were not at an end; he transferred them to France, to stimulate the Society established in Paris for the abolition of slavery. Publications were written by him in French on the state of Hayti, on the state of the English colonies, of the West Indies, on the shocking condition of the French colonies; these works were composed during the weakness of his later years, and were acknowledged with the deepest gratitude by the anti-slavery societies both of England and of France. Nor were his labours confined to this department; he was no less busily employed on the other great questions which arose during the agitated period of Wilberforce's public life. When the great question of the admission of missionaries to India, at the renewal of the Charter, was discussed, he was the man on whom all relied to prepare evidence and stir up petitions. The ostensible actors were members of Parliament and East India directors. Grant took an effective part at the India House; various members, with Wilberforce as their leader, took part within the House, where evidence was heard at the bar; deputations waited on Government, and the question was keenly debated on the floor of the House. But the real workshop was behind; there lay the manufactory which wrought and moulded the opinions of the country. Henry Thornton, writing in the spring of 1812 to Bowdler, and bringing up, as he tells him, the latest news on the question in which both were interested, writes thus :-"We are occupied chiefly about the religious part of the East Indian subject. Petitions pour in in immense numbers, and if the Secretary of State was to break into the house of the chief conspirator against the peace of India, which is no other than that of Babington, he would find there some hundred petitions ready for presentation, and doubtless a variety of other seditious papers, and our whole plan for organizing the country. Macaulay is in truth the real agent who has written his circulars, and received those petitions in answer." Such services, laborious and unostentatious as they were, were not merely unrewarded; they exposed him to bitter attacks. It was well known by those interested in the Slavery question, that his unwearied brain and his inflexible purpose gave to the Abolition cause its backbone and sinews. The planters hated and feared him; they maligned his character and his motives: they whispered stories against him in secret, and at length slander, emboldened by impunity, took shape, substance, and size. They had ransacked his life and history in the West Indies in order to find charges against him, but there they failed. At last they turned to Africa, and they found a governor, who had succeeded him in Sierra Leone, who was induced to trump up a miserable accusation against him in 1814. He was not, indeed, moved by this, or disturbed. His friends were more vexed than he. "Poor Macaulay," writes Wilberforce, "after all his sufferings, labours, and disinterestedness for Africa, is in reality put on his defence, showing the mortification of many even well disposed people, jealous, and taken up with idle and malignant tales against him. . . . . Yet he will come pure out of the fire." He met the attack with a prompt refutation; and the report of the Sierra Leone committee, which sat on the case, dispelled the cloud, and cleared his character. He might have demanded more than an acquittal; he might have insisted on the censure of his adversary, and "pressed," says Wilberforce, "for a more triumphant, and really therefore more just, vindication." But this would have caused a division among the supporters of Abolition, and therefore he forbore. (Wilb. Life, vol. iv. pp. 152-3.) With perfect calmness he took the penalties of his post, as well as its labours. Why he so bore himself, why he so meekly suffered, appears in the letters which passed between him and Wilberforce during his residence in Africa, on which our limits, already exceeded, forbid us to enter. But one thing stands out clear-that self-renunciation was his characteristic. He had many tastes; but when duty called him, he gave them up. He had a taste for science, and he was glad, when he could, to attend the meetings of the Royal Society; but he allowed himself little leisure for science. He had a taste for literature. In that branch in which his son became distinguished, he might have gained money and fame. His grasp of facts was great; his style was vigorous. His monthly review of politics in this periodical was singularly terse and clear; but in literature he took (as was his wont) the post which has the hardest work and least fame. He became Editor of this periodical, holding unfashionable opinions, proclaiming obnoxious doctrines. He managed it with singular tact; he prevailed on persons to write in it whom none but he could persuade. He induced Henry Thornton to write, and Robert Grant, and Wilberforce, and Bowdler. Their writings were known and noticed; his part was in the shade. He had talents for business. These he might have turned to full account, and thus made himself rich; but he turned from business to work the work of the philanthropist, and so remained poor. He was social; he loved days of leisure, and the ease, which all men love; but he rarely took rest. Hannah More was his valued friend: she was always entreating him to come to Barley Wood, and to enjoy the repose of the country. He esteemed her, and he would fain have enjoyed rest and her society; but his visits were few, and they were brief. He was wanted for the drudgery of London, and from that drudgery he would not depart. In the autumn holidays of 1823 his old friend Wilberforce writes to him from North Wales:-"I wish that you could view the prospect from my window-Cader Idris in all his grandeur. But you, my dear friend, are better employed; brightening a crown, I trust, for future honour, and benefitting your fellow-creatures." Hours of ease, literary fame, the poet's laurels, the writer's gains, had no charms for him. One object filled his eye and engrossed his soul: "He had heard the bay of the bloodhound On the track of the hunted slave, The lash and the curse of the master, He had seen in the cane fields of Jamaica the negro's weary step and sunken lot; he had watched him toiling under tropical suns, and engaged through the long nights in the intolerable pressure of sugar straining. In these works he had seen. him faint and fail. He had tracked him to his African home by the steaming rivers of reeds and mangoes, and he felt that he loved that home as fondly as the Highlander loves his hut in the glens of Sutherland and Argyle. From the reedy banks of Africa he had seen him torn, bound, manacled, and driven like a beast on shipboard, to be