THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.

Essayist and Historian.

HOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, a son of Zachary Macaulay, an African merchant and a leading anti-slavery advocate, was born in Leicestershire, England, 25th October, 1800. As a child he was remarkably precocious, acquiring a passion for books when only three years old. At the age of seven he knew by heart Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, and nearly the whole of Marmion; and at eight he wrote, in imitation of Scott, over three hundred lines of a poem on the Battle of Cheviot. At Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was a student from 1818 to 1822, he gained a reputation as a scholar and a debater. After obtaining his degree he devoted himself to literature, his first attempts at which, in the shape of ballad poems and essays, appeared in Knight's Quarterly, which was started in June, 1823. His famous essay on Milton appeared in the Edinburgh Review for August, 1824; and during the next twenty years he was the most brilliant and popular contributor to that periodical. In 1826 he was called to the bar, but though he joined the Northern Circuit, he never practiced. In 1830 he was sent to Parliament by Lord Lansdowne, the father of the present Governor-General of Canada, as member for the pocket-borough of Calne; and in 1832 he was returned to the reformed House as Member for Leeds. In 1834, accompanied by a sister, he went to India, where he remained till 1838, his principal work being the codification of the criminal law. On his return to England in 1839 he was elected Member for Edinburgh, and in 1840 was appointed Secretary of War. In

1842 appeared his spirited Lays of Ancient Rome, and in 1848 the first two volumes of his History of England from the Accession of James II. These were followed in 1855 by two other volumes.

During the latter part of his career Macaulay was the recipient of many marks of public esteem. In 1849 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow; in 1857 he was made foreign associate of the French Academy of Moral and Political Science; and in the same year he was created Baron Macaulay. These honors he did not long enjoy. His health had been failing for many years, and on the 28th of December, 1859, he died in London of heart disease. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. A fifth volume of his history was published in 1861, by his sister, Lady Trevelyan.

Macaulay was a man of remarkable gifts and attainments. He had a marvelous memory; his industry was enormous; his knowledge was vast and varied; and his literary style so clear, incisive and brilliant that for the first time history became in his hands as interesting as fiction. In politics he was a thorough Liberal, and every measure for the advancement of civil or religious liberty was sure of the heartiest support from his eloquent tongue and pen. He has, indeed, been accused of partiality, and his History has been styled a huge Whig pamphlet. But though there is some foundation for this charge, and though some errors have been brought home to him, its substantial truth has never been impugned. His most salient weakness was over-confidence; and his serene self-assurancenever troubled by a speck of doubt―gave point to the epigram of Lord Melbourne, who expressed a wish that he could be "as cock-sure of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything." Notwithsanding this defect, however, his History has remained to this day the most popular historical work ever written, either in England or elsewhere. On the publication of the third and fourth volumes in 1855, an edition of 25,000 was exhausted on the day of issue, and 11,000 other applicants had to wait for a new issue. Messrs. Longman's famous cheque

for the £20,000 represented Macaulay's share of the profits in 1856. In the United States the sale has been even larger. In five years (1849-54) from the publication of the first two volumes no less than 125,000 copies were sold. Of the third and fourth, 73,000 were sold by a single publishing house in New York in ten days; 25,000 in Philadelphia, and other editions were published in Boston and elsewhere. The total sale of these two volumes in England and America during the first four weeks was in excess of 150,000 copies.

The following description of the Puritans in Macaulay's essay on "Milton," is acknowledged to be one of the finest specimens of the literature of this century:

THE PURITANS.

"The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on his intolerable brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between the greatest and the meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from Him on whom their own eyes were constantly fixed. They recognized no title to superiority but his favor; and confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had

charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems, crowns of glory which should never fade away. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt: for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest; who had been destined before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away. Events which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained on his account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the Evangelist and the harp of the prophet. He had been wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had risen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God."

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.

Novelist.

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER was born at Burlington, in New Jersey, on the 15th of September, 1789. His father migrated from New Jersey in 1790, and went to reside in the western part of New York State, upon the head waters of the Susquehanna River. He was the first settler in that wild and inaccessible region through which the New York and Erie Railway now runs, and from him the little hamlet took the name of Cooperstown, which it has retained ever since. Here, in the heart of what was then a wilderness, Fenimore Cooper passed his childhood. Around him there was everything best calculated to impress the mind of the growing boy. He lived on the edge of interminable and unexplored woods, with lakes and streams in abundance scattered all around. Before him lay the might and majesty of nature in her grandest mood. The red Indians, belonging to the Six Nations, surrounded him on all sides. Their habits and languages, their modes of thought, their skill in running a trail, in managing a birch bark canoe, and in mimicking every sound of the woods, became so familiar to the young student and impressed his imagination so deeply, that he was able to reproduce them all in connection with the one character which, under the name of "Leatherstocking," or "La Longue Carabine," or "The Trapper," or "Hawkeye," runs like a golden thread through the skein of all his romances, and invests them with a singular charm. "Leatherstocking,' says Mr. Lounsby, "is the only great original character that American fiction has added to the literature of the world." In addition, however, to opportunities of studying the white hunter