and reliable record of that country or that period of which he proposes to write. Novelists or essayists contract no such obligation, and therefore cannot be said to violate any confidence. The former are confessedly free from such ties and may revel in the unrestricted liberty of the grossest anachronisms, and certainly they connot be charged with neglecting to avail themselves of this privilege. The latter are known to be uttering their own peculiar views upon the subjects of which they treat, and no person would be insane enough to deny their perfect right to do so. For it is admitted that the same subject may be differently viewed according to the different points of observation from which it is regarded. One man may consider a free press one of the greatest blessings which a country can boast, the ægis which protects the liberty of a people from the innovations of a despot. Another may with equal sincerity consider it as the greatest curse with which a nation can be afflicted, a sort of barricade from behind which democratic malecontents may assail the just prerogatives of the king. A Whig of the reign of Queen Anne looked upon the Revolution as the most glorious event recorded in our annals, whilst a Tory of the same period considered it to have been a gross violation of the most sacred duty a subject owes to his sovereign. And both may be right, and each is entitled to entertain and express his own opinions upon these or any other subjects when treating of them in this particular manner. But when a man sits down to write a history, be he Whig or be he Tory, should cease to be either, the distinctions of party should be merged in the dignity of his theme, private feeling should yield to public duty, and he should approach his task with a mind untrammelled by prejudice, a conscience free from the influence of factious bias, prepared to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. With him the interests of the few should be subservient to the interests of many, the claims of party should be sacrificed to the demands of truth, and his motto should be "fiat justitia ruat cœlum." In these characteristics Mr. Macaulay is deficient, he lacks the courage to break up his old connexion, to abstract himself from old prejudices and former habits of thought, lest in the effort some ray of light might gleam upon the darkness in which he seems to be enveloped, manifesting to his astonished gaze the startling fact that virtues do exist beyond the narrow limits of the Whig coterié, and men may be patriots who are not Whigs. Fearful of this terrible consequence he resolutely refuses to judge for

himself, and sinks the historian in the Whig. Hence his history is but a continuation of those brilliant essays by which some years ago the public were dazzled and delighted, itself an essay and nothing more. Of course he abuses Catholicism; in this, however, he is consistent, and as in his earlier literary efforts he never loses an opportunity (nay often makes one) of vilifying us, so in his latest he does not spare the lash. For this we were prepared, for experience has taught us that the most polished periods fall dully on the ear of Protestant England, unless quickened by the censure of that "Gorgeous Superstition" to which nevertheless her people are entitled for whatever of liberty they now have the happiness to enjoy.

We do not complain of this (a distempered appetite must be gratified even with garbage, but then proper ministers should be found to furnish forth the repast), but we do complain that history should be degraded by an alliance with those puny abortions which hebdomadally issue from the press full of the most hideous obcenities-scoffing at religion, ridiculing morality, jesting with Hell, and insulting Heaven. We do complain that men of genius should pander to the foul passions of besotted prejudice, and seek to win the worthless applause of ignorant and misguided zealots by the sacrifice of honor, of justice, and of truth. Can Mr. Macaulay forget that to the period when the Bishop and the Thane sat together on the judgment seat must be referred those merciful dispensations by which the justice of the common law is tempered? Shall he be permitted to repudiate the debt of gratitude posterity owes to those pious men (whom modern latitudinarians denominate lazy monks) by whose labors have been preserved those masterpieces of the classic genius of antiquity, which else had perished beneath the overwhelming torrent of barbarism, which on Rome's destruction swept over the fairest provinces of Southern Europe? Shall he be suffered to depreciate the services of the Catholic Church to the cause of humanity, in achieving during the twelfth and thirteen centuries the most wonderful revolution of ancient or modern times, and by attempting to lessen our estimation of the agency by which that revolution was accomplished, rob the Church of the glory to which her patriotism is entitled? "A purer religion," he writes, "might be a less efficient agent." Really we must protest against this and such like unfair insinuations. If possible let the fact be denied, but if not, let it be stated, fairly and honestly. If any of the surrounding circumstances suggest the idea of improper motives

