ith to Thackeray's remark, "Macaulay reads twenty
books to write a sentence; he travels a hundred miles to make a line of
description." It is a matter of regret that the progress of historical
criticism and the scientific teaching of history have had the tendency
to drive Macaulay out of the fashion with students, and I know not
whether the good we used to get out of him thirty-five years ago can now
be got from other sources. For I seem to miss something that we
historical students had a generation ago--and that is enthusiasm for the
subject. The enthusiasm that we had then had--the desire to compass all
knowledge, the wish to gather the fruits of learning and lay them
devoutly at the feet of our chosen muse--this enthusiasm we owed to
Macaulay and to Buckle. Quite properly, no one reads Buckle now, and I
cannot gainsay what John Morley said of Macaulay: "Macaulay seeks truth,
not as she should be sought, devoutly, tentatively, with the air of one
touching the hem of a sacred garment, but clutching her by the hair of
the head and dragging her after him in a kind of boisterous triumph, a
prisoner of war and not a goddess." It is, nevertheless, true that
Macaulay and Buckle imparted a new interest to history.

I have spoken of the impression we get of Macaulay through reading his
"Life and Letters." Of Carlyle, in reading the remarkable biography of
him, we get the notion of a great thinker as well as a great reader. He
was not as keen and diligent in the pursuit of material as Macaulay. He
did not like to work in libraries; he wanted every book he used in his
own study--padded as it was against the noises which drove him wild. H.
Morse Stephens relates that Carlyle would not use a collection of
documents relating to the French Revolution in the British Museum for
the reason that the museum authorities would not have a private room
reserved for him where he might study. Rather than work in a room with
other people, he neglected this valuable material. But Carlyle has
certainly digested and used his material well. His "French Revolution"
seems to approach the historical works of the classics in there being so
much in a little space. "With the gift of song," Lowell said, "Carlyle
would have been the greatest of epic poets since Homer;" and he also
wrote, Carlyle's historical compositions are no more history than the
historical plays of Shakespeare.

The contention between the scientific historians and those who hold to
th