The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1876-08-23
RICHMOND, VA, WEDNESDAY AUGUST %, 1876


tions than any one else. He was keenl..
alive to literary beauties and blemishes, an
habitually referred his own works to th
highest standards and tried them by the sc
verest test of merit. He is perhaps the mos
delightful writer of prose in the English Ian
guage; certainly of historic narratives. 1
is hardly an exaggeration to say of him, tina
in his voluminous and varied works, there il
not one dull line. If Homer himself some
times mods; Macaulay never does. He ii
always awake, always animated, always in.
teresting. Whether you agree with him OIL
not, it is impossible to Withhold or to withdraw
your attention; and in spite of your convic.
tion in regard to the truth of the view pre-
sented, or the candor of the statement, you
are charmed and led captive. He was the
most absolute master of prose composition
which our age, fruitful in great authors, sec
ular and religious, has produced. Although
poetry was by no means the business of his
life, and although he evidently regarded it
as rather an intellectual pastime than as a
serious and sustained endeayor, his Battle of
Jury and his Lays of Ancient Rome stir the
heart as Sir Philip Sidney said of the ballad
of Chevey Chase, like the sound of trum
pet. Sir Walter Scott and Lord Macaulay
are not reckoned in the front ranks of the
medium English poets. And yet | boldly
affirm that there is as much of the true Ho-
meric fire, the rapidity, the rush and the
force of the father and fountain of song in
Marmion and in the Lays of Ancient Rome,
as in the most spirited and splendid passages
of Milton, of Dryden, or of Byron.
This work will send many an old admirer
back to the pages of Macaulay with renewed
delight. There is perhaps no one other vol
ume of anything like the same compass, from
the studious perusal of which man may get
so much solid and entertaining literary
as from Macaulay's Essays"
not excepting Montaigne's Essays, or Bur-
toms Anatomy of Melancholy, or Johnson's
Lives of the Poets. The seemingly endless
knowledge of Macaulay on all sorts of sub
jects; his admirable illustrations, drawn
from sources so remote and unlike; from
history, from fable, from travels from the
poets of Greece, of Rome, and of Persia;
from the ways of man; from the Word and
from the works of God; from every depart
ment of literature and from every walk of
art his sympathy with the noble struggles
of men for self-government in every period
of time and in every quarter of the globe;
his enlightened zeal for free institutions; his
faith in constitutional government;
his earnest attachment to rational and
liberty; his clear, good sense and
implacable disgust for every species of hyp-
ocriSy and fraud; the high and gentleman
like spirit which marks all his writings, i'm
part to the productions of his pen their pc
culiar charm and value. No writer since
the days of Voltaire has gained 50 wide
celebrity. AS literary man he was crown
ed with every laurel. What johnson said
of Garrick may with little exaggeration be
said of him, that his death eclipsed the gaiety
of nations. On the day he died he was
more extensively read than any writer in the
English tongue. "The incompatible man"
says Prof, Won Rsnke, "whose works have
a European or rather q worldwide circula.
ton to degree uuequalled by any of his
"Six rival translatorS, were
engaged at one and the same time on the
work of turning the History into German.
1t has been published in the Polish, the Dan
ish, the Swedish, the italian, the French,
the Dutch, the Spanish, the Hungarian, the
Russian, the Bohemian languages, and is at
this moment in course of translation into Per-
sian.' - During his lifetime he received every
testimony of respect from his own and from
foreign countries. In addition to the high
est academic and literary distinctions which
his own country could give, he was made a
peer of the realm, and was twice member
of the Cabinet He was made a member
of the Academies of Utrecht, Munich, and
Turin. The king of Prussia named him a
Knight of the Order of Merit on presenta-
tion of the Royal Academy Of Sciences at
Berlin, and his nomination was communi-
Gated to him, in letter from the Baron
Won Humboldt, the Chancellor of the
Order. Guizot himself proposed him for
same day of February, 1853, the official an
the Institute of France, and wrote to in
form him of the fact On one and the
nouncement of his election came from Paris,
and his badge of the Order of Merit from
Berlin.
TO BE CONCLUDED.
OVER EDUCATING.-At no period of youth
l. II IL o.obod bouonJ ;s, c,o