disappeared over its brink. The times themselves were fevered with excitement. Every week brought its own romance, and the issue fluctuated in agitating uncertainty. No wonder that the record of such a period, in the hands of so great a master, had all the restless interest of fiction. When the curtain fell on the first act of this drama, James II. had relinquished his throne, and the Prince of Orange was on his way to assume the sceptre, amid the restored tranquillity of perturbed politicians and the acclamations of a liberated people.

But when the second act commences things are widely changed. The excitement and the danger that drew chiefs and parties together, have given place to security and disunion. The certain reaction which by an invariable law attends all political convulsions, had, in 1689, many sources peculiar to the crisis. The Prince who had been hailed as a deliverer when seen through the medium of present tyranny, with a prison or scaffold in the background, had come gradually to be regarded as a phlegmatic Dutchman, ignorant of the language and distasteful to the people of the country. Absence and length of time worked their usual effect as regarded the self-exiled monarch, and roused again the inveterate attachment which Englishmen always have to things that used to be. Thus a period of an intense public contention was succeeded by one of constant private intrigue.

Viewed more closely, however, this second stage of the Revolution of 1688 was by far the more momentous and important. A successful revolution is comparatively a commonplace event, and may be brought about by commonplace actors. But to found the new order of things with firmness and stability on the ruins of the old—to meet with constancy the reflux of the wave -to combine the preservation of old tastes and habits and institutions, wherein the greater part of Government truly consists, with the changes called for by the times-to oppose, to watch, to foil, to prevent the intrigues of disappointed friends and the cabals of concealed enemies, and to raise on the mingled and incoherent elements of a revolution a great social and political temple, dedicated to the liberty of man, and liberating all beneath its shadow- these are the tasks of genius and statesmanship, on which so many successful revolutions have been wrecked, and this was the undertaking which devolved on, and was fulfilled by, William of Orange.

The progress of this great enterprise-the principles which guided, and the causes which retarded it-the scattered elements in our Saxon Constitution which were combined and harmoniously united by bold and skilful hands—the manner in which a new world sprang out of the old, and substantial

freedom assumed its permanent dominion among us, it is Mr. Macaulay's distinction to have described for the first time. Nothing can be more masterly and comprehensive than his treatment of this, by far the most important and instructive part of his subject; and it is as original as it is powerful. Not, indeed, that there is much in his materials which is absolutely new, or that gives to the student of the history of those times information on important details which were not formerly accessible. But he seems to us to have been the first who has had sagacity enough to follow through its course the tangled clue of politics during the eight years over which these volumes extend; and, to have grasped with the eye of a statesman the bearing of details on the great consequences of the time.

That the centre of his great picture should be occupied by one prominent figure, to which all others are accessory, might not only be anticipated from the historian's enthusiastic temperament, but was essential to the truth of history. We consider his portrait of William no less correct than able; doing him the justice which had been too much denied him, and depicting his failings or his virtues with a true and discriminating hand. Never had man a more difficult position to fill. That he held it at all, and handed down his crown in a succession never broken to this day, would of itself have been sufficient to have earned the grateful remembrance of his adopted country, and to have concealed from view failings or defects far greater than any which can be laid to his charge. But he did much more than this. He was, in the truest sense, a hero, although not perhaps of the class which are favourites of romance-writers. His temperament was frigid, and was congealed into still harder ice by his ignorance of the language of the country he undertook to govern. There was nothing in his person, or his demeanour, or his course of action, to excite enthusiasm. And above all, he came, lived among us, and died, a stranger; a willing exile from a land for which he hourly pined, toiling for a nation which was hard to satisfy; his busy earnest spirit fretting his hardworn body to decay. But he was a hero, notwithstanding, -a man with a commission the most difficult and hazardous, which he performed nearly single-handed, with few to help but disguised enemies and half-hearted friends. To his success this country owes her safety in a time of the greatest peril, and Europe a large proportion of its advance in social and political improvement.

It is with the strictest truth that Mr. Macaulay has represented all the events which succeeded the Revolution as depending on this common centre. The progress of things, no doubt, in

some measure assisted his efforts; and from nothing did the cause of constitutional government derive more collateral aid than from the never-failing absurdity and bigotry of the abdicated monarch. To be a Jacobite now-a-days is a pleasant pastime. The sorrows of discrowned kings, and the disloyalty of an ungrateful people, weave themselves gracefully into song or story. But all the while the modern Cavalier sits comfortably in a home protected by a free Constitution, and utters his sneers at the Revolution through a press which prints at his pleasure. It never occurs to him that had he lived now under the dynasty he laments, the most probable reward of his political courage would have been a place in the pillory. For not in the deepest misfortune, or the most untoward reverses, did the man who forgot everything else-friends, courage, manliness, honesty, ever for one moment allow his deserted kingdom to believe that if restored to power he would abate one tittle of his moody, revengeful bigotry. In this, if in nothing else, he was open, candid, and sincere. His proposals to his country for his return were filled with hearty and honest promises that not one offence should be pardoned, not one rebel forgiven, that bloody assizes, untiring vengeance, and unrelenting persecution should inaugurate the triumph of the right divine of kings to govern ill.'

