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by George Otto Trevelyan

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Title: Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay

Author: George Otto Trevelyan

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Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay

by Sir George Otto Trevelyan




VOLUME I



PREFACE

TO

THE SECOND EDITION.

WHEN publishing the Second Edition of Lord MACAULAY'S Life and
Letters, I may be permitted to say that no pains were spared in
order that the First Edition should be as complete as possible.
But, in the course of the last nine months, I have come into
possession of a certain quantity of supplementary matter, which
the appearance of the book has elicited from various quarters.
Stray letters have been hunted up. Half-forgotten anecdotes have
been recalled. Floating reminiscences have been reduced to
shape;--in one case, as will be seen from the extracts from Sir
William Stirling Maxwell's letter, by no unskilful hand. I should
have been tempted to draw more largely upon these new resources,
if it had not been for the examples, which literary history only
too copiously affords, of the risk that attends any attempt to
alter the form, or considerably increase the bulk, of a work
which, in its original shape, has had the good fortune not to
displease the public. I have, however, ventured, by a very
sparing selection from sufficiently abundant material, slightly
to enlarge, and, I trust, somewhat to enrich the book.

If this Second Edition is not rigidly correct in word and
substance, I have no valid excuse to offer. Nothing more
pleasantly indicates the wide-spread interest with which Lord
MACAULAY has inspired his readers, both at home and in foreign
countries, than the almost microscopic care with which these
volumes have been studied. It is not too much to say that, in
several instances, a misprint, or a verbal error, has been
brought to my notice by at least five-and-twenty different
persons; and there is hardly a page in the book which has not
afforded occasion for comment or suggestion from some friendly
correspondent. There is no statement of any importance throughout
the two volumes the accuracy of which has been circumstantially
impugned; but some expressions, which have given personal pain or
annoyance, have been softened or removed.

There is another class of criticism to which I have found myself
altogether unable to defer. I have frequently been told by
reviewers that I should "have better consulted MACAULAY'S
reputation," or "done more honour to MACAULAY'S memory," if I had
omitted passages in the letters or diaries which may be said to
bear the trace of intellectual narrowness, or political and
religious intolerance. I cannot but think that strictures, of
this nature imply a serious misconception of the biographer's
duty. It was my business to show my Uncle as he was, and not as
I, or any one else, would have had him. If a faithful picture of
MACAULAY could not have been produced without injury to his
memory, I should have left the task of drawing that picture to
others; but, having once undertaken the work, I had no choice but
to ask myself, with regard to each feature of the portrait, not
whether it was attractive, but whether it was characteristic. We
who had the best opportunity of knowing him have always been
convinced that his character would stand the test of an exact,
and even a minute, delineation; and we humbly believe that our
confidence was not misplaced, and that the reading world has now
extended to the man the approbation which it has long conceded to
his hooks.

G. O. T.

December 1876.




PREFACE

TO

THE FIRST EDITION,

THIS work has been undertaken principally from a conviction that
it is the performance of a duty which, to the best of my ability,
it is incumbent on me to fulfil. Though even on this ground I
cannot appeal to the forbearance of my readers, I may venture to
refer to a peculiar difficulty which I have experienced in
dealing with Lord MACAULAY'S private papers.

To give to the world compositions not intended for publication
may be no injury to the fame of writers who, by habit, were
careless and hasty workmen; but it is far otherwise in the case
of one who made it a rule for himself to publish nothing which
was not carefully planned, strenuously laboured, and minutely
finished. Now, it is impossible to examine Lord MACAULAY'S
journals and correspondence without being persuaded that the idea
of their being printed, even in part, never was present to his
mind; and I should not feel myself justified in laying them
before the public if it were not that their unlaboured and
spontaneous character adds to their biographical value all, and
perhaps more than all, that it detracts from their literary
merit.

To the heirs and relations of Mr. Thomas Flower Ellis and Mr.
Adam Black, to the Marquis of Lansdowne, to Mr. Macvey Napier,
and to the executors of Dr. Whewell, my thanks are due for
the courtesy with which thhey have placed the different portions
of my Uncle's correspondence at my disposal. Lady Caroline
Lascelles has most kindly permitted me to use as much of
Lord Carlisle's journal as relates to the subject of this work;
and Mr. Charles Cowan, my Uncle's old opponent at Edinburgh, has
sent me a considerable mass of printed matter bearing upon the
elections of 1847 and 1852. The late Sir Edward Ryan, and Mr.
Fitzjames Stephen, spared no pains to inform me with regard to
Lord MACAULAY'S work at Calcutta. His early letters, with much
that relates to the whole course of his life, have been
preserved, studied, and arranged, by the affectionate industry of
his sister, Miss Macaulay; and material of high interest has been
entrusted to my hands by Mr. and the Hon. Mrs. Edward Cropper. I
have been assisted throughout the book by the sympathy, and the
recollections, of my sister Lady Holland, the niece to whose
custody Lord MACAULAY'S papers by inheritance descend.

G.O.T.

March 1876.





LIFE AND LETTERS OF LORD MACAULAY

By

SIR GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN

CHAPTER I

1800-1818.

