spell, and, like the gigantic slaves of the ring and lamp of Aladdin, laboured to decorate and aggrandise a master whom they could have crushed.  With incomparable address he appropriated to himself the glory of campaigns which had been planned, and counsels which had been suggested, by others.  The arms of Turenne were the terror of Europe.  The policy of Colbert was the strength of France.  But in their foreign successes, and their internal prosperity, the people saw only the greatness and wisdom of Lewis.”

In the second chapter of the History much of this is compressed into the sentence:  “He had shown, in an eminent degree, two talents invaluable to a prince,—­the talent of choosing his servants well, and the talent of appropriating to himself the chief part of the credit of their acts.”

In a passage that occurs towards the close of the essay may be traced something more than an outline of the peroration in which, a quarter of a century later on, he summed up the character and results of the Revolution of 1688.

“To have been a sovereign, yet the champion of liberty; a revolutionary leader, yet the supporter of social order, is the peculiar glory of William.  He knew where to pause.  He outraged no national prejudice.  He abolished no ancient form.  He altered no venerable name.  He saw that the existing institutions possessed the greatest capabilities of excellence, and that stronger sanctions, and clearer definitions, were alone required to make the practice of the British constitution as admirable as the theory.  Thus he imparted to innovation the dignity and stability of antiquity.  He transferred to a happier order of things the associations which had attached the people to their former government.  As the Roman warrior, before he assaulted Veii, invoked its guardian gods to leave its walls, and to accept the worship and patronise the cause of the besiegers, this great prince, in attacking a system of oppression, summoned to his aid the venerable principles and deeply seated feelings to which that system was indebted for protection.”

A letter, written during the latter years of his life, expresses Macaulay’s general views on the subject of University honours.  “If a man brings away from Cambridge self-knowledge, accuracy of mind, and habits of strong intellectual exertion, he has gained more than if he had made a display of showy superficial Etonian scholarship, got three or four Browne’s medals, and gone forth into the world a schoolboy and doomed to be a schoolboy to the last.  After all, what a man does at Cambridge is, in itself, nothing.  If he makes a poor figure in life, his having been Senior Wrangler or University scholar is never mentioned but with derision.  If he makes a distinguished figure, his early honours merge in those of a later date.  I hope that I do not overrate my own place in the estimation of society.  Such as it is, I would not give a halfpenny to add to the consideration which I enjoy, all the consideration