Macaulay paints; Carlyle reproduces, Macaulay describes: Carlyle's figures live and move, think and act, feel and speak, are human and composite; Macaulay's are picturesque puppetry and semi-mechanical marionettes, and are far more histrionic than historic. Macaulay is an author, but Carlyle is far more; he is an influence, a force,-a force, too, without a rival in our times. Macaulay's history is re-creative, Carlyle's creative. The latter writes to inform and inspirit, the former to gratify and incline to Whiggism; the latter is a productive writer, the former is a reproductive one. Carlyle is a lofty and ardent soul, whose fire, and life, and honest sincerity is felt; Macaulay is a clever and popular man, whose prodigious efforts of culture and power of position made him the darling of a party and the pet of a political circle. Macaulay wanted generous geniality and hearty sympathy, Carlyle possesses a spirit aglow with love for humanity, and his sympathies are so intense that he can enter into the very soul of each of his characters, and learn the very secrets of his mode of life, thought, and individuality. This arises from his genius, his inborn greatness, his poetic gift. The greater writer is certainly he who most influences the vital soul of man. Carlyle has been the influential mind of the age on all the effective men of our time. Macaulay has exerted little or no influence on the thinkers, teachers, and statesmen of the age. Macaulay was an Edinburgh Reviewer, Carlyle is reviewer and reviser of human thought. The man who keeps but a little above the commonplace level of life and thought current in an age, and who, accepting the opinions prevalent in that time, touches them into elegant expression and burnishes them into aphoristic and quotable sentences, is sure to be popular; for he makes himself only the mirror in which the most ordinary minds of the country see themselves reflected, and they accept him as their representative man. But the chief merit of such a man is a millinery dexterity, a manipulative cleverness, a power of management of the materials in hand or in fashion. Such a modish modiste was Macaulay. He caught the watchwords of his party, and played the echo to the opinions entertained by them. He got hold of the few notions which were current among the men of the day who were admired and looked up to, and he put them into a cunning kaleidoscope, wherein he juggled them into unwonted beauty, which dazzled and bewildered and gratified those who saw into what seemingly divine crystallizations the few beads and broken glass got into when turned and twirled in the ambidextrous style of the magicians of parliamentary oratory and review literature. Even his History is more of a showman's catalogue of portraits, and the prestidigitation of puppets, than the impressive exhibition of principles. His general acceptance as the interpreter of a party, his ready acquiescence in party tactics, and his willing reception of a party position as the advocate and apologist of his faction, are all evidences of the essentially mediocre spirit of Macaulay as a man, and consequently as a writer; for, as a writer, an author cannot 1868. D rise higher than his nature. In this relation Macaulay made some telling remarks in his review of the Rev. Robert Montgomery's poems after quoting the lines, "The soul, aspiring, pants its source to mount, As streams meander level with their fount." We take this to be, on the whole, the worst simile in the world. In the first place, no stream meanders, or can possibly meander, level with its fount. In the next place, if streams did meander level with their founts, no two motions can be less like each other than that of meandering level and that of mounting upwards. As streams cannot rise higher than their founts, writers cannot rise higher than their natures; and hence every proof of the mediocrity of a man is an argument of his being commonplace as a writer, in comparison with those great original souls who are the begetters of new truths and influences which operate in changing life. Such a great soul is Thomas Carlyle. In effectiveness, no man of the present age rivals him. He has been the best abused man in all the literary world, and he has been able to withstand the united abuse of both hemispheres, and that, be it remembered, was the product of all the intensest hatred of the world; for the odium theologicum has been poured out very vehemently on his devoted head; the odium politicum has been hurled against him from the highest places; the odium philosophicum has been used to pelt him with its hard names and harsh imprecations; the odium literarium has spilt much splenetic ink upon his reputation; and the odium vulgare has not been spared; but he has overlived them all, and his words, howsoever rugged and unliked, go forth to the ends of the world. He is not only an expositor, he is an impulse, an