of industry, patience, and thrift, spread through society. The spirit of the cogging dicers of Whitefriars took possession of the grave Senators of the City, Wardens of Trades, Deputies, Aldermen. It was much easier and much more lucrative to put forth a lying prospectus announcing a new stock, to persuade ignorant people that the dividends could not fall short of twenty per cent., and to part with five thousand pounds of this imaginary wealth for ten thousand solid guineas, than to load a ship with a well chosen cargo for Virginia or the Levant. Every day some new bubble was puffed into existence, rose buoyant, shone bright, burst, and was forgotten.'-Vol. iv., pp. 319-322.

We cannot find room for the excellent remarks with which he disposes of the outcry against the national debt, and answers all the predictions of ruin by a triumphant appeal to facts, which show that when the debt was fifty millions, and croakers were certain of our immediate ruin, trade flourished, the nation became richer and richer, and when the increase rose to eighty millions, to a hundred and forty millions, to two hundred and forty millions, and to eight hundred millions, still the ruined nation grew richer and richer, till now there is no one who doubts that the England of 1856 is better able to pay her eight hundred millions than the England of 1692 was to pay fifty millions.

From what has been here rapidly said, it will be gathered that we greatly admire Macaulay's work, and consider it immeasurably our best English history for its period, and as likely to preserve its pre-eminence. The freedom with which we have criticised certain details of the execution is an earnest of our sincerity. It is but the opinion of an individual we have expressed, but it is a genuine opinion; and we should be doing ourselves an injustice if we closed this notice without the most explicit acknowledgment of our admiration of the work considered in its totality. We confess not to have yet reached that eminence from which certain critics look down upon Macaulay, and peremptorily declare his work is not history.' If it is not history, we should be grateful to learn whose work is history. Are we to consider Herodotus, Thucydides, Tacitus, Sallust, Voltaire, Gibbon, and Hume historians, and, if so, in what respect does Macaulay fall short of the conditions these writers have fulfilled? Or is it solely because Macaulay is brilliant, and very readable, whereas the historian ought to be, as indeed he mostly is, opaque and heavy? If the 'dull dogs' are to bear away the palm, let it be explicitly proclaimed in all quarters. Let us respect Guicciardini, Thuanus, Mr. Roscoe, and Mr. Prescott, as the grandest priests of the historic muse. Let us declare that the dignity of history lies in dulness, and that to be readable is to be historically con

temptible. If Macaulay's charm of narrative is to make us despise his laborious erudition, and if, because he makes history readable as a novel, we are to tell him with supercilious brevity that he has completely failed, and that what he, poor man, imagines to be history is really nothing of the kind;' it is desirable that we, the ignorant, the reading, and the fascinated public, should know the precise grounds of such a judgment. When we are told why Macaulay has not written history, and what history really is, we can then make up our minds-to read Macaulay, and leave history to his critics.

Here the writer of this article stops. But has he said all that should be said, even within our narrow limits, concerning such a publication and such a man? Not quite. This history will live, and will be read, talked about, and written about, a hundred years hence as earnestly as now. We can imagine the number of some new 'Quarterly' for January, 1956, making its appearance with an article on English historians, in which grave things are said touching a defect in Macaulay, of which we have made no mention. In one respect,' says the critic to come, Great Britain has not been fortunate in her historical literature. Religion has 'suffered much from the hands of her ablest writers in this department. Robertson, indeed, was a clergyman; but his religion was an accident, not a growth. It was a cold conventionalism, to which even the most worldly could hardly take exception. Hume extended his scepticism not only to the foundations of all ' religion, but to the foundations of all knowledge. He had no 'faith in God; and no more faith in man than sufficed to teach ' him that nations exist as a material heritage, to be used at pleasure hy potentates and courts. Gibbon, with a scepticism less developed and settled, betrays a like low conception of man as 'man, and an irreligious tendency more impulsive and mis'chievous. Of Hallam, all that can be said is, that his writings are not adverse to religion. Of good old Sharon Turner, that he was smothered in his material; and of Lingard, that he had no conception of Christianity, except as a system which should a priesthood with the privileges of a caste. From Macaulay, who came in the wake of these writers, something 'better might have been expected. His large and generous soul, and his hearty appreciation of everything just, and pure, and noble in man, seemed to say, that with so general a sympathy 'with all that man should be towards man, there would surely come high thoughts as to what all men should be in relation to 'the Existence above them all. But this further insight does not appear to have been reached, and this deeper feeling failed.

Religious Architecture-Taste and Utility.

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to be realized. Religion, in some form or other, is the power ' beyond all others which gives this historian phase after phase of the story he narrates. But the question whether this religion was in any sense a reality, or a something as factitious as the 'political schemings of the cabals of the hour, does not seem for a moment to have occurred to him, certainly it is a question on which he makes no sign. His world is a world in which 'there is no higher agency than that of man; and his humanity is a humanity with no higher existence than the present. The affairs which he describes are a very mesh of entanglements-a 'moral chaos, almost frightful in its confusions. Such he finds 'the case to be; as such he deals with it, and as such he leaves 'it, without one word to indicate that he has ever paused to 'inquire as to its whence or to its wherefore. Of course, no one expected the historian to diverge into sermonizing, or into dis'quisitions about the origin of evil, or final causes. But that the grand questions concerning human existence and human destiny should have been thus left by such a mind, and that the sceptics of aftertime should have been allowed to appeal, as they have done, to this implied and practical scepticism (however un'justly) as being clearly in their favour, is a fact which cannot be recorded by the Christian without regret and sorrow.'

