Amen!" The third verse is omitted, and three verses from the Rev. John Cennick introduced. The hymn in its altered form has been copied into many collections of hymns, and by different compilers attributed to both Madan and Cennick.

In the year 1776, the Rev. Augustus M. Toplady published a hymnbook entitled, "Psalms and Hymns for Public and Private Worship," in which he alters and prints many of the hymns of the Wesleys, but the limits of this paper forbid their notice.

Mr. Wesley's alterations of Dr. Watts were very few, and in no instance was the sense injured, but, on the contrary, was always improved. Take the following as a specimen :

WATTS.

"The God that rules on high,

And thunders when He please, That rides upon the stormy sky, And manages the seas."

ALTERED BY WESLEY.

"The God that rules on high,

That all the earth surveys, That rides upon the stormy sky, And calms the roaring seas."

The alterations in the remainder are very slight, and are as follows: hymn 39, Dr. Watts begins the first and the ninth verses with, " Our God, our help," Wesley, "O God! our help." In the second line of verse two Dr. Watts writes, "Thy saints have dwelt secure, Wesley, "Still may we dwell secure." The fourth verse of Dr. Watts is omitted, the fifth is the same as Watts. In line two of verse six Watts writes, "With all their lives and cares," Wesley, "With all their cares and fears," which makes the rhyme of the second and fourth lines complete; "fears," and "years," being more consonant than "cares," and "years," as written by Dr. Watts. The seventh verse is the same as Dr. Watts; Wesley omits the eighth verse; in the ninth Watts writes, in the third and fourth lines, "Be thou our guard while troubles last, And our eternal home," Wesley, "Be thou our guard while life shall last, And our perpetual home."

Hymn 215. In the first line of the first stanza Dr. Watts has, "I'll praise my Maker with my breath," Wesley, "I'll praise my Maker while I've breath," the second stanza is omitted by Wesley, the third is an exact copy. Dr. Watts in the fourth writes, "The Lord hath eyes to give the blind; The Lord supports the sinking mind," Wesley, "The Lord pours eye-sight on the blind; The Lord supports the fainting mind."

Hymn 216. Watts has eight verses, Wesley omits the second and fourth. Watts in the second line of the first verse writes, "Our hearts and voices," Wesley, "Your hearts and voices;" Watts in the third line of verse seven writes, "The nimble wit," Wesley, "The piercing wit."

Hymn 217 is from Watts' Lyric Poems, entitled, "A Song to Creative Wisdom," in four parts, and contains eighteen stanzas. Wesley retains nine of them, with only one or two verbal alterations.

Hymn 307 is also from Lyric Poems, and has six verses, Wesley omits the second. Watts writes in the third verse, "Thy dazzling beauties whilst he sings," Wesley, "Thee, while the first archangel sings;" in the last verse, third line, Watts writes, "A sacred reverence," Wesley, "A solemn reverence."

Few persons would be disposed to find fault with the above alterations by Mr. Wesley; and it will be admitted by all, as the Rev. Samuel W. Christophers observes, ("Hymn Writers and their Hymns,") that "John Wesley's touches are, for the most part, delicate but effective. By the slightest stroke he sometimes turns weakness into strength, commonplaces into beauties, and irregularity into order. A transforming word or two, now and then,...calls up grandeur from what was puerile or mean." "The Presbyterian Quarterly Review" says of Wesley's complaint: "This is scarcely too severe, in view of the liberties which incompetent men have sometimes taken with the very best productions of our best hymnwriters. The Wesleys have not suffered alone; we daily meet with hymns, by other authors, whose power, both lyrical and devotional, has not merely sustained loss, but has been wholly destroyed, by the process of emasculation and of change which they have undergone at the hands of men who have had no sufficient genius to appreciate the excellency of the poetry, and no sufficiently deep Christian experience to apprehend those high standards of assurance and holiness which they disclosed."

JAMES STELFOX.

LORD MACAULAY.*

FIRST PAPER.

