0124 19 E,S.

ΤΟ

THE RIGHT HON. SIR JOHN M'NEILL, G.C.B.

MY DEAR SIR JOHN,

Dedications are out of fashion, but I feel that the publication of the following pages requires a few words of explanation, and I prefer addressing them to you, to adopting the more ordinary form of a preface.

For this I have two reasons. In the first place, I am desirous to connect an attempt, however humble, to vindicate the fair fame of departed greatness with the name of one to whose undaunted love of truth England owed so much in a recent crisis of her fortunes. The second reason is more personal to myself. It was impossible for me to

recur so frequently as I have done in the following pages to the Highlands, without a constant remembrance of the honour which you, like so many others, have conferred upon the land of your ancestors, of your birth, and of your strongest and most abiding affections; nor could I forget that it is to your kindness and to your friendship that I owe my familiarity with a country, where, in your society, I have passed many of the most agreeable days of my life, and garnered up recollections which are a source of constant enjoyment.

The following Essays were, as you know, with the exception of one (that on Viscount Dundee), published during the lifetime of the eminent historian to whose writings they refer. The sudden and melancholy event which threw a gloom over society-which closed for ever one of the brightest sources of intellectual enjoyment, and left the highest place in the world of letters vacant, without a successor— has, however, as it appears to me, made no

difference in the duty of one who seeks merely to advocate the cause of truth. It was not without great hesitation, nor until after a most careful examination of the evidence, that I ventured at last to express my conviction of the errors into which Lord Macaulay's History was likely to lead those who placed an implicit reliance upon his representations. Of this number I frankly confess myself originally to have been one. Sharing in his opinions, sympathising in his feelings, and sincerely attached to that party in politics of which he was so brilliant an ornament, I permitted myself to be carried away by the eloquent torrent of his declamation; and it was not without many a struggle that I found myself compelled, by a dry examination of facts, to surrender the illusion by which I had been enthralled. The following pages are the result of this examination. I have confined myself to five instances. Three relate to men who played prominent and important parts, and who have left their impress distinctly marked on history. One relates to