Plan and scope of the work--History of the Macaulay family--
Aulay--Kenneth--Johnson and Boswell--John Macaulay and his
children--Zachary Macaulay--His career in the West Indies and in
Africa--His character--Visit of the French squadron to Sierra
Leone--Zachary Macaulay's marriage--Birth of his eldest son--Lord
Macaulay's early years--His childish productions--Mrs. Hannah
More--General Macaulay--Choice of a school--Shelford--Dean
Milner--Macaulay's early letters--Aspenden hall--The boy's habits
and mental endowments--His home--The Clapham set--The boy's
relations with his father--The political ideas amongst which he
was brought up, and their influence on the work of his life.

HE who undertakes to publish the memoirs of a distinguished man
may find a ready apology in the custom of the age. If we measure
the effective demand for biography by the supply, the person
commemorated need possess but a very moderate reputation, and
have played no exceptional part, in order to carry the reader
through many hundred pages of anecdote, dissertation, and
correspondence. To judge from the advertisements of our
circulating libraries, the public curiosity is keen with regard
to some who did nothing worthy of special note, and others who
acted so continuously in the face of the world that, when their
course was run, there was little left for the world to learn about
them. It may, therefore, be taken for granted that a desire
exists to hear something authentic about the life of a man who
has produced works which are universally known, but which bear
little or no indication of the private history and the personal
qualities of the author.

This was in a marked degree the case with Lord Macaulay. His two
famous contemporaries in English literature have, consciously or
unconsciously, told their own story in their books. Those who
could see between the lines in "David Copperfield" were aware
that they had before them a delightful autobiography; and all who
knew how to read Thackeray could trace him in his novels through
every stage in his course, on from the day when as a little boy,
consigned to the care of English relatives and schoolmasters, he
left his mother on the steps of the landing-place at Calcutta.
The dates and names were wanting, but the man was there; while
the most ardent admirers of Macaulay will admit that a minute
study of his literary productions left them, as far as any but an
intellectual knowledge of the writer himself was concerned, very
much as it found them. A consummate master of his craft, he
turned out works which bore the unmistakable marks of the
artificer's hand, but which did not reflect his features. It
would be almost as hard to compose a picture of the author from
the History, the Essays, and the Lays, as to evolve an idea of
Shakespeare from Henry the Fifth and Measure for Measure.

But, besides being a man of letters, Lord Macaulay was a
statesman, a jurist, and a brilliant ornament of society, at a
time when to shine in society was a distinction which a man of
eminence and ability might justly value. In these several
capacities, it will be said, he was known well, and known widely.
But in the first place, as these pages will show, there was one
side of his life (to him, at any rate, the most important,) of
which even the persons with whom he mixed most freely and
confidentially in London drawing-rooms, in the Indian Council
chamber, and in the lobbies and on the benches of the House of
Commons, were only in part aware. And in the next place, those
who have seen his features and heard his voice are few already
and become yearly fewer; while, by a rare fate in literary
annals, the number of those who read his books is still rapidly
increasing. For everyone who sat with him in private company or
at the transaction of public business,--for every ten who have
listened to his oratory in Parliament or from the hustings,--
there must be tens of thousands whose interest in history and
literature he has awakened and informed by his pen, and who would
gladly know what manner of man it was that has done them so great
a service.

To gratify that most legitimate wish is the duty of those who have
the means at their command. His lifelike image is indelibly
impressed upon their minds, (for how could it be otherwise with
any who had enjoyed so close relations with such a man?) although
the skill which can reproduce that image before the general eye
may well be wanting. But his own letters will supply the
deficiencies of the biographer. Never did any one leave behind him
more copious materials for enabling others to put together a
narrative which might be the history, not indeed of his times, but
of the man himself. For in the first place he so soon showed
promise of being one who would give those among whom his early
years were passed reason to be proud, and still more certain
assurance that he would never afford them cause for shame, that
what he wrote was preserved with a care very seldom bestowed on
childish compositions; and the value set upon his letters by those
with whom he corresponded naturally enough increased as years went
on. And in the next place he was by nature so incapable of
affectation or concealment that he could not write otherwise than
as he felt, and, to one person at least, could never refrain from
writing all that he felt; so that we may read in his letters, as
in a clear mirror, his opinions and inclinations, his hopes and
affections, at every succeeding period of his existence. Such
letters could never have been submitted to an editor not connected
with both correspondents by the strongest ties; and even one who
stands in that position must often be sorely puzzled as to what he
has the heart to publish and the right to withhold.

I am conscious that a near relative has peculiar temptations
towards that partiality of the biographer which Lord Macaulay
himself so often and so cordially denounced; and the danger is
greater in the case of one whose knowledge of him coincided with
his later years; for it would not be easy to find a nature which
gained more by time than his, and lost less. But believing, as I
do, (to use his own words,) that "if he were now living he would
have sufficient judgment and sufficient greatness of mind" to
wish to be shown as himself, I will suppress no trait in his
disposition, or incident in his career, which might provoke blame
or question. Such in all points as he was, the world, which has
been so indulgent to him, has a right to know him; and those who
best love him do not fear the consequences of freely submitting
his character and his actions to the public verdict.