influence, an original force, a stirrer of the hearts of men. No amount of comparison of extracts can give any adequate exhibition of this difference. It is a whole, as well as a wholesome entireness of being with which Carlyle impresses us; while Macaulay may be judged of by extracts, Carlyle cannot be so. He is full of the "infinite variety" of genius; Macaulay is only full of the "infinite variety" of, as we have said, kaleidoscopic commonplace. To determine what constitutes greatness in a writer is the first thing, and then there comes out the ground of comparison regarding who is the "greater" of the two. Nobody, I presume, ever thought of Macaulay as one of the great new creations of the Infinite Father; he has always been, we think, looked upon as the offspring of his party. Carlyle is the issue of no party. He is an independent and fresh soul. He looks upon the problems of life ab initio, and does not believe in the gospel of custom and the evangelism of British factions. He writes out of the depths of a pure spirit, and does not care to harmonize his views with the conditions of things as they have been from of old. Productiveness is better than reproductiveness, genius is higher than talent, truth is nobler than party, and life is higher than politics; and hence Carlyle is a greater writer than Macaulay. H. W. History. HAS THE PAPACY BEEN BENEFICIAL TO THE WORLD? AFFIRMATIVE ARTICLE.-I. As this question has been set down by the conductors of the British Controversialist in the "History" section, it is quite apparent that they, in their wisdom, have decided that the argumentative contention should be carried on mainly, at all events, regarding the Papacy as a civil institution, rather than as a religious system. It is not necessary, therefore, to be a Papist in belief, or a Romanist in creed, to take the affirmative of the controversy. So far from this, we are of opinion that a discussion of much more worth may be conducted by those who are adverse to the Papacy as a theological power, than by those who believe in its omnipotency as an earthly headship of the Church. The writer of this article is not at all favourable in his sentiments to tyranny of any kind-ecclesiastical or political, but he believes that he may justly affirm that "the Papacy has been beneficial to the world historical fact, and as a reality in human experience. as an In this point of view the question is of intense present interest, as well as of considerable importance as a mere topic in philosophical history. The political value of the Papacy as a temporal institution has become inwoven with all modern history, and has been a matter of very serious concernment to Europe, at least, for the last three quarters of a century. In fact, since the French Revolution, if not before it, the power of the Popedom has been a European question; and this has gathered intensity, especially since the French intervention in 1849. In truth, since the modern unsettlement of the political state of Rome, and the States of the Church as the fief of the father of the faithful Catholic Church under Napoleon I., there have been such constant uneasiness and turmoil in the papal states by insurrection, secession, and civil war. that it has more or less influenced the entire policy of the Governments of South-western Europe at least, and we opine that the French monarch, the King of Italy, the Austrian Emperor, the peninsular Sovereigns, the Prussian Prime Minister, and the British Cabinet have found that the supremacy of the See of Rome is beset behind and before, on the right hand and on the left, by anxieties that, besides being a torment to the other sovereignties, it is itself "With difficulty and with danger compassed round." What can be done with the Papacy? is one of the entrancing political questions of our day. Many people imagine that that topic is only shelved during the tenure of life and office by Pio Nono; while a few others think that the time of the prophecies has fully come, and that the Papacy must fall from its high estate, that the days of the millennial glory may manifest themselves, and Christ may reign instead of Antichrist. The least considerate of men can scarcely look upon the condition of Italy as satisfactory so long as the sighs for national unity, so strongly and thoroughly expressive of the heartfelt grief of the Peninsula of the Boot, are heaved in vain, because Rome, the capital and mistress of the world, is the patrimonial heritage of the See of St. Peter, and Italy is motherless. Italians are ready to say,— "Men, this is the great year of resurrection! All who are in their graves shall hear His voice, And shall come forth! That which twenty centuries since Shout, countrymen! and wake the graves, shout ROME;" while the heart of each true patriot throbs with the hope that Rome will yet again become the head and leader of a regenerated Italy. These mere