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would be their appropriate motto, and the events that actually 
happen often verify the saying that truth is stranger than 
fiction. ... 
There is an old Scotch proverb, “ Give a romancer a hair 
and he will make a tether of it,” and this applies to a certain 
school of writers of history. Out of a scrap of prose or a line 
of verse, or a broken fragment of an inscription, they will, by 
the aid of an active imagination, construct whole pages of nar- 
rative. The character of a people and the state of its society 
will be inferred from a few lines which may, when they were 
written, have been quite untrue, or mere satire, or a gross 
exaggeration. The historian in modern times who has been 
most conspicuous for the use of such materials is Lord Macaulay. 
The result is, that not consciously but inevitably truth is sa- 
crificed to effect. I will mention two instances of this his 
account of the Highlands, and his account of the state of the 
English clergy in the seventeenth century. 
It is not pleasant to detract from the merit of a work ot 
such brilliancy as Lord Macaulay^s History, but it is impossible 
not to see that he has been misled into many great mistakes. 
I speak not now of his almost bitter hatred of the Duke or 
Marlborough, which induces him to paint his character in the 
blackest -colours, and his almost idolatrous admiration ot 
William III., which induces him to palliate all his faults, even 
that of faithlessness to his wife ; but I allude to specific facts, 
in which the historian has been shown to be utterly wrong, and 
I would recommend those who doubt it to read the New Examen, 
bv Mr. Paget (London, 1861), in which the author has, with 
admirable acumen, instituted “ an inquiry into the evidence 
relating to certain passages in Lord Macaulay’s History. e 
has shown, I think satisfactorily, that Lord Macaulay has been 
inaccurate and unjust in his- account of the execution by 
Claverhouse, of Brown, the so-called Christian carrier ; that he 
has confounded William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, 
with a George Penn, in describing a disreputable transaction 
relative to the maids of Taunton ; and that he is mistaken in 
several other matters of fact. 
I have often thought how strangely history would have 
to be rewritten, if we could summon from the world of spirits 
those who were the chief actors in many of the events which it 
records, and obtain from them a true version of such events. 
How manv motives would then be disclosed of which we now 
know nothing ! How many inferences would be shown to be 
erroneous ! How many facts would be altered in their com- 
plexion ! And yet, in fairness, I ought to mention, how seldom 
it has happened that popular verdicts, with respect to the 
