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and much more if it is to be fully exhibited. It is elicited and expanded by trial, and battles into perfection and supremacy. Nor does it escape the collision of opinion even in its earlier years, nor does it remain truer to itself, and with a better claim to be considered one and the same, though externally protected from vicissitude and change. It is indeed sometimes said that the stream is clearest near the spring. Whatever use may fairly be made of this image, it does not apply to the history of a philosophy or belief, which, on the contrary, is more equable, and purer, and stronger, when its bed has become deep, and broad, and full. It necessarily rises out of an existing state of things, and for a time savours of the soil. Its vital element needs disengaging from what is foreign and temporary, and is employed in efforts after freedom which become more vigorous and hopeful as its years increase. Its beginnings are no measure of its capabilities, nor of its scope. At first no one knows what it is, or what it is worth. It remains perhaps for a time quiescent; it tries, as it were, its limbs, and proves the ground under it, and feels its way. From time to time it makes essays which fail, and are in consequence abandoned. It seems in suspense which way to go; it wavers, and at length strikes out in one definite direction. In time it enters upon strange territory; points of controversy alter their bearing; parties rise and fall around it; dangers and hopes appear in new relations; and old principles reappear under new forms. It changes with them in order to remain the same. In a higher world it is

otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often."1 The image of the river pervades this passage throughout, and yet is never obtrusive and never determines or even constrains the progress of the thought. The imagery simply seems to insinuate the ideas into the reader's mind with a certain novelty of appeal and half-sensuous persuasiveness. Another passage of much this kind has already been quoted, where Newman decribes the adventurous investigator scaling the crags of truth.

Closely akin to this use of figures is Newman's generous use of examples and illustrations. Whatever be the principle he is discussing, he is not content till he has realized it for the reader in tangible, visible form, until he has given it the cogency and intensity of appeal that only sensations or images possess. In all these ways, then, by his idiomatic and colloquial phrasing, by his specific vocabulary, by his delicately adroit use of metaphors, by his carefully elaborated imagery, and by his wealth of examples and illustrations, Newman keeps resolutely close to the concrete, and imparts everywhere to his style warmth, vividness, colour, convincing actuality.

1 'Development of Christian Doctrine," ed. 1891, pp. 39-40.

T. B. MACAULAY: THE BATTLE OF THE

BOYNE.

From "The History of England," London, 1855, vol. iii., ch. xvi., pp. 619-635.

This famous account of the Battle of the Boyne is an excellent example of that mingling of explanation and narrative which makes the best kind of history. The purpose is explanation, the method is narrative; the result is a vivid setting forth of events with their causes and consequences laid bare. The characteristic touch with which the extract ends, "till their King had fled," is the keynote. Though the narrative moves so swiftly and apparently so unconsciously it has all the deliberate selection and arrangement of exposition; all the touches of color and all the graphic detail are steadily subordinated to the larger purposes of the explanation. As a matter of style, it will be noticed how much vigor and swiftness Macaulay gained by the shortness of his sentences; this device, which in his other writings becomes sometimes a tiresome mannerism, is for his purpose here of invaluable service. I may point, too, to Macaulay's scrupulous care in referring to the authorities from which he drew his facts: this is the invariable habit of a scholarly mind.

ON the twenty-fourth of June, the tenth day after William's landing, he marched southward from Loughbrickland with all his forces. He was William marches fully determined to take the first opportunity of fighting. Schomberg and some other officers recommended caution and delay. But the

southward.

King answered that he had not come to Ireland to let the grass grow under his feet. The event seems to prove that he judged rightly as a general. That he judged rightly as a statesman cannot be doubted. He knew that the English nation was discontented with the way in which the war had hitherto been conducted; that nothing but rapid and splendid success could revive the enthusiasm of his friends and quell the spirit of his enemies; and that a defeat could scarcely be more injurious to his fame and to his interests than a languid and indecisive campaign.

The country through which he advanced had, during eighteen months, been fearfully wasted both by soldiers and by Rapparees. The cattle had been slaughtered the plantations had been cut down: the fences and houses were in ruins. Not a human soul was to be found near the road, except a few naked and meagre wretches who had no food but the husks of oats, and who were seen picking those husks, like chickens, from amidst dust and cinders. Yet, even under such disadvantages, the natural fertility of the country, the rich green of the earth, the bays and rivers so admirably fitted for trade, could not but strike the King's observant eye. Perhaps he thought how different an aspect that unhappy region would have presented if it had been blessed with such a government and such a religion as had made his native Holland the wonder of the world; how endless a succession of pleasure houses, tulip gardens and dairy farms would have lined the road from Lisburn 1 Story's Impartial Account.

to Belfast; how many hundred of barges would have been constantly passing up and down the Laggan; what a forest of masts would have bristled in the desolate port of Newry; and what vast warehouses and stately mansions would have covered the space occupied by the noisome alleys of Dundalk. "The country," he was heard to say, "is worth fighting for."

The original intention of James seems to have been to try the chances of a pitched field on the border between Leinster and Ulster. The Irish army But this design was abandoned, in conse- retreats. quence, apparently, of the representations of Lauzun, who, though very little disposed and very little qualified to conduct a campaign on the Fabian system, had the admonitions of Louvois still in his ears.1 James, though resolved not to give up Dublin without a battle, consented to retreat till he should reach some spot where he might have the vantage of ground. When therefore William's advanced guard reached Dundalk, nothing was to be seen of the Irish army, except a great cloud of dust which was slowly rolling southwards towards Ardee. The English halted one night near the ground on which Schomberg's camp had been pitched in the preceding year; and many sad recollections were awakened by the sight of that dreary marsh, the sepulchre of thousands of brave men.2

Still William continued to push forward, and still the Irish receded before him, till, on the morning of

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