commonplaces on "the situation," as it is now the cant, if not the slang, of the day to call any occurrence exciting special mark, will show the opportune character of the present debate. We shall endeavour to adhere to its discussion as an historical question, and shall attempt to view it altogether apart from the odium theologicum which usually accompanies the consideration of such topics in so-called Protestant England. The better to do this we may define "the Papacy" as it appears to us in an historical retrospect. The Papacy is not at all synonymous with the Church, not even of the Church visible and militant, not even of the Church Catholic. It is the Church existing in state, as a state with a Capital, and capital powers. Is is the Church in its sovereignty as a body corporate, exercising functions political as well as religious. It is that independent and constituted society standing among the masters and sovereigns of the world, with higher claims and rights than earthly dignities, and a mightier majesty than kings possessed, which though in the world was not of the world; and yet an institution which, without lineal successorship, maintained its corporate existence from the people. It is that centre of energy and system, discipline and influence, which, founded on religion, exerts through a sacerdotal caste, an incorporated priesthood, the power of a temporal sovereignty, as an agency for making more effective the spiritual supremacy which it claimed, and at which it aimed. Of course, the Papacy is here used, like all abstract nouns, as an abbreviated expression for a multitude of separate thoughts gathered into a unity, and grouped into a whole; and it is difficult to get hold of so many of the central ideas as may be held to form the inner essence which supplied the persistency of vital effectiveness to it without a knowledge of the events involved in its appearance as a historical product. If we accept of the bare idea of pontifical supremacy, and if we agglomerate to that all the means and agencies implied in the making of that sovereignty effective, and securing the safety, prosperity, and workableness of the government of the vicar of Christ, perhaps we would come nearest it. It is, in fact, a word which, like our own word parliament, is much more easily understood than defined, analysis, in this as in so many other cases, destroying the life of that which it endeavours to dissect that it may understand. The turning-point in human history is the advent of Christianity. Thereafter the civilization of the world became changed in its direction, and "Westward the course of empire took its way." Amid the contests of Greece and Rome the Church organized itself, fixed its chief dogmas, developed its main doctrines, and set up its new priesthood in the place of the old pagan sacerdotalism, and took its place among powers and potentates. In the hour of the weakness of the Greek empire, and when the Goths and Lombards held Italy in their barbarous grasp, the Pope energetically maintained the dignity and importance of Rome, intimidated the barbarians, animated the Romans, and rivalled in some measure the Greek sway; thus acquiring a prestige which served as a great help to the attainment of temporal sovereignty. Gregory III. declared the independence of Rome, and Pepin and Charlemagne, Rome's Pontiff-rulers, received many augmentations of power and territory. Diplomacy, force, and cunning, swelled the might and the majesty of the Papal States, and the German empire formally acknowledged the exclusive authority of the Pope in a wide district of Italy, and asserted the right of his Holiness to undisputed allegiance. The mighty mind of Hildebrand had seized upon the prime power by which men could be governed; he had clarified, to his own view, the purposes to which his predecessors had aspired-to unite the entire community of the faithful into one banded brotherhood, moved by the same spirit, stirred by the same ambition, and acting from the same motive. He had gathered together the scattered threads of the policy of former Popes, and he had planned out the wondrous scheme which their fitful efforts had only foreshadowed; and he left this great idea of a spiritual government to be worked out by his successors. In this, as we have just stated, they were pretty successful, and had acquired acknowledged sovereign rights among certain states in Rome, together with certain privileges and immunities in many other countries. I grant that there were many tyrannies perpetrated by several holders of the Popedom, but these by no means convince us that the Papacy was not beneficial. Indeed, we think that, great and terrible as the tyrannies of the Popes were, the atrocities of the secular sovereignties would have been far worse had that not been there with a might above monarchs to restrain from evil and to constrain to good. During many centuries |