light in conversation, of so flowing
and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive
simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon
this odious and accursed civil war than that single loss, it must be
most infamous and execrable to all posterity.' Now Clarendon is not a
great writer, not even a good writer, for he is prolix and involved, yet
we see that even Clarendon, when he comes to a matter in which his heart
is engaged, becomes sweet and harmonious in his rhythm. If we turn to a
prose-writer of the very first place, we are instantly conscious of a
still greater difference. How flashy and shallow Macaulay's periods
seem, as we listen to the fine ground-base that rolls in the melody of
the following passage of Burke's, and it is taken from one of the least
ornate of all his pieces:--

You will not, we trust, believe that, born in a civilised country,
formed to gentle manners, trained in a merciful religion, and living
in enlightened and polished times, where even foreign hostility is
softened from its original sternness, we could have thought of
letting loose upon you, our late beloved brethren, these fierce
tribes of savages and cannibals, in whom the traces of human nature
are effaced by ignorance and barbarity. We rather wished to have
joined with you in bringing gradually that unhappy part of mankind
into civility, order, piety, and virtuous discipline, than to have
confirmed their evil habits and increased their natural ferocity by
fleshing them in the slaughter of you, whom our wiser and better
ancestors had sent into the wilderness with the express view of
introducing, along with our holy religion, its humane and charitable
manners. We do not hold that all things are lawful in war. We should
think every barbarity, in fire, in wasting, in murders, in tortures,
and other cruelties, too horrible and too full of turpitude for
Christian mouths to utter or ears to hear, if done at our
instigation, by those who we know will make war thus if they make it
at all, to be, to all intents and purposes, as if done by ourselves.
We clear ourselves to you our brethren, to the present age, and to
future generations, to our king and our country, and to Europe, which
as a spectator, beholds this tragic scene, of every part or share in
adding this last and worst of evils to the inevitable mischiefs of a
civil w