The most devout believers in the doctrine of the transmission of
family qualities will be content with tracing back descent
through four generations; and all favourable hereditary
influences, both intellectual and moral, are assured by a
genealogy which derives from a Scotch Manse. In the first decade
of the eighteenth century Aulay Macaulay, the great-grandfather
of the historian, was minister of Tiree and Coll; where he was
"grievously annoyed by a decreet obtained after instance of the
Laird of Ardchattan, taking away his stipend." The Duchess of
Argyll of the day appears to have done her best to see him
righted; "but his health being much impaired, and there being no
church or meeting-house, he was exposed to the violence of the
weather at all seasons; and having no manse or plebe, and no fund
for communion elements, and no mortification for schools or any
pious purpose in either of the islands, and the air being
unwholesome, he was dissatisfied;" and so, to the great regret of
the parishioners whom he was leaving behind, he migrated to
Harris, where he discharged the clerical duties for nearly half a
century.

Aulay was the father of fourteen children, of whom one, Kenneth,
the minister of Ardnamurchan, still occupies a very humble niche
in the temple of literature. He wrote a History of St. Kilda
which happened to fall into the hands of Dr. Johnson, who spoke
of it more than once with favour. His reason for liking the book
is characteristic enough. Mr. Macaulay had recorded the belief
prevalent in St. Kilda that, as soon as the factor landed on the
island, all the inhabitants had an attack which from the account
appears to have partaken of the nature both of influenza and
bronchitis. This touched the superstitious vein in Johnson, who
praised him for his "magnanimity" in venturing to chronicle so
questionable a phenomenon; the more so because,--said the
Doctor,--"Macaulay set out with a prejudice against prejudice,
and wanted to be a smart modern thinker." To a reader of our day
the History of St. Kilda appears to be innocent of any trace of
such pretension; unless it be that the author speaks slightingly
of second-sight, a subject for which Johnson always had a strong
hankering. In 1773 Johnson paid a visit to Mr. Macaulay, who by
that time had removed to Calder, and began the interview by
congratulating him on having produced "a very pretty piece of
topography,"--a compliment which did not seem to the taste of the
author. The conversation turned upon rather delicate subjects,
and, before many hours had passed, the guest had said to the host
one of the very rudest things recorded by Boswell! Later on in
the same evening he atoned for his incivility by giving one of
the boys of the house a pocket Sallust, and promising to procure
him a servitorship at Oxford. Subsequently Johnson pronounced
that Mr. Macaulay was not competent to have written the book that
went by his name; a decision which, to those who happen to have
read the work, will give a very poor notion of my ancestor's
abilities.

The eldest son of old Aulay, and the grandfather of Lord
Macaulay, was John, born in the year 1720. He was minister
successively of Barra, South Uist, Lismore, and Inverary; the
last appointment being a proof of the interest which the family
of Argyll continued to take in the fortunes of the Macaulays. He,
likewise, during the famous tour in the Hebrides, came across the
path of Boswell, who mentions him in an exquisitely absurd
paragraph, the first of those in which is described the visit to
Inverary Castle. ["Monday, Oct. 25.--My acquaintance, the Rev.
Mr. John M'Aulay, one of the ministers of Inverary, and brother
to our good friend at Calder, came to us this morning, and
accompanied us to the castle, where I presented Dr. Johnson to
the Duke of Argyll. We were shown through the house; and I never
shall forget the impression made upon my fancy by some of the
ladies' maids tripping about in neat morning dresses. After
seeing for a long time little but rusticity, their lively manner,
and gay inciting appearance, pleased me so much, that I thought
for a moment I could have been a knight-errant for them."] Mr.
Macaulay afterwards passed the evening with the travellers at
their inn, and provoked Johnson into what Boswell calls warmth,
and anyone else would call brutality, by the very proper remark
that he had no notion of people being in earnest in good
professions if their practice belied them. When we think what
well-known ground this was to Lord Macaulay, it is impossible to
suppress a wish that the great talker had been at hand to avenge
his grandfather and grand-uncle. Next morning "Mr. Macaulay
breakfasted with us, nothing hurt or dismayed by his last night's
correction. Being a man of good sense he had a just admiration of
Dr. Johnson." He was rewarded by seeing Johnson at his very best,
and hearing him declaim some of the finest lines that ever were
written in a manner worthy of his subject.

