: From "Past and Present."]

[Footnote 52: From the essay on Lockhart's "Life of Scott,"
contributed to the _London and Westminster Review_ in 1838.]

[Footnote 53: A reference apparently to Carlo Broschi, an Italian
soprano, whom Grove's "Dictionary" describes as "the most remarkable
singer perhaps who has ever lived." He was born in 1705 and died in
1782.]

[Footnote 54: From the essay on Croker's edition of Boswell's "Life of
Johnson," contributed to _Frazer's Magazine_ in 1832.]

[Footnote 55: From the essay on Burns contributed to the _Edinburgh
Review_ in 1828.]

LORD MACAULAY

Born in 1800, died in 1859; educated at Cambridge; admitted
to the bar in 1826; member of Parliament, 1830-34; member of
the Supreme Council in India, 1834-38; member of Parliament,
1839-47; Secretary of War, 1839-41; paymaster-general,
1846-47; again in Parliament in 1852; raised to the peerage
in 1857; his "History of England" published in 1848-61; his
"Lays of Ancient Rome" in 1842.

I

PURITANS AND ROYALISTS[56]

We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of men,
perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and ridiculous
parts of their character lie on the surface. He that runs may read
them; nor have there been wanting attentive and malicious observers to
point them out. For many years after the Restoration they were the
theme of unmeasured invective and derision. They were exposed to the
utmost licentiousness of the press and of the stage, at the time when
the press and the stage were most licentious. They were not men of
letters; they were, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend
themselves; and the public would not take them under its protection.
They were therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies
of the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of their
dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture,
their long graces, their Hebrew names, their scriptural phrases which
they introduced on every occasion, their contempt of human learning,
their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the
laughers. But it is not from the laughers alone that the philosophy of
history is to be learned. And he who approaches this subject should
carefully guard against the influence of that potent ridicule which
has already misled so many excellent writers.

Ecco il fonte del riso, ed e