Hastings. The subtle gifts of rhetoric, the magic work of poetry, are loved for their own sake; and they are not severely cross-examined upon the possession of historic attributes to which they do not pretend. But rhetoric is not confined to speeches, nor poetry to metre. It can hardly be denied, either by eulogist or detractor, by friend or foe, that both these elements are found in the prose of Macaulay; and if they are most attractive, they are also perilous allies in the work of the historian and the critic.

In truth, if we mistake not, the poetical element in his mind and temperament was peculiar, but was strong and pervading. Those who may incline to doubt our opinion that he was a poet as well as a rhetorician, and, perhaps a poet even more than a rhetorician, would do well to consult the admirable criticism of Professor Wilson on his 'Lays.' ('Life,' ii. 121.) We will not dwell upon the fact (such we take it to be) that his works in verse possess the chief merits of his other works, and are free from their faults. But his whole method of touch and handling are poetical. It is, indeed, infinitely remote from the reflective and introspective character, which has taken possession of contemporary poetry among our writers in such a degree, as not only to make its interpretation a work of serious labour, but also to impair its objective force. Macaulay was, perhaps, not strong in his reflective faculties; certainly he gave them little chance of development by exercise. He was eminently objective, eminently realistic; resembling in this the father of all poets, whom none of his children have surpassed, and who never converts into an object of conscious contemplation the noble powers which he keeps in such versatile and vigorous use. Macaulay all history is scenic; and philosophy he scarcely seems to touch, except on the outer side where it opens into action. Not only does he habitually present facts in forms of beauty, but the fashioning of the form predominates over, and is injurious to, the absolute and balanced presentation of the subject. Macaulay was a master in execution, rather than in what painting or music terms expression. He did not fetch from the depths, nor soar to the heights; but his power upon the surface was rare and marvellous; and it is upon the surface that an ordinary life is passed, and that its imagery is found. He mingled, then, like Homer, the functions of the poet and the chronicler; but what Homer did was due to his time, what Macaulay did, to his temperament. We have not attempted to ascertain his place among historians. That is an office which probably none but an historian can perform. It is more easy to discover for him contrasts than resemblances. Commonly sound in his classical appreciations, he was an enthusiastic admirer of Thucydides;

In

Thucydides; but there can hardly be a sharper contrast than between the history of Thucydides and the history of Macaulay. Ease, brilliancy, pellucid clearness, commanding fascination, the effective marshalling of all facts belonging to the external world as if on parade-all these gifts Macaulay has, and Thucy-dides has not. But weight, breadth, proportion, deep discernment, habitual contemplation of the springs of character and conduct, and the power to hold the scales of human action with firm and even hand-these must be sought in Thucydides, and are rarely observable in Macaulay. But how few are the writers whom it would be anything less than ridiculous to place in comparison with Thucydides! The History of Macaulay, whatever else it may be, is the work not of a journeyman but of a great artist, and a great artist who lavishly bestowed upon it all his powers. Such a work, once committed to the press, can hardly die. It is not because it has been translated into a crowd of languages, nor because it has been sold in hundreds of thousands, that we believe it will live, but because, however open it may be to criticism, it has in it the character of a true and high work of art.

We are led, then, to the conclusion, or the conjecture, that, however the body of our writers may be reduced in a near future by many and many a decimation, Macaulay will, and must, survive. Personal existence is beset with dangers in infancy, and again in age. But authorship, if it survive the first, has little to fear from the after-peril. If it subsist for a few generations (and generations are for books what years are for their writers), it is not likely to sink in many. For works of the mind really great there is no old age, no decrepitude. It is inconceivable that a time should come when Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, shall not ring in the ears of civilised man. On a lower throne, in a less imperial hall of the same mansion, we believe that Macaulay will probably be found, not only in A.D. 2000, which he modestly specifies, but in 3000 or 2850, which he more boldly formulates, or for so much of this long, or any longer lease as the commentators on the Apocalypse will allow the race to anticipate. Whether he will remain as a standard and supreme authority, is another question. Wherever and whenever read, he will be read with fascination, with delight, with wonder. And with copious instruction too; but also with copious reserve, with questioning scrutiny, with liberty to reject, and with much exercise of that liberty. The contemporary mind may in rare cases be taken by storm; but posterity, never. The tribunal of the present is accessible to influence; that of the future is incorrupt. The coming generations will not give Vol. 142.-No. 283. Macaulay

E

Macaulay up, but they will, probably, attach much less value than we have done to his ipse dixit. They will hardly accept from him his nett solutions of literary, and still less of historic, problems. Yet they will obtain from his marked and telling points of view great aid in solving them. We sometimes fancy that ere long there will be editions of his works in which his readers may be saved from pitfalls by brief, respectful, and judicious commentary, and that his great achievements may be at once commemorated and corrected by men of slower pace, of drier light, and of more tranquil, broadset, and comprehensive judgment. For his works are in many respects among the prodigies of literature; in some, they have never been surpassed. As lights that have shone through the whole universe of letters, they have made their title to a place in the solid firmament of fame. But the tree is greater and better than its fruit; and greater and better yet than the works themselves are the lofty aims and conceptions, the large heart, the independent, manful mind, the pure and noble career, which in this Biography have disclosed to us the true figure of the man who wrote them.

ART. II.—1. A History of British Forest-Trees, Indigenous and Introduced. By Prideaux John Selby, F.L.S., &c. London, 1842.

