to these great poetic inspirations. Yet
history, too, has its generous commonplaces, its plausibilities of
emotion, and no one has ever delighted more than Macaulay did, to appeal
to the fine truisms that cluster round love of freedom and love of
native land. The high rhetorical topics of liberty and patriotism are
his readiest instruments for kindling a glowing reflection of these
magnanimous passions in the breasts of his readers. That Englishman is
hardly to be envied who can read without a glow such passages as that in
the History, about Turenne being startled by the shout of stern
exultation with which his English allies advanced to the combat, and
expressing the delight of a true soldier when he learned that it was
ever the fashion of Cromwell's pikemen to rejoice greatly when they
beheld the enemy; while even the banished cavaliers felt an emotion of
national pride when they saw a brigade of their countrymen, outnumbered
by foes and abandoned by friends, drive before it in headlong rout the
finest infantry of Spain, and force a passage into a counterscarp which
had just been pronounced impregnable by the ablest of the marshals of
France. Such prose as this is not less thrilling to a man who loves his
country, than the spirited verse of the Lays of Ancient Rome. And the
commonplaces of patriotism and freedom would never have been so powerful
in Macaulay's hands, if they had not been inspired by a sincere and
hearty faith in them in the soul of the writer. His unanalytical turn
of mind kept him free of any temptation to think of love of country as a
prejudice, or a passion for freedom as an illusion. The cosmopolitan or
international idea which such teachers as Cobden have tried to impress
on our stubborn islanders, would have found in Macaulay not lukewarm or
sceptical adherence, but point-blank opposition and denial. He believed
as stoutly in the supremacy of Great Britain in the history of the good
causes of Europe, as M. Thiers believes in the supremacy of France, or
Mazzini believed in that of Italy. The thought of the prodigious
industry, the inventiveness, the stout enterprise, the free government,
the wise and equal laws, the noble literature, of this fortunate island
and its majestic empire beyond the seas, and the discretion, valour, and
tenacity by which all these great material and still greater intangible
possessions had been first won, and then kept, against every hostile
comer whether domestic or forei