essays, in which however, though respectful in tone,—­patronizing rather than eulogistic,—­he showed but little sympathy with the author.  He pointed out many defects which the critical and religious world has sustained.  In the admirable article which Mr. Gladstone wrote on Lord Macaulay himself for one of the principal Reviews not many years ago, he paid back in courteous language, and even under the conventional form of panegyric, in which one great man naturally speaks of another, a still more searching and trenchant criticism on the writings of the eminent historian.  Gladstone shows, and shows clearly and conclusively, the utter inability of Macaulay to grasp subjects of a spiritual and subjective character, especially exhibited in his notice of the philosophy of Bacon.  He shows that this historian excels only in painting external events and the outward acts and peculiarities of the great characters of history,—­and even then only with strong prejudices and considerable exaggerations, however careful he is in sustaining his position by recorded facts, in which he never makes an error.  To the subjective mind of Gladstone, with his interest in theological subjects, Macaulay was neither profound nor accurate in his treatment of philosophical and psychological questions, for which indeed he had but little taste.  Such men as Pascal, Leibnitz, Calvin, Locke, he lets alone to discuss the great actors in political history, like Warren Hastings, Pitt, Harley; but in his painting of such characters he stands pre-eminent over all modern writers.  Gladstone does justice to Macaulay’s vast learning, his transcendent memory, and his matchless rhetoric,—­making the heaviest subjects glow with life and power, effecting compositions which will live for style alone, for which in some respects he is unapproachable.

Indeed, I cannot conceive of two great contemporary statesmen more unlike in their mental structure and more antagonistic in their general views than Gladstone and Macaulay, and unlike also in their style.  The treatise on State and Church, on which Gladstone exhibits so much learning, to me is heavy, vague, hazy, and hard to read.  The subject, however, has but little interest to an American, and is doubtless much more highly appreciated by English students, especially those of the great universities, whom it more directly concerns.  It is the argument of a young Oxford scholar for the maintenance of a Church establishment; is full of ecclesiastical lore, assuming that one of the chief ends of government is the propagation of religious truth,—­a ground utterly untenable according to the universal opinion of people in this country, whether churchmen or laymen, Catholic or Protestant, Conservative or liberal.