There is a tradition that, in his younger days, the minister of
Inverary proved his Whiggism by giving information to the
authorities which almost led to the capture of the young
Pretender. It is perhaps a matter of congratulation that this
item was not added to the heavy account that the Stuarts have
against the Macaulay family. John Macaulay enjoyed a high
reputation as a preacher, and was especially renowned for his
fluency. In 1774 he removed to Cardross in Dumbartonshire, where,
on the bank of the noble estuary of the Clyde, he spent the last
fifteen years of a useful and honoured life. He was twice
married. His first wife died at the birth of his first child.
Eight years afterwards, in 1757, he espoused Margaret, daughter
of Colin Campbell of Inveresragan, who survived him by a single
year. By her he had the patriarchal number of twelve children,
whom he brought up on the old Scotch system,--common to the
households of minister, man of business, farmer, and peasant
alike,--on fine air, simple diet, and a solid training in
knowledge human and divine. Two generations after, Mr. Carlyle,
during a visit to the late Lord Ashburton at the Grange, caught
sight of Macaulay's face in unwonted repose, as he was turning
over the pages of a book. "I noticed," said he, "the homely Norse
features that you find everywhere in the Western Isles, and I
thought to myself 'Well! Anyone can see that you are an honest
good sort of fellow, made out of oatmeal.'"

Several of John Macaulay's children obtained position in the
world. Aulay, the eldest by his second wife, became a clergyman
of the Church of England. His reputation as a scholar and
antiquary stood high, and in the capacity of a private tutor he
became known even in royal circles. He published pamphlets and
treatises, the list of which it is not worth while to record, and
meditated several large works that perhaps never got much beyond
a title. Of all his undertakings the one best deserving
commemoration in these pages was a tour that he made into
Scotland in company with Mr. Thomas Babington, the owner of
Rothley Temple in Leicestershire, in the course of which the
travellers paid a visit to the manse at Cardross. Mr. Babington
fell in love with one of the daughters of the house, Miss Jean
Macaulay, and married her in 1787. Nine years afterwards he had
an opportunity of presenting his brother-in-law Aulay Macaulay
with the very pleasant living of Rothley.

Alexander, another son of John Macaulay, succeeded his father as
minister of Cardross. Colin went into the Indian army, and died a
general. He followed the example of the more ambitious among his
brother officers, and exchanged military for civil duties. In
1799 he acted as secretary to a political and diplomatic
Commission which accompanied the force that marched under General
Harris against Seringapatam. The leading Commissioner was Colonel
Wellesley, and to the end of General Macaulay's life the great
Duke corresponded with him on terms of intimacy, and (so the
family flattered themselves) even of friendship. Soon after the
commencement of the century Colin Macaulay was appointed Resident
at the important native state of Travancore. While on this
employment he happened to light upon a valuable collection of
books, and rapidly made himself master of the principal European
languages, which he spoke and wrote with a facility surprising in
one who had acquired them within a few leagues of Cape Comorin.

There was another son of John Macaulay, who in force and
elevation of character stood out among his brothers, and who was
destined to make for himself no ordinary career. The path which
Zachary Macaulay chose to tread did not lead to wealth, or
worldly success, or indeed to much worldly happiness. Born in
1768, he was sent out at the age of sixteen by a Scotch house of
business as bookkeeper to an estate in Jamaica, of which he soon
rose to be sole manager. His position brought him into the
closest possible contact with negro slavery. His mind was not
prepossessed against the system of society which he found in the
West Indies. His personal interests spoke strongly in its favour,
while his father, whom he justly respected, could see nothing to
condemn in an institution recognised by Scripture. Indeed, the
religious world still allowed the maintenance of slavery to
continue an open question. John Newton, the real founder of that
school in the Church of England of which in after years Zachary
Macaulay was a devoted member, contrived to reconcile the
business of a slave trader with the duties of a Christian, and to
the end of his days gave scandal to some of his disciples, (who
by that time were one and all sworn abolitionists,) by his
supposed reluctance to see that there could be no fellowship
between light and such darkness.

But Zachary Macaulay had eyes of his own to look about him, a
clear head for forming a judgment on what he saw, and a
conscience which would not permit him to live otherwise than in
obedience to its mandates. The young Scotchman's innate respect
for his fellows, and his appreciation of all that instruction and
religion can do for men, was shocked at the sight of a population
deliberately kept ignorant and heathen. His kind heart was
wounded by cruelties practised at the will and pleasure of a
thousand petty despots. He had read his Bible too literally to
acquiesce easily in a state of matters under which human beings
were bred and raised like a stock of cattle, while outraged
morality was revenged on the governing race by the shameless
licentiousness which is the inevitable accompaniment of slavery.
He was well aware that these evils, so far from being superficial
or remediable, were essential to the very existence of a social
fabric constituted like that within which he lived. It was not
for nothing that he had been behind the scenes in that tragedy of
crime and misery. His philanthropy was not learned by the royal
road of tracts, and platform speeches, and monthly magazines.
What he knew he had spelt out for himself with no teacher except
the aspect of human suffering, and degradation, and sin.

He was not one of those to whom conviction comes in a day; and,
when convinced, he did nothing sudden. Little more than a boy in
age, singularly modest, and constitutionally averse to any course
that appeared pretentious or theatrical, he began by a sincere
attempt to make the best of his calling. For some years he
contented himself with doing what he could, (so he writes to a
friend,) "to alleviate the hardships of a considerable number of
my fellow-creatures, and to render the bitter cup of servitude as
palatable as possible." But by the time he was four-and-twenty he
became tired of trying to find a compromise between right and
wrong, and, refusing really great offers from the people with
whom he was connected, he threw up his position, and returned to
his native country. This step was taken against the wishes of his
father, who was not prepared for the construction which his son
put upon the paternal precept that a man should make his practice
square with his professions.