6

So our critic of 1956 may be supposed to write. Will this 'imaginary' criticism become a reality? The day must deelare it.

ART. II. Chapel and School Architecture. By F. J. JOBSON. 8vo. Hamilton.

HALF a century since, good architecture was understood to consist in the closest possible imitation of what was called the Roman style. The more nearly a building raised for Christian worship resembled the edifices reared two thousand years ago for the worship of the gods and goddesses of the Roman Capitol, the nearer it approached to what was deemed proper in such matters. Civic buildings, at the same time, were approved in the measure in which they were repetitions of the palaces or the amphitheatres which adorned, or had once adorned, the banks of the Tiber. This Roman, or Romanesque style, which came in with that revival of letters and of classical taste that may be said to have preceded the Reformation, continued to be the prevailing style of our architecture until within the memory of the older men of the present generation.

Edifices for secular purposes are still raised, for the most part, after models supplied by Rome or Greece. But our religious architecture has diverged into another path. The Sir Christopher Wren style of building, as a new building, is now of rare occurrence in our church architecture. The mediæval, and especially the Gothic, has almost supplanted everything else. Even secular buildings have come considerably under the influence of the current taste. The medieval comes before us in the shape of cottages, and guildhalls, and palaces, and even in new houses of parliament. Some who rail at it to-day, may be seen following the prevailing taste to-morrow. It is a little strange that an age which would seem to be on full speed in its departure from feudalism, should seem in this respect to be strongly disposed to go back to it. For not only Episcopalians, but Nonconformists, who would seem to be at the furthest remove from everything mediæval, share quite as much as their contemporaries in this revolution as to liking and disliking. The great majority of new places built by Nonconformists within the last twenty years have been, we have reason to think, either in the Gothic or the AngloNorman style. In one of our northern towns, not many years since, an observant gentleman, looking at a beautiful Gothic structure, inquired of his friend-What church is that?' 'Church,' said the other; it is not a church, it is a Dissenting chapel. D their impudence!' was the devout exclamation of the querist. No doubt it really is a very impudent thing, on the part of such people, that they should presume to emerge from the lanes and courts into which they were so long driven; and, above all, that they should be bold enough to quit their pantile hovels in such recesses, and be seen resorting to such churchlooking chapels on the great highways of the land; thus, to the best of their power, proclaiming to all passers-by, that, in regard both to wealth and taste, they have come to feel that they have a right to place themselves quite abreast with their neighbours. That certain gentlemen should swear at them for so doing, is just one of the most natural things in the world.

But Nonconformists whose notions and sympathies have been moulded by the prejudices of a past generation, have looked with some misgiving on this change. Sects are bound together by the accidents of their respective systems, quite as much as by the distinctive principles of them. Churchmen have their system as it is, very much from the mere accidents of the Reformation. Nonconformists have their respective systems as they are, very much from the accidents of their history as nonconforming and protesting bodies. Whatever is like the Church of England is of

course bad.

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Whatever is like Dissent is of course bad. So do our full-grown children on both sides think and feel. But for ourselves, thoroughly protestant as we are, we rejoice in this return to mediæval tastes, if it be only as an indication that we are beginning to distinguish between the false of the past, which we should conscientiously reject, and the true, which we should as conscientiously perpetuate. We have no sympathy with the man who does not feel it to be a pleasant thing to be at one with the bygone races of men to the utmost extent consistent with being at one with truth. We would dissent even from the Church of Rome no more than we can help. We would dissent from the Church of England no more than we can help. We feel that our love of man should be such as to cause all our points of divorce from him to be painful, not pleasing. Up in those times long since past, there were manly and devout souls, and we rejoice in everything in which we can be in harmony with them, whether it be in matters of opinion or in matters of less significance. Medieval architecture, if in itself good, is all the more beautiful to us from its consisting of forms which were looked upon and pronounced good by the intellect and the heart of man in other days.

As to any conscientious objection to the use of the mediæval style, we cannot for the life of us see why that should not apply still more to the use of the classical style. If the one be supposed to have come to us through the channel of popery, we know that the other has come to us through the channel of paganism. Our Doric columns, and our circled arches, we have from peoples whose idolatrous practices moved the spirit of Paul to protest against them in Athens and in Rome. It is true, the one style was used by our forefathers at a time when they added the worship of saints and of the Virgin to the worship of the Saviour; but it is no less true that the other was used by races foreign to our own, whose worship terminated in doing honour to Mars or Venus. The first, indeed, were not quite so good Christians as they should have been; but the second were no Christians at all. Furthermore, it is a great mistake to suppose that mediæval architecture has come to us from Rome. The architecture of Rome is to this day to the letter Roman. Not a Gothic door or window has ever found a place within the walls of Rome. In matters of taste, we are never so fully in the track of the popes and of St. Peter's as when we most scrupulously follow classical models. The Rome against which Luther protested, was Rome intoxicated with a passion for classicality in all things. In brief, the great question with us, in regard to architecture as in regard