From The Examiner, 7 Jan.
LORD MACAULAY.

BEFORE the ashes of this illustrious man are committed to the kindred dust of our most famous wits and patriots, we may be permitted to add a few words to the tribute which has already been largely paid to his genius and public character. The life of Thomas Babington Macaulay may be said to have consisted of two careers, the literary and the political, both leading him to the highest honors that either the public or the crown had to bestow. The two paths to eminence met, as it were, in history. He was qualified, however, to win the first distinctions in either letters or politics, had he limited his ambition to either the one or the other.

or despised the technicalities of the law, it was to master those branches of it which were more congenial to his turn of mind, especially with his views in life which contemplated fame rather than fortune. He made his first entrance into the House of Commons for the borough of Calne in 1830; and the agitating discussions on the Reform Bill soon tested his capacity for the senate. This is not the occasion for enumerating or criticising Lord Macaulay's parliamentary efforts. It is enouga to say that after all deductions on account of a too voluble delivery, an action deficient in grace, and a voice in harmony and variety, he was still a distinguished speaker. As compositions, indeed, not many speeches made in either House between the first Reform Bi.. Although no student with adverse fortune and the second, will bear comparison with to contend with ever gave an example of more Macaulay's, as much for their extensive inforpertinacious industry, Macaulay cannot be mation and effective reasoning, as for the marquoted as an instance of genius and labor vellous torrent of polished and splendid peovercoming domestic or even social disadvan-riods in which, whether he wrote to be heard tages. His family, its circumstances and posi- or to be read, it was his habit to cast his mation, with its influences, political and religious, terials. Among debaters he had no rank at are too well known to need repetition here. all; and it was probably this that disqualified He enjoyed the advantages of the best educa- | him most for office, which he held but for tion the country could afford, and turned it to the account of his future eminence. His first distinctions in life were won at Trinity College, Cambridge, which is now repaid with the The best proof of Macauley's success .n honor of having numbered so great a man the first parliament he sat in, was the seat amongst its members. As a fellow of Trinity which it obtained for him in the next. Leeds he was, however, less remarkable even then returned him to the reformed House of Comthan as a member of the Union Debating So- mons; and about the same time he became a ciety, where he first heard the echo of his own member of the government, as Secretary to voice, and laid the foundations of the fluent the Board of Control. His next step was the and abundant rhetoric which, with all its de-acceptance of the post in India, which, as it fects, among which the profusion of ornament was tantamount to abandoning ministerial adand illustration was the most conspicuous, ob-vancement at home, surprised not a little his tained for him a place among the orators of friends and the public. The Indian office his time. The chief disadvantage his youth had to struggle with was of his own creation, the high repute he brought with him from the university, which was soon augmented by his contributions to the Edinburgh Review. The dazzling and passionate paper on Milton was his first effort in a department of literature in which he was speedily without a rival; for the very faults of the youthful essayist were pledges of his future excellence. Severity is sterility in a young writer. It is easy to chastise a too luxuriant fancy; but the virgin soil that produces no flowers, rarely yields fruits either. However, the bar was his profession, and not a nominal one only, for if he either neglected

short periods, and in which he made no figure. Office probably never interfered with his more congenial pursuits.

however, was not a sinecure; it not only required a man of talent, but a man of Lord Macaulay's attainments, both general and professional. His mission as legal adviser to the supreme council was in fact a special one to prepare a new code for our Indian empire. There never was a question in England about the ability with which this great and difficult work was executed; though opinions vary as to the causes which led to its failure in practice, the chief reason probably being that the inherent difficulties of the undertaking, arısing from the multitude of races to be dealt with, and the labyrinth of usages and customs to be either respected or annulled, were such

as to be insurmountable by any genius or skil. But this is not a question to be discussed here.

favorites and his aversions, both were well
chosen, but to both he gave more white and
black than were due. His view of Bacon's
character is perhaps, on the whole, the just-
est, and his controversy with Basil Montagu
is admirably managed both in substance and
manner. A peculiarity of Lord Macaulay
was that all things about which his mind was
occupied were of equal importance.
would set about the proof that two and two
make four with as much earnestness, array of
facts, and parade of illustration, as he would
exhibit on the profoundest political problem.
His views were like Chinese designs, without
perspective, and whatever was in front was of
the first magnitude of importance.