But Zachary Macaulay soon had more congenial work to do. The
young West Indian overseer was not alone in his scruples. Already
for some time past a conviction had been abroad that individual
citizens could not divest themselves of their share in the
responsibility in which the nation was involved by the existence
of slavery in our colonies. Already there had been formed the
nucleus of the most disinterested, and perhaps the most
successful, popular movement which history records. The question
of the slave trade was well before Parliament and the country.
Ten years had passed since the freedom of all whose feet touched
the soil of our island had been vindicated before the courts at
Westminster, and not a few negroes had become their own masters
as a consequence of that memorable decision. The patrons of the
race were somewhat embarrassed by having these expatriated
freedmen on their hands; an opinion prevailed that the traffic in
human lives could never be efficiently checked until Africa had
obtained the rudiments of civilisation; and, after long
discussion, a scheme was matured for the colonisation of Sierra
Leone by liberated slaves. A company was organised, with a
charter from the Crown, and a board which included the names of
Granville Sharpe and Wilberforce. A large capital was speedily
subscribed, and the Chair was accepted by Mr. Henry Thornton, a
leading City banker and a member of Parliament, whose determined
opposition to cruelty and oppression in every form was such as
might be expected in one who had inherited from his father the
friendship of the poet Cowper. Mr. Thornton heard Macaulay's
story from Thomas Babington, with whom he lived on terms of close
intimacy and political alliance. The Board, by the advice of its
Chairman, passed a resolution appointing the young man Second
Member in the Sierra Leone Council, and early in the year 1793 he
sailed for Africa, where soon after his arrival he succeeded to
the position and duties of Governor.

The Directors had done well to secure a tried man. The colony was
at once exposed to the implacable enmity of merchants whose
market the agents of the new company spoiled in their capacity of
traders, and slave-dealers with whom they interfered in their
character of philanthropists. The native tribes in the vicinity,
instigated by European hatred and jealousy, began to inflict upon
the defenceless authorities of the settlement a series of those
monkey-like impertinences which, absurdly as they may read in a
narrative, are formidable and ominous when they indicate that
savages feel their power. These barbarians, who had hitherto
commanded as much rum and gunpowder as they cared to have by
selling their neighbours at the nearest barracoon, showed no
appreciation for the comforts and advantages of civilisation.
Indeed, those advantages were displayed in anything but an
attractive shape even within the pale of the company's territory.
An aggregation of negroes from Jamaica, London, and Nova Scotia,
who possessed no language except an acquired jargon, and shared
no associations beyond the recollections of a common servitude,
were not very promising apostles for the spread of Western
culture and the Christian faith. Things went smoothly enough as
long as the business of the colony was mainly confined to eating
the provisions that had been brought in the ships; but as soon as
the work became real, and the commons short, the whole community
smouldered down into chronic mutiny.

Zachary Macaulay was the very man for such a crisis. To a rare
fund of patience, and self-command, and perseverance, he united a
calm courage that was equal to any trial. These qualities were,
no doubt, inherent in his disposition; but no one except those
who have turned over his voluminous private journals can
understand what constant effort, and what incessant watchfulness,
went to maintain throughout a long life a course of conduct, and
a temper of mind, which gave every appearance of being the
spontaneous fruit of nature. He was not one who dealt in personal
experiences; and few among even the friends who loved him like
father or brother, and who would have trusted him with all their
fortune on his bare word, knew how entirely his outward behaviour
was the express image of his religious belief. The secret of his
character and of his actions lay in perfect humility and an
absolute faith. Events did not discompose him, because they were
sent by One who best knew his own purposes. He was not fretted by
the folly of others, or irritated by their hostility, because he
regarded the humblest or the worst of mankind as objects, equally
with himself, of the divine love and care. On all other points he
examined himself so closely that the meditations of a single
evening would fill many pages of diary; but so completely in his
case had the fear of God cast out all other fear that amidst the
gravest perils, and the most bewildering responsibilities, it
never occurred to him to question whether he was brave or not. He
worked strenuously and unceasingly, never amusing himself from
year's end to year's end, and shrinking from any public praise or
recognition as from an unlawful gratification, because he was
firmly persuaded that, when all had been accomplished and
endured, he was yet but an unprofitable servant, who had done
that which was his duty to do. Some, perhaps, will consider such
motives as oldfashioned, and such convictions as out of date; but
self-abnegation, self-control, and self-knowledge that does not
give to self the benefit of any doubt, are virtues which are not
oldfashioned, and for which, as time goes on, the world is likely
to have as much need as ever. [Sir James Stephen writes thus of
his friend Macaulay: "That his understanding was proof against
sophistry, and his nerves against fear, were, indeed, conclusions
to which a stranger arrived at the first interview with him. But
what might be suggesting that expression of countenance, at once
so earnest and so monotonous--by what manner of feeling those
gestures, so uniformly firm and deliberate were prompted--whence
the constant traces of fatigue on those overhanging brows and on
that athletic though ungraceful figure--what might be the charm
which excited amongst his chosen circle a faith approaching to
superstition, and a love rising to enthusiasm, towards a man
whose demeanour was so inanimate, if not austere:--it was a
riddle of which neither Gall nor Lavater could have found the
key."

