t, we shall perhaps find that the
popular estimate is not altogether wrong.

Macaulay was not only a typical Whig, but the prophet of Whiggism to his
generation. Though not a poet or a philosopher, he was a born
rhetorician. His parliamentary career proves his capacity sufficiently,
though want of the physical qualifications, and of exclusive devotion to
political success, prevented him, as perhaps a want of subtlety or
flexibility of mind would have always prevented him, from attaining
excellence as a debater. In everything that he wrote, however, we see
the true rhetorician. He tells us that Fox wrote debates, whilst
Mackintosh spoke essays. Macaulay did both. His compositions are a
series of orations on behalf of sound Whig views, whatever their
external form. Given a certain audience--and every orator supposes a
particular audience--their effectiveness is undeniable. Macaulay's may
be composed of ordinary Englishmen, with a moderate standard of
education. His arguments are adapted to the ordinary Cabinet Minister,
or, what is much the same, to the person who is willing to pay a
shilling to hear an evening lecture. He can hit an audience composed of
such materials--to quote Burke's phrase about George Grenville--'between
wind and water.' He uses the language, the logic, and the images which
they can fully understand; and though his hearer, like his schoolboy, is
ostensibly credited at times with a portentous memory, Macaulay always
takes excellent care to put him in mind of the facts which he is assumed
to remember. The faults and the merits of his style follow from his
resolute determination to be understood of the people. He was specially
delighted, as his nephew tells us, by a reader at Messrs.
Spottiswoode's, who said that in all the 'History' there was only one
sentence the meaning of which was not obvious to him at first sight. We
are more surprised that there was one such sentence. Clearness is the
first of the cardinal virtues of style; and nobody ever wrote more
clearly than Macaulay. He sacrifices much, it is true, in order to
obtain it. He proves that two and two make four with a pertinacity which
would make him dull, if it were not for his abundance of brilliant
illustration. He always remembers the principle which should guide a
barrister in addressing a jury. He has not merely to exhibit his proofs,
but to hammer them into the heads of his audience by incessant
repetition. It is no small proof of artist