He

In 1838, Macaulay returned from India with that intimate acquaintance with its affairs which he evinced in his essays on Clive and Hastings. He was also in possession of the secure independence so invaluable to one whose ambition had always partaken more of the scholar than the politician. However, he had not yet done with political life, for the year after his return from the East saw him Secretary-at-War and member for Edinburgh. The office he only held until the change of government, which took place in 1839; but ne sat for the Scotch capital until 1847, when in one of its fanatical fits, provoked by his Macaulay's writing is often incorrect, but it fearless support of the Maynooth endow-carries the reader on so agreeably that the ments, it dishonored itself by refusing to re-jolts do not strike him. It is the negligentia elect him. It was, however, but a short mad- hominis magis de re, quam de verbo, laboness. The next general election afforded the rantis. But in the choice of words, too, he people of Edinburgh an opportunity of re- was very felicitous, and his occasional faults deeming themselves, which they seized with are in structure, from which, indeed, he esa.acrity. capes as much as possible in the short sentences that mark his style. We have sometimes been inclined to think the taste for Macaulay's style, rich to gorgeousness, rather an unfavorable sign, but the more we have returned to his pages the less we have been disposed to entertain this opinion, so muca body and solidity is there in all his works. Occasionally, however, he is pompous and stilted, dealing in big words for small occasions, as, for instance, in the passage where the lion-hearted Plantagenet is made the bugaboo of the eastern nursery.

But in truth, except the mere seat in the House, his career as an active member of the legislature was already finished. The complaint which was destined to end his days imposed upon him so far back as 1852 the necessity of abstaining from the excitements of debate, though fortunately it left him strength for the more important labors with which his name will be immortally connected. Lord Macaulay never spoke in the commons after his second election for Edinburgh, nor in the House of Lords at all, which was the more to be regretted as the studied character of his eloquence rendered it particularly suited to the greater leisure and calmer atmosphere of the hereditary chamber.

The fault of Macaulay's style, especially for history, is the obtrusiveness of it. In reading him we are always thinking of the style. In reading Hume we never think of The great faculties of Macaulay's mind the style. Hume's style is a medium .ike were memory and imagination. In judgment fine glass through which we clearly see the he was deficient. It seemed, indeed, as if his objects he places before us, so that we are mind was so full of different stores, that there not sensible of the medium. Macaulay's style was not room for the judgment to move in it, is glass too, but it is richly colored glass, and discriminate, and prefer one thing to another. the painted objects forever recall our attenWhen a great question arose Macaulay's tion to the art that so exhibits them to us. mind did not apply first principles to it, but It may be said that if this is a fault it is the went to work with precedents. His memory fault of a merit, and so it may be, paradoxidisinterred all the facts bearing on the ques-cal as it sounds. Certainly we do not wish tion, and his imagination made them alive the stained glass washed crystal clear. We again. Whether in his Essays or his History, he is the most dramatic of writers. Partial ne undeniably was. He was a great advocate, not a discriminating judge. He had his

take the style for better for worse, befitting Macaulay, and befitting no one e.se. Like Johnson's style, it is appropriate only to the writer, and, like his, a bad model for imita

tion. And in style is there any model good | lads celebrated in Gay's Trivia, which usea to for imitation? Quintilian would say, no, and flutter in strings upon certain walls, and to be we believe Quintilian to be right, and that every one who has any thing to say worth hearing will have a style of his own to clothe his thoughts becomingly.

In society Macaulay was more admired and wondered at than relished. He was too much for society. Whatever the subject was, his mind opened upon it and played like a fountain copiously without pause. Conversation there was none. He took possession and held it. He could not help it. He did not talk for display, or with a thought of display, but simply because there was that in him about the subject-matter of which he must deliver himself. He talked as a bird sings, oecause he cannot help it. It was a gush, and it seemed as if he were as greedy to give it out as a glutton is to take in food. His words leaped from him, and as if they were impatient things struggling to get out even before their turn. After a time Macaulay somewhat corrected this excess, which gave occasion to Sidney Smith to remark that "he had never seen Macaulay to such advantage, there having been several splendid flashes of silence."

