tion and the highest defcriptive powers, could never have effected without them. It was from theſe long-neglected picture-writings of great hiſtorical ſcenes, and of the celebrated individuals who are crowded in them—“in their habit as they lived”—that he derived ſo much of his wonderfully minute knowledge of all that related to the ſtirring times of the ſeventeenth and eighteenth centuries. To theſe deſpiſed and inexhauſtible ſources of information, he was principally indebted for his life-like delineations of character; for his deſcriptions of popular commotions; and, not unfrequently, for his knowledge of the motives by which public men were actuated, at particular conjunctures, in their conduct.
The admirable uſe made of them by Lord Macaulay, in his hiſtorical fragment and eſſays, has ſuggefted the idea of collecting and republiſhing the following ſpecimens. They have been gleaned from exceedingly rare (not a few, I believe, unique) ſingle-ſheets and broadſides, old manuſcripts, and contemporary journals, in the national and other libraries. A few have been extracted from very ſcarce volumes, which were published at the cloſe of the ſeventeenth or early in the eighteenth century; and fewer ſtill have been derived from more