That Sir James himself could read the riddle is proved by the
concluding words of a passage marked by a force and tenderness of
feeling unusual even in him: "His earthward affections,--active
and all--enduring as they were, could yet thrive without the
support of human sympathy, because they were sustained by so
abiding a sense of the divine presence, and so absolute a
submission to the divine will, as raised him habitually to that
higher region where the reproach of man could not reach, and the
praise of man might not presume to follow him."]

Mr. Macaulay was admirably adapted for the arduous and uninviting
task of planting a negro colony. His very deficiencies stood him
in good stead; for, in presence of the elements with which he had
to deal, it was well for him that nature had denied him any sense
of the ridiculous. Unconscious of what was absurd around him, and
incapable of being flurried, frightened, or fatigued, he stood as
a centre of order and authority amidst the seething chaos of
inexperience and insubordination. The staff was miserably
insufficient, and every officer of the Company had to do duty for
three in a climate such that a man is fortunate if he can find
health for the work of one during a continuous twelvemonth. The
Governor had to be in the counting-house, the law-court, the
school, and even the chapel. He was his own secretary, his own
paymaster, his own envoy. He posted ledgers, he decided causes,
he conducted correspondence with the Directors at home, and
visited neighbouring potentates on diplomatic missions which made
up in danger what they lacked in dignity. In the absence of
properly qualified clergymen, with whom he would have been the
last to put himself in competition, he preached sermons and
performed marriages;--a function which must have given honest
satisfaction to one who had been so close a witness of the
enforced and systematised immorality of a slave-nursery. Before
long, something fairly resembling order was established, and the
settlement began to enjoy a reasonable measure of prosperity. The
town was built, the fields were planted, and the schools filled.
The Governor made a point of allotting the lightest work to the
negroes who could read and write; and such was the stimulating
effect of this system upon education that he confidently looked
forward "to the time when there would be few in the colony unable
to read the Bible." A printing-press was in constant operation,
and in the use of a copying-machine the little community was
three-quarters of a century ahead of the London public offices.

But a severe ordeal was in store for the nascent civilisation of
Sierra Leone. On a Sunday morning in September 1794, eight French
sail appeared off the coast. The town was about as defensible as
Brighton; and it is not difficult to imagine the feelings which
the sansculottes inspired among Evangelical colonists whose last
advices from Europe dated from the very height of the Reign of
Terror. There was a party in favour of escaping into the forest
with as much property as could be removed at so short a notice;
but the Governor insisted that there would be no chance of saving
the Company's buildings unless the Company's servants could make
up their minds to remain at their posts, and face it out. The
squadron moored within musket-shot of the quay, and swept the
streets for two hours with grape and bullets; a most gratuitous
piece of cruelty that killed a negress and a child, and gave one
unlucky English gentleman a fright which ultimately brought him
to his grave. The invaders then proceeded to land, and Mr.
Macaulay had an opportunity of learning something about the
condition of the French marine during the heroic period of the
Republic.

A personal enemy of his own, the captain of a Yankee slaver,
brought a party of sailors straight to the Governor's house. What
followed had best be told in Mr. Macaulay's own words. "Newell,
who was attended by half-a-dozen sans-culottes, almost foaming
with rage, presented a pistol to me, and with many oaths demanded
instant satisfaction for the slaves who had run away from him to
my protection. I made very little reply, but told him he must now
_take_ such satisfaction as he judged equivalent to his claims,
as I was no longer master of my actions. He became so very
outrageous that, after bearing with him a little while, I
thought it most prudent to repair myself to the French officer,
and request his safe-conduct on board the Commodore's ship. As I
passed along the wharf the scene was curious enough. The
Frenchmen, who had come ashore in filth and rags, were now many
of them dressed out with women's shifts, gowns, and petticoats.
Others had quantities of cloth wrapped about their bodies, or
perhaps six or seven suits of clothes upon them at a time. The
scene which presented itself on my getting on board the flag-ship
was still more singular. The quarter-deck was crowded by a set of
ragamuffins whose appearance beggared every previous description,
and among whom I sought in vain for some one who looked like a
gentleman. The stench and filth exceeded anything I had ever
witnessed in any ship, and the noise and confusion gave me some
idea of their famous Mountain. I was ushered into the Commodore's
cabin, who at least received me civilly. His name was Citizen
Allemand. He did not appear to have the right of excluding any of
his fellow-citizens even from this place. Whatever might be their
rank, they crowded into it, and conversed familiarly with him."
Such was the discipline of the fleet that had been beaten by Lord
Hove on the first of June; and such the raw material of the
armies which, under firm hands, and on an element more suited to
the military genius of their nation, were destined to triumph at
Rivoli and Hohenlinden.

