y did wish that, with as little unpleasantness as might be, the
college should submit to the king. And even if we accept as not proved
the allegation that he directly tempted the Fellows to perjury, yet Mr.
Forster must not ask us to believe that Penn would not have been a great
deal better pleased if the Fellows had quietly dropped the consideration
of their oaths, and surrendered their foundation to the Papists without
further struggle.

"We suspect the truth to be, that Mr. Macaulay has somewhat exceeded his
specified warrants, not in the design, but in the coloring. We believe
that many of Penn's acts were strangely inconsistent, if rigorously
noted, with his principles as previously professed, but we doubt whether
they will bear quite such hard words as Mr. Macaulay has given them.
Nevertheless, to recur to an expression which we employed before, we are
persuaded that in a majority of cases the _general impression_ of an
unbiassed inquirer would be more nearly in accordance with Mr.
Macaulay's sketch than with that flattering and stainless portrait which
Mr. Forster, at the conclusion of his remarks, would fain have drawn.
Mr. Macaulay may have painted his story a little too highly. His faults
are less in his verbs and substantives than in his adjectives and his
adverbs. Penn never in all probability became such an obsequious and
pliant-principled courtier as he is represented in this history, but the
simple facts which are authentically recorded of his court-life preclude
any notion of the high-souled and spotless character which Mr. Forster
would fain depict."

The subjects discussed in this volume have been much handled by our own
writers, and in several cases with very decided ability. We incline to
the side of Mr. Forster, throughout. An attentive study of the life of
William Penn reveals to our view a character of singular purity, and in
nearly all respects admirably composed. The judgment of Macaulay we hold
in very little esteem. It was said of Voltaire that he would sacrifice
Christ for an epigram; it may be said of Macaulay that he would
sacrifice as liberally for an antithesis. He labors always for effect,
and it must be admitted that he has evinced very extraordinary abilities
for this end; he never fails in variety, contrast, or grouping; hence
his popularity, and the absence from his pictures of the highest
elements of history.

Although in State Papers and in the Transactions of Societies in this