in the inception, improper acts in the execution, or improper designs in the consummation, state them, comment upon them, produce the evidence which is relied upon to sustain the view; but in the presence of a great fact, in the absence of every suspicion which could excite a doubt of the good faith of the chief agent in its achievement, we object to private religious opinions being foisted upon the public as the result of historical research and philosophical reflection. Mr. Macaulay may hold whatever religious opinions he considers best calculated to promote the ultimate purpose of man's creation, but we do object that he should set up his private creed as the standard by which every other religion is to be judged. We know it is the historian's province to comment upon the events he relates, and intersperse his narrative with reflections fairly suggested by the subject matter, but we have yet to learn that any historian (deserving the name) should graft upon his narrative personal opinions at variance with acknowledged facts. Were we to attempt the confutation of Mr. Macaulay's falsehoods with regard to Catholicity, the whole Review would be insufficient to contain our remarks, and as we have but a small portion of its space allotted to us, we must pass over many points, warning our readers, however, to receive with caution every statement he makes with reference to the Catholic Church. But while we pass by many particulars we cannot abstain from referring to one passage, a passage which disgraces not alone the man who u tered it, but the age which could tolerate its utterance. We grieve to be obliged to speak thus harshly of the expressions of one for whose services to the cause of emancipation every Catholic must be grateful, but we cannot admit that because as a politician he advocated the extension to a large portion of his fellow subjects of a right to participate in the benefits of a constitution which their ancestors had created and fostered-a right which the entire civilized world demanded, and which the Government declared they could no longer safely withholdwe cannot admit that this confers upon him any privilege to insult the feelings of the Catholics not alone of this Empire, but of the universe, by misrepresenting the doctrines of the religion which they profess. "Eloquence," the present Pope is reported to have said when addressing a gentleman who had then recently distinguished himself by his brilliant advocacy in a very remarkable case, but whose reputation, like that of single speech Hamilton, scems to rest upon this solitary forensic effort, "Eloquence, when properly dirccted, is he noblest gift of God."

But surely when that great gift is diverted from its legitimate office, and made the tool of bigotry and malevole nce, it becomes a curse instead of a blessing, and from being the noblest gift of God becomes the most efficient agent of the devil in working out his diabolical schemes. We can freely admit that Mr. Macaulay does possess great powers of fascination, but we fear truth is often sacrificed to effect, and he frequently exceeds the latitude which even the exaggeration of fictitious narrative allows.

In his sketch of George Fox he permits himself to be betrayed into an exhibition of vulgar bigotry of which the most ignorant fanaticism would be ashamed. Forgetful of his own antecedents, false to the traditional glory of that party, to whose interests he so willingly sacrifices truth and candour, forgetful of the noble stand which Fox and Burke made against the enormous injustice of that oath by which the Sacrifice of the Mass is declared damnable and idolatrous, unmindful of the sentiments which the most distinguished Bishops of the Establishment have entertained and expressed on this subject, regardless of the well merited rebuke by which the great English lexicographer silenced the impertinent sneer of his Scotch lackey, Mr. Macaulay deliberately insults the religion of that nation whose troops have preserved our army from the ruin and disgrace to which ignorance and incapacity had consigned it, outrages the feelings of his Catholic compatriots, whose blood has fertilized the classic soil of the Tauric Chersonese, and whose bleaching bones mark the spot whereon a mighty armament has tasted the bitterness of defeat, by the dull sneer of self-sufficient ignorance at that most Holy Sacrament in which all Catholics believe their God to be present. What does he say?-and now, readers, mark well this passage; he is accounting for the phenomenon that George Fox's theories should have had any disciples amongst the well informed:

"Thus we frequently see inquisitive and restless spirits take refuge from their own scepticism in the bosom of a church which pretends to infallibillity, and AFTER QUESTIONING THE EXISTENCE OF A DEITY, BRING THEMSELVES TO WORSHIP A WAFER!!!”

If this were a matter of opinion we should not have referred to it, but it is an admitted fact, admitted by every one, that Catholics do believe in the real presence; and the

most fertile theme our adversaries possess, (a theme on which the recipients of our forced contributions love to dilate,) is, the folly, the madness, the stupidity of those deluded papists who believe a priest can create a God. We shall, however, offer no further comment upon this elegant extract; it is a comment upon itself; and so we leave it to speak for itself.

Having thus shown how Mr. Macaulay speaks of Catholics, we shall next proceed to shew how he deals with history.

Charles the First having been beheaded by a sentence the injustice of which few now are found to question, a period of anarchy succeeded, which gradually subsided through the consecutive phases of republicanism, and a military dictatorship into the old and well loved form of monarchical government. Charles the Second was restored, and after a gay and dissolute life, yielded his place to his brother James, who in spite of the unfair attempt to exclude him, now came to the throne without any opposition. Few can praise the entire course of this King's conduct, and least of all have we as Irishmen any reason to revert with pleasure to the period when he held the sceptre of these kingdoms, or to that subsequent period, when, deprived of his Crown, he sought refuge in Ireland, and requited the loyalty and hospitality with which her people welcomed him, by betraying the cause he had summoned them to support, and abandoning them to the measureless vengeance with which their generous efforts in his behalf were visited. Still we cannot join in that indiscriminate censure with which it is sought to ruin his reputation. We have no desire to screen from just reproach the man who merited the expressive, though not very flattering, soubriquet by which he is still known in many parts of Ireland, but we think there are circumstances which, if fairly stated, would palliate if not excuse many of those acts which otherwise appear indefensible.

Called to the government of a country whose people differing from him in religion, looked with suspicion upon every act by which he sought to extend freedom to the professors of his own creed, anxious himself to be free from that foreign influence which had been the bane of his brother's career, but compelled to act under the advice of men corrupted by french gold; disliked by the Whigs, distrusted by the Tories, unsupported by the Parliament, and