“A cockney in a rural village was stared at as much as if he had intruded into a kraal of Hottentots.  On the other hand, when the lord of a Lincolnshire or Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street, he was as easily distinguished from the resident population as a Turk or a Lascar.  His dress, his gait, his accent, the manner in which he gazed at the shops, stumbled into gutters, ran against the porters, and stood under the waterspouts, marked him out as an excellent subject for the operations of swindlers and banterers.  Bullies jostled him into the kennel, Hackney coachmen splashed him from head to foot, thieves explored with perfect security the huge pockets of his horseman’s coat, while he stood entranced by the splendour of the Lord Mayor’s Show.  Money-droppers, sore from the cart’s tail, introduced themselves to him, and appeared to him the most honest friendly gentlemen that he had ever seen.  Painted women, the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone Park, passed themselves on him for countesses and maids of honour.  If he asked his way to St. James’, his informants sent him to Mile End.  If he went into a shop, he was instantly discerned to be a fit purchaser of everything that nobody else would buy, of second-hand embroidery, copper rings, and watches that would not go.  If he rambled into any fashionable coffee-house, he became a mark for the insolent derision of fops, and the grave waggery of Templars.  Enraged and mortified, he soon returned to his mansion, and there, in the homage of his tenants and the conversation of his boon companions, found consolation for the vexations and humiliations which he had undergone.  There he was once more a great man, and saw nothing above himself except when at the assizes he took his seat on the bench near the Judge, or when at the muster of the militia he saluted the Lord Lieutenant.”

On the whole, I should put this detached chapter of description at the very head of his Essays, though it happens to occur in another volume.  The History as a whole does not, as it seems to me, reach the same level as the shorter articles.  One cannot but feel that it is a brilliant piece of special pleading from a fervid Whig, and that there must be more to be said for the other side than is there set forth.  Some of the Essays are tinged also, no doubt, by his own political and religious limitations.  The best are those which get right away into the broad fields of literature and philosophy.  Johnson, Walpole, Madame D’Arblay, Addison, and the two great Indian ones, Clive and Warren Hastings, are my own favourites.  Frederick the Great, too, must surely stand in the first rank.  Only one would I wish to eliminate.  It is the diabolically clever criticism upon Montgomery.  One would have wished to think that Macaulay’s heart was too kind, and his soul too gentle, to pen so bitter an attack.  Bad work will sink of its own weight.  It is not necessary to souse the author as well.  One would think more highly of the man if he had not done that savage bit of work.