Mr. Macaulay, who spoke French with ease and precision, in his
anxiety to save the town used every argument which might prevail
on the Commodore, whose Christian name, (if one may use such a
phrase with reference to a patriot of the year two of the
Republic,) happened oddly enough to be the same as his own. He
appealed first to the traditional generosity of Frenchmen towards
a fallen enemy, but soon discerned that the quality in question
had gone out with the old order of things, if indeed it ever
existed. He then represented that a people, who professed to be
waging war with the express object of striking off the fetters of
mankind, would be guilty of flagrant inconsistency if they
destroyed an asylum for liberated slaves; but the Commodore gave
him to understand that sentiments, which sounded very well in the
Hall of the Jacobins, were out of place on the West Coast of
Africa. The Governor returned on shore to find the town already
completely gutted. It was evident at every turn that, although
the Republican battalions might carry liberty and fraternity
through Europe on the points of their bayonets, the Republican
sailors had found a very different use for the edge of their
cutlasses. "The sight of my own and of the Accountant's offices
almost sickened me. Every desk, and every drawer, and every
shelf, together with the printing and copying presses, had been
completely demolished in the search for money. The floors were
strewed with types, and papers, and leaves of books; and I had
the mortification to see a great part of my own labour, and of
the labour of others, for several years totally destroyed. At the
other end of the house I found telescopes, hygrometers,
barometers, thermometers, and electrical machines, lying about in
fragments. The view of the town library filled me with lively
concern. The volumes were tossed about and defaced with the
utmost wantonness; and, if they happened to bear any resemblance
to Bibles, they were torn in pieces and trampled on. The
collection of natural curiosities next caught my eye. Plants,
seeds, dried birds, insects, and drawings were scattered about in
great confusion, and some of the sailors were in the act of
killing a beautiful musk-cat, which they afterwards ate. Every
house was full of Frenchmen, who were hacking, and destroying,
and tearing up everything which they could not convert to their
own use. The destruction of live stock on this and the following
day was immense. In my yard alone they killed fourteen dozen of
fowls, and there were not less than twelve hundred hogs shot in
the town." It was unsafe to walk in the streets of Freetown
during the forty-eight hours that followed its capture, because
the French crews, with too much of the Company's port wine in
their heads to aim straight, were firing at the pigs of the poor
freedmen over whom they had achieved such a questionable victory.

To readers of Erckmann-Chatrian it is unpleasant to be taken thus
behind the curtain on which those skilful artists have painted
the wars of the early Revolution. It is one thing to be told how
the crusaders of '93 and '94 were received with blessings and
banquets by the populations to whom they brought freedom and
enlightenment, and quite another to read the journal in which a
quiet accurate-minded Scotchman tells us how a pack of tipsy
ruffians sat abusing Pitt and George to him, over a fricassee of
his own fowls, and among the wreck of his lamps and mirrors which
they had smashed as a protest against aristocratic luxury.

"There is not a boy among them who has not learnt to accompany
the name of Pitt with an execration. When I went to bed, there
was no sleep to be had on account of the sentinels thinking fit
to amuse me the whole night through with the revenge they meant
to take on him when they got him to Paris. Next morning I went on
board the 'Experiment.' The Commodore and all his officers messed
together, and I was admitted among them. They are truly the
poorest-looking people I ever saw. Even the Commodore has only
one suit which can at all distinguish him, not to say from the
officers, but from the men. The filth and confusion of their
meals was terrible. A chorus of boys usher in the dinner with the
Marseilles hymn, and it finishes in the same way. The enthusiasm
of all ranks among them is astonishing, but not more so than
their blindness. They talk with ecstasy of their revolutionary
government, of their bloody executions, of their revolutionary
tribunal, of the rapid movement of their revolutionary army with
the Corps of justice and the flying guillotine before it;
forgetting that not one of them is not liable to its stroke on
the accusation of the greatest vagabond on board. They asked me
with triumph if yesterday had not been Sunday. 'Oh,' said they,
'the National Convention have decreed that there is no Sunday,
and that the Bible is all a lie.'" After such an experience it is
not difficult to account for the keen and almost personal
interest with which, to the very day of Waterloo, Mr. Macaulay
watched through its varying phases the rise and the downfall of
the French power. He followed the progress of the British arms
with a minute and intelligent attention which from a very early
date communicated itself to his son; and the hearty patriotism of
Lord Macaulay is perhaps in no small degree the consequence of
what his father suffered from the profane and rapacious
sansculottes of the revolutionary squadron.

Towards the middle of October the Republicans took their
departure. Even at this distance of time it is provoking to learn
that they got back to Brest without meeting an enemy that had
teeth to bite. The African climate, however, reduced the squadron
to such a plight, that it was well for our frigates that they had
not the chance of getting its fever-stricken crews under their
hatches. The French never revisited Freetown. Indeed, they had
left the place in such a condition that it was not worth their
while to return. The houses had been carefully burned to the
ground, and the live stock killed. Except the clothes on their
backs, and a little brandy and flour, the Europeans had lost
everything they had in the world. Till assistance came from the
mother country they lived upon such provisions as could be
recovered from the reluctant hands of the negro settlers, who
providentially had not been able to resist the temptation of
helping the Republicans to plunder the Company's stores.
Judicious liberality at home, and a year's hard work on the spot,
did much to repair the damage; and, when his colony was again
upon its feet, Mr. Macaulay sailed to England with the object of
recruiting his health, which had broken down under an attack of
low fever.

