are so sanguine as they were at the beginning of the last session. The decision of the House of Lords has, I fear, excited in the public mind feelings of resentment which will not soon be allayed. What then, it is said, would you legislate in haste? Would you legislate in times of great excitement concerning matters of such deep concern? Yes, sir, I would; and if any bad consequences should follow from the haste and excitement, let those be held responsible who, when there was no need of haste, when there existed no excitement, refused to listen to any project of Reform-nay, who made it an argument against When Reform that the public mind was not excited. few meetings were held, when few petitions were sent up to us, these politicians said, 'Would you alter a constitution with which the people are perfectly satisfied?' And now, when the kingdom from one end to the other is convulsed by the question of Reform, we hear it said by the very same persons, 'Would you alter the representative system in such agitated times as these?' Half the logic of misgovernment lies in this one sophistical dilemma: If the people are turbulent, they are unfit for liberty; if they are quiet, they do not want liberty. I allow that hasty legislation is an evil. I allow that there are great objections to legislating in troubled times. But reformers are compelled to legislate fast, because bigots will not legislate early. Reformers are compelled to legislate in times of excitement, because bigots will not legislate in times of tranquillity. If ten years ago, nay, if only two years ago, there had been at the head of affairs men who understood the signs of the times and the temper of the nation, we should not have been forced to hurry now. If we cannot take our time, it is because we have to make up for their lost time. If they had reformed gradually, we might have reformed gradually; but we are compelled to move fast, because they would not move at all. (From Speech on the Reform Bill.) On the Maynooth College Bill. Can we wonder that the eager, honest, hot-headed Protestants, who raised you to power in the confident hope that you would curtail the privileges of the Roman Catholics, should stare and grumble when you propose to give public money to the Roman Catholics? Can we wonder that, from one end of the country to the other, everything should be ferment and uproar, that petitions should, night after night, whiten all our benches like a snowstorm? Can we wonder that the people out of doors should be exasperated by seeing the very men who, when we were in office, voted against the old grant to Maynooth, now pushed and pulled into the House by your whippers-in to vote for an increased grant? The natural consequences follow. All those fierce spirits, whom you hallooed on to harass us, now turn round and begin to worry you. The Orangeman raises his warwhoop Exeter Hall sets up its bray: Mr Macneile shudders to see more costly cheer than ever provided for the priests of Baal at the table of the Queen; and the |