the Macaulay sentence is plain as that of Swift himself.  Carlyle’s gospel is full of passion, novelty, suggestion, theory, and social problems.  Macaulay turned his back on social problems and disdained any kind of gospel.  He had no mission to tell the world how bad it is; on the contrary, he was never wearied with his proofs that it ought to be well satisfied with its lot and its vast superiority in all things to its ancestors.

The great public, wherever English books penetrate, from the White Sea to Australia, from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, loves the brilliant, manly, downright optimist; the critics and the philosophers care more for the moody and prophetic pessimist.  But this does not decide the matter; and it does not follow that either public or critic has the whole truth.  If books were written only in the dialect, and with the apocalyptic spirit of Sartor, it is certain that millions would cease to read books, and could gain little from books if they did.  And if the only books were such “purple patches” of history as Macaulay left us, with their hard and fast divisions of men into sheep and goats, and minute biographies of fops, pedants, and grandees, narrated in the same resonant, rhetorical, unsympathetic, and falsely emphatic style—­this generation would have a very patchwork idea of past ages and a narrow sense of the resources of our English language.  There is room for both literary schools, and we need teachers of many kinds.  We must not ask of any kind more than they can give.  Macaulay has led millions who read no one else, or who never read before, to know something of the past, and to enjoy reading.  He will have done them serious harm if he has persuaded them that this is the best that can be done in historical literature, or that this is the way in which the English language can be most fitly used.  Let us be thankful for his energy, learning, brilliance.  He is no priest, philosopher, or master.  Let us delight in him as a fireside companion.

In one thing all agree—­critics, public, friends, and opponents.  Macaulay’s was a life of purity, honour, courage, generosity, affection, and manly perseverance, almost without a stain or a defect.  His life, it was true, was singularly fortunate, and he had but few trials, and no formidable obstacles.  He was bred up in the comfortable egoism of the opulent middle classes; the religion of comfort, laisser-faire, and social order was infused into his bones.  But, so far as his traditions and temper would permit, his life was as honourable, as unsullied, and as generous, as ever was that of any man who lived in the fierce light that beats upon the famous.  We know his nature and his career as well as we know any man’s; and we find it on every side wholesome, just, and right.  He has been fortunate in his biographers, and amply criticised by the best judges.  His nephew, Sir George Trevelyan, has written his life at length in a fine book.  Dean Milman and Mark