LORD MACAULAY died in the last week of December, 1859; his biography has now been some two months before the public. No explanation of the delay is offered, nor does the work contain any indication of its reason. To write the Life of his Uncle was a duty Mr. Trevelyan felt it incumbent upon him to fulfil, especially as nothing of his personal history can be found in his works. The world is laudably curious about its great men, and eagerly welcomes any account of them that has any pretensions to trustworthiness. Interesting the memoirs of so distinguished a man as Thomas Babington Macaulay must be the prominent part he played in politics, the figure he made in society, the contributions to our national literature he has left behind him, unite to render his countrymen glad to know what manner of man he was. On the whole, the reading public will be satisfied with these volumes; they present their subject to the world as only his most cherished intimates could have seen him. But-to say nothing of the mingled advantage and disadvantage inseparable from the near relation of his biographer to himthe work manifests two serious faults, the one as to its conception, the other as to its tone. Two alternative methods of arranging the "life" and the "letters" might be followed: the life might be written in periods, and the letters relating to each period appended thereto; or the life and letters might be woven into one continuous narrative. Either arrangement would be perspicuous, but the attempt to combine the two after Mr. Trevelyan's fashion only results in confusion and bewilderment. Perhaps, to the same cause must be ascribed the apparent sketchiness of the outline, and a disappointing absence of detail in the filling-in. It

"The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. By his Nephew, George Otto Trevelyan, M.P." London: Longmans, Green and Co. 1876.

is possible, however, that the author thought his uncle's letters a sufficient revelation of his personality. For the acrimony with which nearly every one is treated who opposed Lord Macaulay, or who came into literary competition with him, there can be no such excuse. Spiteful is the mildest term that can be applied to certain of the letters that ought never to have seen the light. These criticisms we were bound to pen; for the future, we confine ourselves almost exclusively to Lord Macaulay's private life.

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY issued from a good stock. His paternal ancestors for several generations were ministers in the Scotch Church, and manifested intellectual ability. Of the famous band to whom we owe the suppression of the slave-trade, the most unobtrusive and not the least assiduous and efficient was his father, Zachary Macaulay. Celebrated as the son became, it may well be questioned whether the world is not at least as deeply indebted to the man who sacrificed "really great offers" from his horror of slavery, at a time when many of the most pious and enlightened were not ashamed to be proprietors of human flesh; who for six years guided the infant settlement at Sierra Leone, till its career of prosperity commenced; who devoted his every energy to promote the freedom and elevation of an oppressed and degraded race; who -to quote his epitaph in Westminster Abbey-" meekly endured the toil, the privation, and the reproach, resigning to others the praise and the reward." The mother was a Miss Mills, daughter of a highly respectable Bristol merchant, a friend and pupil of Hannah More. Old Mr. Mills was a Quaker, and strongly attached to his sect. When in London, his son went to hear Rowland Hill, and lost a new hat in the chapel. John," said his father, seriously, "John, if thee 'd gone to the right place of worship, thee 'd have kept thy hat upon thy head."

Zachary Macaulay and Selina Mills were married, August 26th, 1799, immediately after the final return of the former from his African Government. Their son was born at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, the residence of Mr. Macaulay's sister's husband, October 25th, 1800. The first two years of his life were passed at the offices of the Sierra Leone Company, Birchin Lane, of which his father had been appointed secretary; the remainder of his childhood in High Street, Clapham. A precocious youngster he was, yet modest withal.

"From the time that he was three years old he read incessantly, for the most part lying on a rug before the fire, with his book on the ground, and a piece of bread and butter in his hand. A very clever woman who then lived in the house as parlour maid, told how he used to sit in his nankeen frock, perched on the table by her as she was cleaning the plate, and expounding to her out of a volume as big as himself. He did not care for toys, but was very fond of taking his walk, when he would hold forth to his companion, whether nurse or mother, telling interminable stories out of his own head, or repeating what he had been reading in language far above his years. His memory retained without effort the phraseology of the book which he had been last engaged on, and he talked, as the maid said, 'quite printed words,' which produced an effect that appeared formal, and often, no doubt, exceedingly droll. Mrs. Hannah More was fond of relating how she called at Mr. Macaulay's, and

was met by a fair, pretty, slight child, with abundance of light hair, about four years of age, who came to the front door to receive her, and tell her that his parents were out, but that if she would be good enough to come in he would bring her a glass of old spirits: a proposition which greatly startled the good lady, who never aspired beyond cowslip wine. When questioned as to what he knew about old spirits, he could only say that Robinson Crusoe often had some. About this period his father took him on a visit to Lady Waldegrave at Strawberry Hill, and was much pleased to exhibit to his old friend the fair, bright boy, dressed in a green coat with red collar and cuffs, a frill at the throat, and white trousers. After some time had been spent among the wonders of the Oxford Collection, of which he ever after carried a catalogue in his head, a servant who was waiting upon the company in the great gallery spilt some hot coffee over his legs. The hostess was all kindness and compassion, and when, after a while, she asked how he was feeling, the little fellow looked up in her face and replied: Thank you, madam, the agony is abated.'”

