Page:Books and men.djvu/212

 202, the brutality, the mad, exterminating barbarity of Claverhouse, and Lauderdale, and Jeffreys, the minions of episcopacy and the king." There it stood, venerably correct in sentiment, with a strangely new location and surroundings. It is hard enough, surely, to see Claverhouse pilloried side by side with the brute Jeffreys; but to meet him on the banks of the Delaware is like encountering Ezzelin Romano on Fifth Avenue, or Julian the Apostate upon Boston Common.

Much of this universal harmony of abuse may be fairly charged to Macaulay, for it is he who in a few strongly written passages has presented to the general reader that remarkable compendium of wickedness commonly known as Dundee. "Rapacious and profane, of violent temper and obdurate heart," is the great historian's description of a man who sought but modest wealth, who never swore, and whose imperturbable gentleness of manner was more appalling in its way than the fiercest transports of rage. Under Macaulay's hands Claverhouse exhibits a degree of ubiquity and mutability that might well require some supernatural basis to sustain it. He supports as