Such night in England ne’er had been, nor ne’er again shall be.

The line is a heightened, almost epic-sounding claim of national singularity: a particular night is presented as unmatched in England’s past and impossible to repeat. In Macaulay’s characteristic rhetorical mode, the phrasing (“ne’er… nor ne’er again”) turns an event into a historical watershed—something that marks a before-and-after in collective memory. The effect is to frame the episode not merely as notable, but as definitive for English identity or destiny, inviting readers to treat it as a moment of exceptional crisis, triumph, or revelation rather than ordinary chronology.