rely the old and
common heresies, but ten thousand times worse, adopting a vile
principle never yet avowed in terms, though too often and too much
taken for a guide, unknown to those who followed it, in forming
their judgments of great and successful criminals."

Of the essay on Warren Hastings he thought better, "bating some
vulgarity and Macaulay's usual want of all power of reasoning."
Lord Cockburn wrote to Mr. Napier (1844) a word or two on Macaulay.
"Delighting as I do," says Lord Cockburn, "in his thoughts, views, and
knowledge, I feel too often compelled to curse and roar at his words
and the structure of his composition. As a corrupter of style, he is
more dangerous to the young than Gibbon. His seductive powers greater,
his defects worse." All good critics now accept this as true. Jeffrey,
by the way, speaking of the same essay, thinks that Macaulay rates
Chatham too high. "I have always had an impression," he says, "(though
perhaps an ignorant and unjust one), that there was more good luck
than wisdom in his foreign policy, and very little to admire (except
his personal purity) in any part of his domestic administration."

It is interesting to find a record, in the energetic speech of
contemporary hatred, of the way in which orthodox science regarded a
once famous book of heterodox philosophy. Here is Professor Sedgwick
on the _Vestiges of Creation_:--

"I now know the Vestiges well, and I detest the book for its
shallowness, for the intense vulgarity of its philosophy, for its
gross, unblushing materialism, for its silly credulity in catering
out of every fool's dish, for its utter ignorance of what is meant
by induction, for its gross (and I dare to say, filthy) views of
physiology,--most ignorant and most false,--and for Its shameful
shuffling of the facts of geology so as to make them play a
rogue's game. I believe some woman is the author; partly from the
fair dress and agreeable exterior of the Vestiges: and partly from
the utter ignorance the book displays of all sound physical logic.
A _man_ who knew so much of the surface of Physics must, at least
on some one point or other, have taken a deeper plunge; but _all_
parts of the book are shallow.... From the bottom of my soul, I
loathe and detest the Vestiges. 'Tis a rank pill of asafoetida and
arsenic, covered with gold leaf. I do, therefore, trust that your
contributor h