Had the exiled Stuart possessed the quality foreign to his house, of knowing to whom to apply for counsel, and following it when given, there is no doubt that William's task would have been still more difficult than it was. But this does not diminish the almost exclusive credit he deserves in its fulfilment. That calm, cold, searching eye was everywhere. That strong, quiet grasp held the reluctant elements together. Had it been relaxed for a moment, the component parts would have been riven asunder by mutual repulsion, and private hopes and fears, jealousies and rivalries, the treachery of statesmen and the ambition of soldiers, would have supplied the defects of the suicidal diplomacy of St. Germain's.

6

The continuation of the history starts from the landing at Torbay with the words The Revolution was accomplished.' It was so. The hearty reception of the Prince of Orange proved how great had been the oppression, and how long the endurance of the people. The landing effected, the triumphal progress finished,

* The family archives of many English houses, scattered over the country, abound in original documents of the highest importance to the history of this eventful period; and though some of these authorities are quoted by Mr. Macaulay, many others remain to be explored. Thus a remarkable collection of such papers exists at VOL. CV. NO. CCXIII.

L

the vacant throne supplied, the new king saw a threefold sphere of duty and difficulty stretched before him. He had to adjust the strained and warped machinery of constitutional government in England; to subdue rebellion and assuage the grievances of Church and State in Ireland and Scotland; and to form, cement, and invigorate the great coalition against the power of France in Europe. It were hard to say which of these tasks was the most imminent at the crisis, or the most fruitful in results

Littlecote House, Wilts, the ancient seat of the Popham family, where William slept on the night which followed the Conference of Hungerford-to which we have had access since the publication of these volumes. Among these papers is to be found the original correspondence of William, Bentinck, Burnet, and Admiral Herbert at the moment of embarcation and during the anxious days which preceded the final departure of the expedition which landed at Torbay. And they reveal a very singular and secret occurrence which has not attracted Mr. Macaulay's notice. In the course of the month of October a challenge was addressed to Admiral Herbert, by a person professing to write in the name of Lord Dartmouth, and calling upon the Admiral to meet his lordship with choice of arms at Ostend. Herbert had accepted the challenge, and only waited for further arrangements to be made for this passage of arms, when the Prince of Orange pressed the English admiral to assume the command of the Dutch fleet, a measure which Mr. Macaulay has well described as 'eminently judicious.' (Vol. ii. p. 476.) Embarrassed by his engagement to meet Lord Dartmouth in single combat, Herbert hesitated for some days to accept the command, but without assigning any sufficient reason for this reluctance. At length, on the repeated solicitation of William, Herbert went to him and placed the challenge in his hands. The Prince smiled, and told Admiral Herbert to put the challenge in his pocket, for he should fight Lord Dart'mouth at sea.' This identical document is preserved at Littlecote, with a memorandum of the time relating this anecdote.

One of the first cares of William, after his landing and arrival at Exeter, was to provide for the safety of the Dutch fleet: and we do not think that it has been remarked by Mr. Macaulay, that at a very early period after the landing, the Prince ordered Herbert to provide for the safety of the transports and ships-of-war by returning to Holland. The surrender of Plymouth, however, shortly afterwards, gave the requisite shelter to the squadron; and before it had actually sailed to the Dutch ports, news arrived that Dartmouth, with the English fleet, had withdrawn to the Thames. It is extremely worthy of note, that the order to Herbert to take back the fleet to Holland was given in the first week after the landing, and before the gentry of the West of England had begun to give in their adhesion to the cause of William. Burnet's and Bentinck's letters to Herbert (which are preserved at Littlecote) as well as those of William himself, give a most striking picture of the whole course of these events.

when accomplished. Had he failed in consolidating his power on principles of constitutional liberty, no sagacity in council or success in war could have saved him from rapid and headlong downfal. Had Scotland been disaffected, and Ireland unsubdued, the arms of France would not have been required to restore the old dynasty in its full vigour of misgovernment. Had Louis XIV. been permitted to complete his schemes of ambition, he might have dictated terms to Europe, and appointed a viceroy for England. All were equally inevitable—all equally imminent; failure in any one was fatal. Let us follow the historian in his narrative of how the indomitable will of one earnest man met and surmounted them all.

The Parliament in the first instance addressed itself to its functions with the dignity and gravity befitting the magnitude of the occasion; and its first act-by which it turned the Convention into a Parliament—although taken in due constitutional order, and founded on constitutional grounds, gave a plain indication of the resolute will of the people not to be diverted from their great enterprise by timid and vacillating counsels. Then came the taking of the oaths to the new sovereigns, which disclosed so strong and prevalent a feeling either of friendship to the new dynasty or of despair of the old, as to prove that the Revolution had truly been accomplished. The revolt of the Scots' regiment produced the first Mutiny Bill, and laid the foundation of military discipline and a standing army. suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act completed for the time the precautions necessary to fence the newly-assumed throne from immediate danger, and to arm the Legislature with authority and the Executive with the means of energetic action.

The

It is worthy of remark that the first acts of this Convention bore on their face restraint of popular rights and assistance to authority. A standing army had long been the object of denunciation among constitutional politicians. The Habeas Corpus Act had not been suspended in the worst days of James. Even the turning of the Convention into a Parliament, instead of recurring to a new election, was exceptional in representative government. Yet the men who had upset a throne to protect popular liberty passed these measures without hesitation or demur. And they were right. They saw the dawn of the period when the practical administration of the country would be in the hands of Parliament, under the control of public opinion. A strong executive in an arbitrary government is always dangerous, and has often been fatal to liberty. But a weak executive in a free government may lead to the same result; and nothing can more clearly demonstrate how plainly