a council of war, which agreed that, instead of retreating that night towards the Avon as they had intended, they should advance and attack, provided the spy, who was to be sent out to a new reconnoissance, should report that the troops were not intrenched.  We may be sure that—­as the news only arrived at three in the afternoon—­the assembling the council of war—­the deliberation—­ the sending back the spy—­his return and another deliberation—­must have protracted the final decision to so late an hour that evening, that it is utterly impossible that the change of the design of a march northward to that of an “attack to be made under cover of the night,” could have been that morning no secret in Bridgwater.  But our readers see it was necessary for Mr. Macaulay to raise this fable, in order to account for the poor girl’s knowing so important a secret.  So far we have argued the case on Mr. Macaulay’s own showing, which, we confess, was very incautious on our part; but on turning to his authority we find, as usual, a story essentially different.  Kennett says—­

A brave Captain in the Horse Guards, now living (1718), was in the action at Sedgemoor, and gave me the account of it:—­That on Sunday morning, July 5, a young woman came from Monmouth’s quarters to give notice of his design to surprise the King’s camp that night; but this young woman being carried to a chief officer in a neighbouring village, she was led upstairs and debauched by him, and, coming down in a great fright and disorder (as he himself saw her), she went back, and her message was not told.—­Kennett, in. 432.

This knocks the whole story on the head.  Kennett was not aware (Wade’s narrative not being published when he wrote) that the King’s troops did not come in sight of Sedgemoor till about three o’clock P.M. of that Sunday on the early morning of which he places the girl’s visit to the camp, and it was not till late that same evening that Monmouth changed his original determination, and formed the sudden resolution with which, to support Kennett’s story, the whole town must have been acquainted at least twelve hours before.  These are considerations which ought not to have escaped a philosophical historian who had the advantage, which Kennett had not, of knowing the exact time when these details occurred....

We must here conclude.  We have exhausted our time and our space, but not our topics.  We have selected such of the more prominent defects and errors of Mr. Macaulay as were manageable within our limits; but numerous as they are, we beg that they may be considered as specimens only of the infinitely larger assortment that the volumes would afford, and be read not merely as individual instances, but as indications of the general style of the work, and the prevailing animus of the writer.  We have chiefly directed our attention to points of mere historical inaccuracy and infidelity; but they are combined with