Scarcely had the boy learned to write when he began to compose. His first recorded effort was ambitious enough—a Universal History; he contrived to compress an account of the events from the Creation to the year of our Lord 1808, into about a quire of paper-foolscap, undoubtedly. His next effort was a tract on the evidences of Christianity, designed to convert the heathen of Travancore. Then followed epic

poems by the half-dozen, and bymns by the score. He was never without some subject for his pen; indeed, so rapidly and abundantly did they occur to him that he rarely finished what he had begun. His parents discerned his uncommon genius, and lovingly preserved the sheets he carelessly neglected. But they were far too wise to permit him to count his own talents, and he grew well nigh to manhood without suspecting that he was cleverer than the majority of his companions. By the time he had attained his twelfth year, he had learnt all that his schoolmaster at Clapham was likely to teach him. His father, therefore, sent him to a private school, kept by the Rev. Mr. Preston, at Little Shelford, near Cambridge. Mr. Preston was a clergyman of the extreme Low Church type, with all the faults and all the excellencies peculiar to that party. He showed himself a first-rate teacher; his little establishment produced several men eminent in the scholastic world, among whom may be particularised the present Professor of Greek at University College, London. Here young Macaulay studied hard, and received much attention from Dean Milner, then at the acme of his celebrity. Frequent and lengthy letters passed between the boy and his father and mother, who encouraged him to write to them freely on any matter that occupied his thoughts. Criticisms of books, accounts of study, sketches of character, comments on politics, abound in these juvenile epistles, side by side with expressions of the warmest affection and longings for the holidays, that he may visit again his dearly-loved home. The parental letters breathe a strong religious spirit; his mother writes with regard to an approaching examination about his success, in which the son appears a little too eager: "Spare no time or trouble to render each piece as perfect as you can, and then leave the event without one anxious thought....Do your best, because it is the will of God you

should improve every faculty to the utmost now, and strengthen the powers of your mind by exercise, and then, in future, you will be better enabled to glorify God with all your powers and talents, be they of a more humble or higher order, and you shall not fail to be received into everlasting habitations, with the applauding voice of your Saviour, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.' You see how ambitious your mother is. She must have the wisdom of her son acknowledged before angels, and an assembled world. My wishes can soar no higher, and they can be content with nothing less for any of my children. The first time I saw your face, I repeated those beautiful lines of Watts' cradle hymn,

'May'st thou live to know and fear Him,
Trust and love Him all thy days;

Then go dwell for ever near Him,

See His face, and sing His praise.'

And this is the substance of all my prayers for you."

Of the many specimens of the youth's correspondence, printed by Mr. Trevelyan, the following may serve as a fair sample. It should be premised that Mr. Macaulay was the editor of the "Christian Observer," and that some officious friend had complained to him of the schoolboy's too free use of his lungs :

"MY DEAR MAMMA,

"SHELFORD, April 11th, 1814.

"The news is glorious indeed! Peace! peace with a Bourbon; with a descendant of Henri Quatre: with a prince who is bound to us by all the ties of gratitude! I have some hopes that it will be a lasting peace; that the troubles of the last twenty years may make kings and nations wiser. I cannot conceive a greater punishment to Buonaparte than that which the Allies have inflicted on him. How can his ambitious mind support it? All his great projects and schemes, which once made every throne in Europe tremble, are buried in the solitude of an Italian isle. How miraculously everything has been conducted! We almost seem to hear the Almighty saying to the fallen tyrant, For this cause have I raised thee up, that I might show in thee My power.'

"As I am in very great haste with this letter, I shall have but little time to write. I am sorry to hear that some nameless friend of papa's denounced my voice as remarkably loud. I have accordingly resolved to speak in a moderate key, except on the undermentioned special occasions: Imprimis, when I am speaking at the same time with three others. Secondly, when I am praising the Christian Observer.' Thirdly, when I am praising Mr. Preston or his sisters, I may be allowed to speak in my loudest voice, that they may hear me.

"I saw to-day that greatest of Churchmen, that pillar of orthodoxy that true friend to the Liturgy, that mortal enemy to the Bible Society, -Herbert Marsh, D.D., Professor of Divinity on Lady Margaret's foundation. I stood looking at him for about ten minutes, and shall always continue to maintain that he is a very ill-favoured gentleman as far as outward appearance is concerned. I am going this week to spend a day