But we are sorry to say we have a heavier complaint against Mr. Macaulay.  We accuse him of a habitual and really injurious perversion of his authorities.  This unfortunate indulgence, in whatever juvenile levity it may have originated, and through whatever steps it may have grown into an unconscious habit, seems to us to pervade the whole work—­ from Alpha to Omega—­from Procopius to Mackintosh—­and it is on that very account the more difficult to bring to the distinct conception of our readers.  Individual instances can be, and shall be, produced; but how can we extract and exhibit the minute particles that colour every thread of the texture?—­how extract the impalpable atoms that have fermented the whole brewing?  We must do as Dr. Faraday does at the Institution when he exhibits in miniature the larger processes of Nature.  We will suppose, then—­taking a simple phrase as the fairest for the experiment—­that Mr. Macaulay found Barillon saying in French, “le drole m’a fait peur,” or Burnet saying in English, “the fellow frightened me.”  We should be pretty sure not to find the same words in Mr. Macaulay.  He would pause—­he would first consider whether “the fellow” spoken of was a Whig or a Tory.  If a Whig, the thing would be treated as a joke, and Mr. Macaulay would transmute it playfully into “the rogue startled me”; but if a Tory, it would take a deeper dye, and we should find “the villain assaulted me”; and in either case we should have a grave reference to

Jan. 31,
“Barillon,-------- 1686”; or, “Burnet, i. 907.” 
Feb. 1,

If our reader will keep this formula in his mind, he will find it a fair exponent of Mr. Macaulay’s modus operandi....

We shall now proceed to more general topics.  We decline, as we set out by saying, to treat this “New Atalantis” as a serious history, and therefore we shall not trouble our readers with matters of such remote interest as the errors and anachronisms with which the chapter that affects to tell our earlier history abounds.  Our readers would take no great interest in a discussion whether Hengist was as fabulous as Hercules, Alaric a Christian born, and “the fair chapels of New College and St. George” at Windsor of the same date.  But there is one subject in that chapter on which we cannot refrain from saying a few words—­THE CHURCH.

We decline to draw any inferences from this work as to Mr. Macaulay’s own religious opinions; but it is our duty to say—­and we trust we may do so without offence—­that Mr. Macaulay’s mode of dealing with the general principle of Church government, and the doctrine, discipline, and influence of the Church of England, cannot fail to give serious pain, and sometimes to excite a stronger feeling than pain, in the mind of every friend to that Church, whether in its spiritual or corporate character.