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letters. He seemed disposed to leave them buried in the voluminous 

 journal in which they had appeared. Here, however, it was the honest 

 admiration of the public, not the base desire of a bookseller for 

 gain, which suggested and indeed compelled their separate publica- 

 tion. America set the example : the first collection was made to 

 gratify the laudable curiosity of those who are spreading our language 

 and our literature over a continent to which our island is but a 

 speck in the ocean. However flattering this homage, American edi- 

 tions are not to be implicitly depended upon, and are confined to their 

 own use. It became necessary to answer the demand in England, and 

 edition after edition has followed in rapid unexhausted succession. 

 On these essays (not perhaps fitly so called, at least very unlike the 

 short essays on religious, moral, social subjects, such as Bacon's, 

 Cowley's, Addison's, Johnson's, Goldsmith's) we cannot of course 

 speak at length. They are rather philosophical, or historical dis- 

 quisitions, and are remarkable in the first place for their vast range 

 and variety. Some grapple with the most profound questions, 

 the Baconian philosophy, the law of population against Mr. Sadler, 

 and what is called the Utilitarian philosophy. This essay Macaulay 

 himself, with noble moderation and self-respect, refused to include in 

 his own selection, not because he was disposed to retract one argument, 

 or to recede from the severity of his judgement on the opinions which 

 he undertook to refute, but because he had not done justice to the high 

 character of his adversary, the late Mr. Mill. Some belong to lite- 

 rary criticism, on which he delighted to mingle singularly acute and 

 original observations on the biographies of distinguished authors, their 

 place in society ; and the articles on Dry den, the Comic Dramatists 

 of Charles II., Temple, Addison, Johnson, Byron, are the most 

 full, instructive, and amusing views of the literary life of their re- 

 spective ages, as well as of their specific works. The greater number, 

 however, and doubtless the most valuable of the essays, are those 

 which belong to history ; a few to the history of Europe, Machia- 

 velli, Ranke's Lives of the Popes, Frederick the Great, Mirabeau, 

 Barrere. In these two last, his judgements on the acts and on the 

 men of the French Revolution are very striking. But the chief and 

 the most important are those on English History. This was mani- 

 festly the subject which he had thought on most profoundly, inves- 

 tigated with the greatest industry, and studied down to what we may 



