In holy anger and pious grief

He solemnly cursed that rascally thief!

He cursed him at board, he cursed him in bed,
From the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.
He cursed him in sleeping, that every night

He should dream of the devil and wake in a fright.
He cursed him in eating, he cursed him in drinking,
He cursed him in coughing, in sneezing, and winking;
He cursed him in sitting, in standing, in lying;
He cursed him in walking, in riding, in flying;
He cursed him living, he cursed him dying!
Never was heard such a terrible curse.

But what gave rise

To no little surprise,

Nobody seemed one penny the worse!

But the poor little jackdaw pined away until

His eye so dim,

So wasted each limb

That heedless of grammar they all cried, That's him !

Then he led them to his nest, and sure enough

there was the ring.

Then the great Lord Cardinal called for his book,
And off that terrible curse he took ;

The mute expression

Served in lieu of confession.

And being thus coupled with full restitution,
The Jackdaw got plenary absolution.

Another story, "The Knight and the Lady," is even better. It relates how "Sir Thomas the

Good was a man of a very contemplative mood, and would pose by the hour o'er a weed or a flower." The Lady Jane, however, would not accompany Sir Thomas on the excursions, being much younger than her spouse, remaining at home engaged in

Propounding receipts for some delicate fare,

Some toothsome conserve of quince, apple, or pear,
Or distilling strong waters, or potting a hare,
Or counting her spoons and her crockeryware.
Nay, more; don't suppose

With such doings as those

This account of her merits must come to a close;
No; examine her conduct more closely-you'll find
She by no means neglected improving her mind;
For there, all the while, with air quite bewitching,
She sat herring-boning, tambouring, and stitching,
Or having an eye to affairs in the kitchen.
Close by her side

Sat her kinsman, McBride,

Her cousin, fourteen times removed, as you'll see
If you look at the Ingoldsby family tree,

When among the collateral branches appears
Captain Dugald MacBride, Royal Scots Fusileers,
And I doubt if you'd find in the whole of his clan
A more high intelligent, worthy young man ;
And there he'd be sitting,

While she was a-knitting,

Or hemming, or stitching, or darning, or fitting,
Or putting a "gore," or a "gusset," or "bit" in ;
Reading aloud, with a very grave look,

Some very wise law from some very good book;

Some such pious divine as

St. Thomas Aquinas ;

Or, equally charming,
The works of Bellarmine,

Or else he unravels

The voyages and travels

Of Hacklutz (how sadly these Dutch names do sully verse),
Purchas', Hawksworth's, or Lemuel Gulliver's-
Not to name others, 'mongst whom there are few so
Admired as John Bunyan or Robinson Crusoe.
No matter who came,

It was always the same,

The captain was reading aloud to the dame,

Till, from having gone through half the books on the shelf, She was almost as wise as Sir Thomas himself.

Sir Thomas disappears, and after a great search is found in a pond, into which he had tumbled while in search of botanical specimens. His pockets are full of eels, which prove so delicious that the Lady Jane suggests that "the body" should be "set again set again" to catch more.

Barham lived on terms of social intimacy with the other famous wits of his time, Theodore Hook, Tom Moore, and Sydney Smith, and with the latter in particular was quite intimate. Many are the anecdotes concerning them that still survive.

LORD MACAULAY.

(1800-1859.)

"I WISH," said Lord Melbourne once, "I was as cocksure of anything as Macaulay is of everything." Certain it is that wonderful memory held at instant command the treasures of a vast and varied reading, and among Englishmen since the days of Johnson and Burke no man was so well equipped for conversation as Macaulay. And not for conversation only but for writing also, as his essays and history show. It has been the fashion among critics for the past quarter of a century to depreciate Macaulay, to ridicule his style and challenge his accuracy. Leslie Stephen smiles at his "snip-snap style," John Morley deplores its influence on modern writers, and Abraham Hayward made several successful burlesques of it. Macaulay himself in an entry in his diary says of his style: "I think my manner a very good manner, but it comes near to being a very bad one, and those faults in me which are the most

noticeable are those that are the most easily imitated." So his historical accuracy has been questioned by many writers of ability and doubtless there are blots in his history. He was not just to William Penn and he too much magnified his hero, William of Orange, but after all his account of the Revolution of 1688, the causes leading thereto and the results therefrom will remain as the only true account of that eventful period in English history.

And as for his style, it was his style and not that of any one else. any one else. The most successful imitators of it are Froude and McMaster, and they sometimes seem the true Amphytrions, because they come very near to having the same mental and literary equipment that Macaulay had.

For the excellence of Macaulay's style lies not so much in the crisp sentences, in the striking antitheses and the extreme lucidity, as in the wonderful fulness of allusion and suggestion. It is not the form in which the thought is expressed, admirable as that is, that strikes us, but the matter therein contained. Thackeray, himself a master of style, expresses his opinion of it in the "Round-about Papers":

Take at hazard any three pages of the essays or history, and, glimmering below the stream of the narrative, as it were,