bawled where brass bands now bray, having been alluded to in conversation, Macaulay exhibited a reach of knowledge in the Grubstreet anthology that amazed the company. He repeated a score of them, and we believe it was but a small sample of the lore of St. Giles' that was in him. Knowledge the most abstruse, and matter the most trivial, were laid up in abundance in the same memory, which sometimes seemed a jeweller's, sometimes a marine-store shop, with a black aoll for a sign without of all sorts of odds ana ends within. That nothing ever escaped from Macaulay's memory is quite certain, but still it is incomprehensible how he got what was in it, seeming as he did to live like other reading men, who are also men of the world, and taking their part in society. Public duties, as we have said, probably interrupted his literary occupations very little. At the council he was a cipher, and when he quitted of fice, so little important had he been in it, that the public took no notice of his retirement. He could afford this failure, and seldom, on the whole, has there been a more successfu life. He won fame early, and kept it shining and increasing to his last hour. Fortune favored his genius, and a nation generously ap

How Macaulay came by the varied stores laid up in his memory, ever ready for instant use, is a problem we cannot pretend to solve.preciates and honors it. Posterity will ratify It seemed that whatever any one knew, he the judgment. knew, and something more. The street bal

From The Athenæum. toise; but the old difficulty arises-on what is the tortoise to stand? Some pundits say that it swims in a sea of milk; but this will not do, fluid under all is not steady enough, even if we go no lower to inquire for bottom.

The Great Pyramid: Why was It built? and Who built It? By John Taylor, Author of "Junius Identified," etc. (Longman and Co.)

OUR heading does not mean that Mr. Taylor either built the Pyramid, or wrote the letters of Junius; but only that he was, in old time, the identifier of Junius, and that he now comes before us as the builder of a pyramidhypothesis. He is, by temperament, a discoverer of hidden things; and has employed no small ingenuity upon what we may call two crack secrets, because they have never been cracked.

Mr. Taylor thinks that, assuming the earth to be a perfect sphere, the young Joktans built a pyramid of such a height that its perpendicular would be equal to the radius of a circle equal in circumference to the perimeter of the square base. "The workmen must all have been remarkably skilful, and have constantly wrought with a quadrant in their hands, to fulfil their presumed instructions so neatly as they did." We may be pretty The pyramids were built by the sons of sure that, let them build what pyramid they Joktan, who afterwards retired into Arabia. might, less ingenuity than Mr. Taylor has These structures are several times referred to brought to the subject would find out some in the Old Testament. They were built that approximate relation or other between toe their dimensions might be for standards of dimensions employed. We shall not enter ength to the whole world, and the great cof- into detail on this point. We strongly recfer for a standard of capacity. And they nave answered their purpose. All our measures are derived from them. The builders had a very good measure of the degree of the earth's surface, and a very good approxImation to the quadrature of the circle. The Roman, the Italian, the Greek, and the We adhere to the old belief, that the parts Ptolemaic foot-the foot of Drusus and of of the human body are the foundations of our Diodorus Siculus, as well as that of the pyra- system of measures. Even if Mr. Taylor s mid yard or metre-the Philetarian foot-theory were true, there must have been measthe British inch-the geometrical foot-the ures in use before the pyramids were built Karnak cubit, or that of Solomon's Temple, the Royal cubit, and the Royal span or foot of Pliny-the cubit of the Nilometer-the Oriental cubit and the Oriental span the stade of Aristotle and all the other Greek stades—are but various arrangements of the same common measure; parts of one great measure, whose body is the earth, either in its diameter or circumference.

ommend all who are curious in metrology to peruse Mr. Taylor's book; the quantity of information which it contains upon old measures is not only agreeably thrown together when the whole forms a theory, true or false but the adaptations help the memory.

and these, no doubt, were taken from corporea. dimensions. The whole earth employing these measures, which we know to have a sort of agreement with their originals, we find it requires more evidence than has been brought forward to convince us that the whole earth repaired to Egypt to have their measures adapted to a common standard. There is no evidence that rude nations feel the want of such a standard.

We know that even long after the reviva. of literature, cultivated men imagined that the Roman foot and the human foot agreed; ana they also fancied that what they called the geometrical foot agreed with both. We see what the idea of measurement is among uneducated persons, of all classes, who are not accustomed to use the foot-rule in their daily business.

