His many-sided Sympathies. 265 



settled the question. He spoke in a stiff 

 artificial position, with his hand behind his 

 back, and occasionally beating a devil's 

 tattoo on his hat. With respect to India, he 

 had a signal advantage over Burke. He had 

 seen with his own eyes what was only pictured 

 to Burke's rich imagination and splendid 

 fancy. The one seemed in his conceptions 

 to stand by the very rice field and the tank, 

 when he rose to Ciceronian magnificence, 

 and from the Manager's box in the hall of 

 William Rufus, denounced Warren Hastings 

 as the oppressor of India ; while the other 

 with his wondrous pen dipped deep into 

 Indian life itself, and made us hear the very 

 cymbals of the Nabob in the grove of mango- 

 trees on the fatal night before Plassy. 



" Of all Macaulay's reviews, the one on 

 Warren Hastings was considered by the 

 public to be his best ; but he, himself, pre- 

 ferred the earlier one on Lord Clive. The 

 Hall scene in the former, and the description 

 of the Jesuits in his first volume of the 

 ' History of England,' have been committed 

 to memory by thousands of students, and 

 turned over and over again into Latin prose, 



