that power of fitting the subtilest thought like the skin, which Sterne's prose possesses. One rare quality, however, Macaulay possesses in a remarkable degree: he never allows himself for a moment to be careless, vulgar, or slipshod. Every person and every thing is called by the right name, and no other. And because he did all this, because he wrote such clear and well-chosen English that the printer's reader himself never had to read his sentences twice over, therefore men who can not write as he could talk glibly of his "mannerism," and so forth. Everybody must have some manner. Macaulay had a good manner, and not a bad one, and therefore he is found fault with. In all this Macaulay has left to every writer of English an example which every writer of English will do well to follow. The care which Macaulay took to write, before all things, good and clear English, may be followed by writers who make no attempt to imitate his style, and who may be led by nature to some quite different style of their own. Many styles which are quite unlike one another may all be equally good, but no style can be good which does not use pure and straightforward English. No style can be good where the reader has to read a sentence twice over to find out its meaning. In these ways the writings of Macaulay may be a direct model to writers and speakers whose natural taste, whose subject, or whose audience may lead them to a style quite unlike his. In every language, and in every kind of writing, purity of speech and clearness of expression must be the first virtues of all. 1.- TRAVELING IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. [The following selection is from the famous "third chapter" of Macaulay's History of England; in which he illustrates the principle, long before stated by him, that the historian should not confine his attention to the doings of kings and courts, but should set forth social conditions. The details have relation to England in the latter part of the seventeenth century.] THE chief cause which made the fusion1 of the different elements of society so imperfect was the extreme difficulty which our ancestors found in passing from place to place. Of all inventions, the alphabet and the printing-press alone excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done most for the civilization of our species. Every improvement of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and intellectually as well as materially, and not only facilitates the interchange of the various productions of nature and art, but tends to remove national and provincial antipathies, and to bind together all the branches of the great human family. In the seventeenth century the inhabitants of London were, for almost every practical purpose, farther from Reading 5 than they now are from Edinburgh, and farther from Edinburgh than they now are from Vienna. It was by the highways that both travelers and goods generally passed from place to place; and those 1 fusion, mingling of class with class. 2 abridge. Give a synonym. 8 locomotion. See Glossary. 4 antipathies, prejudiced dislikes. 5 Reading. Locate this town. highways appear to have been far worse than might have been expected from the degree of wealth and civilization which the nation had even then attained. On the best lines of communication, the ruts were deep, the descents precipitous, and the way often such as it was hardly possible to distinguish, in the dusk, from the uninclosed heath and fen which lay on both sides. Ralph Thoresby,' the antiquary, was in danger of losing his way on the Great North road, between Barnby Moor and Tuxford, and actually lost his way between Doncaster and York. Pepys 2 and his wife, traveling in their own coach, lost their way between Newbury and Reading. In the course of the same tour they lost their way near Salisbury, and were in danger of having to pass the night on the plain. It was only in fine weather that the whole breadth of the road was available for wheeled vehicles. Often the mud lay deep on the right and the left, and only a narrow track of firm ground rose above the quagmire. At such times obstructions and quarrels were frequent; and the path was sometimes blocked up during a long time by carriers, neither of whom would break the way. It happened almost every day that coaches stuck fast, until a team of cattle could be procured from some neighboring farm to tug them out of the slough. 1 Ralph Thoresby, a volumin- | 1703), secretary to the British ous English antiquarian writer of Admiralty during the reigns of the latter part of the seventeenth Charles II. and James II., is best and early part of the eighteenth cen-known from the very amusing tury. Diary of his times which he left 2 Pepys, Samuel Pepys (1632- | behind him. But in bad seasons the traveler had to encounter inconveniences still more serious. Thoresby, who was in the habit of traveling between Leeds and the capital, has recorded, in his Diary, such a series of perils and disasters as might suffice for a journey to the Frozen Ocean or to the Desert of Sahara. On one occasion he learned that the floods were out between Ware and London, that passengers had to swim for their lives, and that a higgler1 had perished in the attempt to cross. In consequence of these tidings, he turned out of the high-road, and was conducted across some meadows, where it was necessary for him to ride to the saddle-skirts in water. In the course of another journey he narrowly escaped being swept away by an inundation of the Trent. He was afterward detained at Stamford four days, on account of the state of the roads, and then ventured to proceed only because fourteen members of the House of Commons, who were going up in a body to Parliament with guides and numerous attendants, took him into their company. The markets were often inaccessible 2 during several months. It is said that the fruits of the earth were sometimes suffered to rot in one place, while in another place, distant only a few miles, the supply fell far short of the demand. The wheeled carriages were, in this district, generally pulled by oxen. When Prince George of Denmark visited the stately mansion of Petworth 3 1 higgler, one who carries about | 1708) married the Princess Anne of provisions for sale. England (daughter of James II.), and when she became queen he was 2 inaccessible. Define. 8 George of Denmark (1653– | made lord high admiral of England. in wet weather, he was six hours in going nine miles; and it was necessary that a body of sturdy hinds1 should be on each side of his coach, in order to prop it. Of the carriages which conveyed his retinue, several were upset and injured. A letter from one of the party has been preserved, in which the unfortunate courtier complains that, during fourteen hours, he never once alighted, except when his coach was overturned or stuck fast in the mud. On the best highways, heavy articles were, in the time of Charles the Second, generally conveyed from place to place by stage-wagons. In the straw of these vehicles nestled a crowd of passengers who could not afford to travel by coach or on horseback, and who were prevented by infirmity, or by the weight of their luggage, from going on foot. The expense of transmitting heavy goods in this way was enormous. From London to Birmingham the charge was seven pounds a ton; from London to Exeter, twelve pounds a ton. This was about fifteen pence a ton for every mile, more by a third than was afterward charged on turnpike roads, and fifteen times what is now demanded by railway companies. The cost of conveyance amounted to a prohibitory tax2 on many useful articles. Coal in particular was never seen except in the districts where it was produced, or in the districts to which it could be carried by sea, and was, indeed, always known in the South of England by the name of sea-coal. On by-roads, and generally throughout the country 1 hinds, peasants. 1 2 prohibitory tax. Explain. |