ate treatise on the "State in its relation to
the Church." It is said that Sir Robert. Peel threw the book down on the
floor, exclaiming that it was a pity so able a man should jeopardize his
political future by writing such trash; but it was of sufficient
importance to furnish Macaulay a subject for one of his most careful
essays, in which however, though respectful in tone,--patronizing rather
than eulogistic,--he showed but little sympathy with the author. He
pointed out many defects which the critical and religious world has
sustained. In the admirable article which Mr. Gladstone wrote on Lord
Macaulay himself for one of the principal Reviews not many years ago, he
paid back in courteous language, and even under the conventional form of
panegyric, in which one great man naturally speaks of another, a still
more searching and trenchant criticism on the writings of the eminent
historian. Gladstone shows, and shows clearly and conclusively, the
utter inability of Macaulay to grasp subjects of a spiritual and
subjective character, especially exhibited in his notice of the
philosophy of Bacon. He shows that this historian excels only in
painting external events and the outward acts and peculiarities of the
great characters of history,--and even then only with strong prejudices
and considerable exaggerations, however careful he is in sustaining his
position by recorded facts, in which he never makes an error. To the
subjective mind of Gladstone, with his interest in theological subjects,
Macaulay was neither profound nor accurate in his treatment of
philosophical and psychological questions, for which indeed he had but
little taste. Such men as Pascal, Leibnitz, Calvin, Locke, he lets alone
to discuss the great actors in political history, like Warren Hastings,
Pitt, Harley; but in his painting of such characters he stands
pre-eminent over all modern writers. Gladstone does justice to
Macaulay's vast learning, his transcendent memory, and his matchless
rhetoric,--making the heaviest subjects glow with life and power,
effecting compositions which will live for style alone, for which in
some respects he is unapproachable.

Indeed, I cannot conceive of two great contemporary statesmen more
unlike in their mental structure and more antagonistic in their general
views than Gladstone and Macaulay, and unlike also in their style. The
treatise on State and Church, on which Gladstone exhibits so much
learning, to me is heavy, vagu