er humble a distance, his own track of study. The temptations to
this kind of writing will be considerably weaker in the case of the
volumes which are yet to come, and we may there, perhaps, hope for a
little more severity of quotation. Yet in the portraitures of
individual characters these inducements will still remain, nor can they
be very easily, or indeed very properly, overlooked.

"It is not enough to say that the character of an historical personage
is to be drawn from the authentic record of his actions. No doubt it is
so; but there are a thousand minute and almost indefinable suggestions,
arising from the perusal of these actions with all their circumstances,
which will exercise a most material influence upon the judgment. The
motives, for instance, of an action, must be almost always matter of
surmise, and yet upon these surmises the conclusion will mainly depend.
It is to this cause we must attribute the contradiction which such
conclusions occasionally exhibit, as in the conflicting characters drawn
by various hands of Archbishop Cranmer, of General Monk, of James II.,
or, as in the case before us, of William Penn. Nevertheless, Mr. Forster
does supply us with some means of estimating the justice and accuracy of
Mr. Macaulay's decision; but as our limits preclude any thing like a
comparison of the two theories in detail, we must confine ourselves to
communicating a general idea of the disputed points in continuation and
illustration of what we have already premised.

"William Penn, the Quaker, as we need hardly state, passed the early
part of his life under heavy persecutions on account of his religious
opinions. In the resolute spirit of fortitude with which he sustained
these sufferings he gave utterance to many rigid and uncompromising
doctrines. Things then took a turn with him, and from a poor persecuted
pietist he became a close client of Royalty, and almost the chief of
court favorites in an age of favoritism. That some of his sayings and
doings in these two strangely-contrasted scenes of his life should be a
little contradictory is, to say the least, no matter of wonder. Mr.
Macaulay, accordingly, giving him full credit for religious principle,
but not much for strength of mind, depicts the stubborn and fanatical
Quaker of former days as having become in the reign of King James the
compliant and, though well-meaning, not over-scrupulous agent of a
monarch, whose designs were directed against the civi