2. Trees and Shrubs for English Plantations. By Augustus Mongredien. With illustrations. London, 1870.

3. The Forester. A Practical Treatise on the Planting, Rearing, and General Management of Forest-Trees. By James Brown, LL.D. 4th edition. Edinburgh and London, 1871. 4. Arboriculture. A Practical Treatise on Raising and Managing Forest-Trees. By John Grigor, the Nurseries, Forres,

N.B. Edinburgh, 1868.

5. The Trees of Old England. By Leo H. Grindon. London, 1870. 2nd edition.

6. The Parks, Promenades, and Gardens of Paris. By William Robinson, F.L.S. London, 1869.

7. Timber and Timber Trees. By Thomas Laslett, Timber Inspector to the Admiralty. London, 1875.

say that every Englishman has an innate passion for tree-planting is a truism which needed no Washington Irving to inculcate it, though indirectly his testimony from across the Atlantic evinces the superiority of this passion to the

accidents

accidents of country or climate. It is a fact that Americans grow rapturous at the sight of the stately oaks and elms of the mother country, as if discriminating between these adornments of our parks and gardens and the giant tenants of their own forests and prairies, with a partiality for the former. But that this penchant is exceptionally national becomes more patent, if we attempt to assess the difference between the associations of the ancients as to forests, trees, and woodland scenery, and those which they call up in the British mind. While Greeks and Romans seems to have identified a plantation with a dense, dark, or sadly-sighing body of trees, they are seldom found exulting in the changeful hues of the greenwood, the soothing walk under the, bee-haunted limes, or those sylvan courts of leafy verdure which tempt the most unromantic to envy the forester, and sigh for the freedom of Robin Hood and Maid Marian. Athens, it is true, could boast its oaks of Parnes; but these were most considered for the sake of their charcoal, the olive being the tree which quickened, beyond others, the pride and enthusiasm of its poets. There were beech groves in the mountain districts of Greece, on the range next below the pines; but the beech does not seem to have had any strong attraction for the Greek eye, though its glossy green is such a charming feature in our parks and glades. The plane, indeed, in their poetry meets with the commemoration due to its light green feather-foliage; but if we pass in review the items of Greek arboriculture, it will be seen that the fig and pomegranate claim scarcely less notice, and that perhaps their chief affection was bestowed upon the cypress and myrtle, the tamarisk, and such lesser shrubs. From the Romans no doubt Great Britain derived not only a goodly addition to her indigenous trees, but also the first rudiments of the culture of this class of products. Besides our best fruit-trees, they are held to have naturalised the chestnut, lime, sycamore, box, and laurel. They may also have introduced the beech, seeing that, according to Cæsar, it was not found in Britain, and that its Welsh name * smacks of a Latin origin. The English elm, too, which is essentially a southern tree, and rarely seeds in England, may easily have been introduced by them with the vine; and to them in all probability we owe our first initiation in forestry, the art of rearing coppice-wood for vine-poles, willows for wicker-work, and forest timber for house and ship-building. Howbeit we have outstript our teachers; and, as much from inborn predilec

Fawydd (th. fagus). Hereford derived its Welsh name of Tre-fawydd from the beech-trees near it. See Pearson's Historical Maps of England,' p. 49. E 2 tion

tion as from a constant tradition of the pleasure and profit of tree-planting, so far covered with indigenous and imported treegrowths the hills and dales, the waste places and greenswards, the suburban spots and rural spaces of our island, that its levels are disguised by a variety of belts and coverts; its uplands clothed with larch and firwood; its parks and gardens embellished by ancient silvan giants and audacious rivals from across the seas; its lesser holdings dotted with fancy conifers and interesting triumphs of persistent acclimatation; and-to come to London and our great cities-each square and crescent has its mimic park. There are many reasons for this. Not only is it a matter of general experience that timber, whether in large or small quantities, is remunerative from its applicability to building and repairs, but our soils and climate, we find, may be sensibly improved by judicious planting. By this we may shut out the importunate blast, by this screen off the burning sunshine. The effect of such shelter is to double the value of inferior tracts; and this both because the influence of woodlands softens the temperature and conciliates the fertilising rain, and also because trees enrich the soil by deposits of vegetable matter, and by their roots open up the land to the action of air and water. Not often, perhaps, is the impulse to plant traceable to such solid and scientific causes: it is mostly due to the sense of delight and administration which an owner of land-be his paradise a few acres or half a shire, it is all the same-experiences in having a hand and a voice in the laying out of his demesne; in, visiting and revisiting his copses and nurseries; in watching his trees and shrubs wax in grace and stature, till they become to him a living interest, and he notes their habits as fondly as those of his children. So fruitful and attractive is the practical study of the subject, that it is a wonder we have suffered our neighbours across the Channel to be beforehand in the institution of colleges of arboriculture; unless, indeed, it be that, as we observed in the outset, in England every man is 'in esse' or 'in posse' his own planter, and it is a rare exception to find a proprietor who would devolve on a Nesfield or Capability Brown the experiments in landscape gardening which make up half the charm of the country gentleman's existence. Indeed, there are few fields in which the errors of inexperience may be retrieved more easily than in treeplanting; for though it may often occur that a single tree or a group proves a mistake in a given situation, it is exceptionally rare to find cause of regret in judicious thinning, or timely removal to another site.

So many excellent treatises on the planting of trees and shrubs