squeezed into a stifling hold, to die worse than the death of a dog, and to be flung like carrion into the waves. The memory of these horrors haunted him, and he never rested till they were put down. He lived to see the British Parliament fling slavery from it as an accursed thing, with great risk, at heavy cost. When he saw this, he was content. Yet not so; for he then took across to France his unconquerable ardour, and he wrought, by repeated publications, to instruct and to enlighten the French mind. With him the desire of African freedom was the master desire to which all other feelings and labours were subordinated. He was active in other departments of philanthropy, but always with a reserve in his own mind for this. He was one of the original founders of the Bible Society; but it was with the hope that Africa would enjoy the Bible. He was one of the earliest supporters of the Church Missionary Society, but it was that its first efforts should be turned to Africa; and before ten years had passed he had the satisfaction of seeing four missions planted on African soil. These were his labours. It was these which left on his wrinkled countenance that look of weariness, and lines of care. He continued his work when nature and its growing infirmities bade him cease. They counselled rest, but rest he would not take while these evils endured. Illness at length, sure and disabling, baffled the indomitable mind. Two years of suffering, and then, in his seventy-first year, in May, 1838, came the welcome rest. By that time, in spite of his selfrenunciation, he was known. The French Society for the Abolition of Slavery had already enrolled his name in golden letters by the side of Wilberforce. A large subscription, headed by the highest names in both Houses of Parliament, supported by all the best friends of the Abolition cause, was gathered. They raised a monument to his memory in the Abbey of Westminster, where, in later years, his distinguished son was to be laid. These were records which he no ways sought, and of which he was not ambitious. One thing he had sought he had lived in his Master's eye, in the light of high endeavour, pursuing beneficent duties, in humble reverence for the Divine commands. Nor can we doubt that, when the story of earth is closed, and labours of good men are reckoned up and recorded, his will be found a high place on the roll of those who have served humanity in the faith and fear of God; and though content to live unknown on earth, he will then have a bright and a durable crown. THE SIXTEENTH DECISIVE BATTLE OF THE WORLD: WE have often wondered that Mr. Creasy did not add the siege of Jerusalem to the fifteen decisive battles of the world. The siege is one of the greatest of historic events, and has peculiar points of the greatest interest. It stands alone among those decisive battles as the subject of prophecy; it surpasses all those other battles in the extent and duration of its results. The destruction of the capital of the Jews has been followed by a dispersion which has lasted for 1800 years; and still the race continues, telling, through all those centuries, upon the character, and influencing the religion, of all the nations upon the earth. And this city stands alone in the power which it once exercised over the whole of Christendom, when all Europe rushed "To chase these pagans, in those holy fields, as it still commands all hearts who remember that it is the place where God Himself died for the sin of man. It stands alone in the weeping and wailing with which its people every day mourn its desolation. But it stands alone also in the promise of its restoration-a restoration to a dominion over the whole world, and to a glory such as earth "saw never." In ancient times it was beautiful for situation; in the days to come, living waters will issue from it for the healing of the nations. It is one of the most ancient of the habitations of men; it is to be hereafter, in a peculiar sense, the scene of the manifestation of the power and glory of God. Not long before the times of which we are going to treat, it had been the scene of the most wonderful occurrences which have yet happened on the face of the earth-the presence, though in shrouded majesty, the death according to the remotest prophecy, the resurrection, and the ascension of the Son of God. It had witnessed His mercy in weeping over the city, and uttering the lamentations, "O that thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace!" And it had witnessed also the infatuated cry (sad introduction to such a history, and sadder even than the history itself), "His blood be on us and on our children!” As Titus marched from Cæsarea upon the devoted city, he reached it by the northern road, which leads to the Damascus Gate. When he drew near, he advanced with six hundred men to view the walls, and presently turned off to lead them towards the tower of Psephinus on the west. As soon, however, as a part of his force showed a flank to the gate, a multitude of the Jews rushed out upon him; some attacking his guard, who were still on the road, and others interposing in great numbers between them and Titus and the few who had quitted it with him. Titus was at once in great danger; for the route he had taken was among hedges and trenches to divide and protect the gardens which lay beneath the walls, so that it was difficult to advance or retreat, and he was without his headpiece and breastplate. Happily for him, he was not personally known to the Jews, and escaped owing to the vigour with which he at once attacked those who had surrounded him, and the personal valour which he displayed. In the night he was joined by the fifth legion, which came up from Emmaus (near Tiberias), and the next day took up a position upon Scopus, about seven furlongs from the city, but commanding a full view of it. Here he encamped with two legions, assigning a more sheltered place for the fifth legion, which had just finished its march; and the tenth legion arriving at this time from Jericho, began to establish themselves on the mount of Olives. The several factions and parties of the Jews, perceiving the Romans forming three different camps, united in attacking them, and fell upon the tenth legion whilst working at their entrenchments. As they were dispersed, unarmed, occupied with the works, not expecting a sally, and overpowered by numbers, they were thrown into great disorder and sustained much loss, so that the whole legion was in jeopardy; but Titus coming up with a strong force on the Jewish left, rallied his soldiers, and, having driven back the assailants, they were sent up the mount to resume their works. Their march appeared a flight to the Jews; and the watchman on |