The little bit over or under is nothing. No number of coincidences in a building, be they never so many nor so true, can persuade us that uneducated races received from Egypt what we never knew uneducated

races able to appreciate. The measurement theless, such hazardous incursions into the of the earth, the approximate quadrature of dark have no small use. Though rebelling the circle, the disposition to value measure- against the demand upon our faith, so long as ment, which these data presume, are all the speculation is nothing more, we appreciate equally unproved, and, historically, equally the many services rendered to knowledge by unlikely. They are evolved from the unfath- those who are strongly incited to curious inomable abyss of speculation,-a vasty deep quiry. Columbus went, as he thought, to from which the spirits always come when they India, upon a wrong theory. How was his are called for by practised thought. theory wrong? Only because America, which he had never reckoned upon, lay in his way; and so he discovered America. In like manner, many a useful result has been found upon a wrong scent, sometimes blocking the way,

We need hardly say that Mr. Taylor's method of fixing the pyramids upon the sons of Joktan is even more hardy in its postulates than the method of connecting the pyramids with the universal system of measures. Never- sometimes by the roadside.

HAMMER-CLOTH.-I do not think any of our lexicographers have given us the true origin of the word hammer-cloth. The name, I should say, is a corruption of armor-cloth, because, in former times, and not unfrequently now, the cloth in question has affixed to it, or woven into it, the armorial bearings of the family to which it belongs. If I am wrong, I shall be happy to be corrected by your more learned correspondents, who, by doing so, will oblige

EDMUND HEPPLE.

Blackheddon House, Newcastle-on-Tyne. [By the following extract from a recent number of The City Press, our correspondent will perceive that some discussion has already arisen as to the derivation of Hammer-cloth :

box, which we conceive to have been properly a bonâ fide box, a box to hold various articles useful in travelling by coach. In this view of the subject, a "hammer-cloth" may have been originally a "hamper-cloth," i.e., a box-cloth, a cloth to cover the coach-box: as we still say, a box-coat-a coat worn by a coachman when seated on the box. See Gent. Mag. 1795, p. 1091.]-Notes and Queries.

"HAMMER-CLOTH.-In one of the descriptions of the procession of the sheriffs, the word hammock-cloth' is used in the description of the appendage to the coachman's seat. I noticed that, in your report, it was described as a 'hammer-cloth. Which is right? On referring to my coachmaker's bill, I find he enters it as a hammock-cloth,' which, if terms in trade usage are of any value, makes your phrase wrong. Nevertheless, I think you are right; for is it not used to conceal the hammer and other tools, no longer required, which, in a former state of the roads, were so often in requisition upon a jour-gine of torture, devised by Mr. Skevington,

ney?

C. C."

Dr. Pegge's explanation of the term Anonymiana (p. 181.), is given in some of our dictionaries, viz., that "The hammer-cloth is an ornamental covering for a coach-box: the coachman formerly used to carry a hammer, pincers, a few nails, etc., in a leather pouch hanging to his box, and this cloth was devised for the hid ing or concealing of them from public view." There is, however, another derivation which we are disposed to view with some degree of favor. The term "hamper" formerly signified a box, and therefore may have been applied to a coach- |

[In the reign of Henry VIII. Sir William Skevington, a lieutenant of the Tower, immortalized himself by the invention of a new engine of torture, called Skevington's Irons, or Skevington's Daughters, which was known and dreaded for a century afterwards under the corrupted name of the Scavenger's Daughter. By the Commons' Journal (14th May, 1604) it ap pears that at that time a committee was appointed by the House of Commons to inquire as in the Tower. The committee reported that to the state of a dungeon called " Little Ease" they found in Little Ease in the Teaver an ensome time lieutenant of the Tower, called Skev ington's Daughters; and that the place itself was very loathsome and unclean, and not used for a long time either for a prison or other cleanly purpose." This instrument appears to have rolled and contracted the body into a ball until the head and feet met together, and forced the blood to ooze from the extremities of the hands and feet, and frequently from the nostrils and moush. See a description of it in Tanner, Societas Europæa, p. 18., quoted in Jardine's Reading on the Use of Torture in the Criminal Law of England, 1837, p. 15.] Notes and Queries.