On his arrival he was admitted at once and for ever within the
innermost circle of friends and fellow-labourers who were united
round Wilberforce and Henry Thornton by indissoluble bonds of
mutual personal regard and common public ends. As an indispensable
part of his initiation into that very pleasant confederacy, he was
sent down to be introduced to Hannah More, who was living at
Cowslip Green, near Bristol, in the enjoyment of general respect,
mixed with a good deal of what even those who admire her as she
deserved must in conscience call flattery. He there met Selina
Mills, a former pupil of the school which the Miss Mores kept in
the neighbouring city, and a lifelong friend of all the sisters.
The young lady is said to have been extremely pretty and
attractive, as may well be believed by those who saw her in later
years. She was the daughter of a member of the Society of Friends,
who at one time was a bookseller in Bristol, and who built there a
small street called "Mills Place," in which he himself resided.
His grandchildren remembered him as an old man of imposing
appearance, with long white hair, talking incessantly of Jacob
Boehmen. Mr. Mills had sons, one of whom edited a Bristol journal
exceedingly well, and is said to have made some figure in light
literature. This uncle of Lord Macaulay was a very lively, clever
man, full of good stories, of which only one has survived. Young
Mills, while resident in London, had looked in at Rowland Hill's
chapel, and had there lost a new hat. When he reported the
misfortune to his father, the old Quaker replied: "John, if thee'd
gone to the right place of worship, thee'd have kept thy hat upon
thy head." Lord Macaulay was accustomed to say that he got his
"joviality" from his mother's family. If his power of humour was
indeed of Quaker origin, he was rather ungrateful in the use to
which he sometimes put it.

Mr. Macaulay fell in love with Miss Mills, and obtained her
affection in return. He had to encounter the opposition of her
relations, who were set upon her making another and a better
match, and of Mrs. Patty More, (so well known to all who have
studied the somewhat diffuse annals of the More family,) who, in
the true spirit of romantic friendship, wished her to promise
never to marry at all, but to domesticate herself as a youngest
sister in the household at Cowslip Green. Miss Hannah, however,
took a more unselfish view of the situation, and advocated Mr.
Macaulay's cause with firmness and good feeling. Indeed, he must
have been, according to her particular notions, the most
irreproachable of lovers, until her own Coelebs was given to the
world. By her help he carried his point in so far that the
engagement was made and recognised; but the friends of the young
lady would not allow her to accompany him to Africa; and, during
his absence from England, which began in the early months of
1796, by an arrangement that under the circumstances was very
judicious, she spent much of her time in Leicestershire with his
sister Mrs. Babington.

His first business after arriving at Sierra Leone was to sit in
judgment on the ringleaders of a formidable outbreak which had
taken place in the colony; and he had an opportunity of proving
by example that negro disaffection, from the nature of the race,
is peculiarly susceptible to treatment by mild remedies, if only
the man in the post of responsibility has got a heart and can
contrive to keep his head. He had much more trouble with a batch
of missionaries, whom he took with him in the ship, and who were
no sooner on board than they began to fall out, ostensibly on
controversial topics, but more probably from the same motives
that so often set the laity quarrelling during the incessant and
involuntary companionship of a sea-voyage. Mr. Macaulay, finding
that the warmth of these debates furnished sport to the captain
and other irreligious characters, was forced seriously to exert
his authority in order to separate and silence the disputants.
His report of these occurrences went in due time to the Chairman
of the Company, who excused himself for an arrangement which had
turned out so ill by telling a story of a servant who, having to
carry a number of gamecocks from one place to another, tied them
up in the same bag, and found on arriving at his journey's end
that they had spent their time in tearing each other to pieces.
When his master called him to account for his stupidity he
replied: "Sir, as they were all your cocks, I thought they would
be all on one side."

Things did not go much more smoothly on shore. Mr. Macaulay's
official correspondence gives a curious picture of his
difficulties in the character of Minister of Public Worship in a
black community. "The Baptists under David George are decent and
orderly, but there is observable in them a great neglect of family
worship, and sometimes an unfairness in their dealings. To Lady
Huntingdon's Methodists, as a body, may with great justice be
addressed the first verse of the third chapter of the Revelation.
The lives of many of them are very disorderly, and rank
antinomianism prevails among them." But his sense of religion and
decency was most sorely tried by Moses Wilkinson, a so-called
Wesleyan Methodist, whose congregation, not a very respectable one
to begin with, had recently been swollen by a Revival which had
been accompanied by circumstances the reverse of edifying. [Lord
Macaulay had in his youth heard too much about negro preachers,
and negro administrators, to permit him to entertain any very
enthusiastic anticipations with regard to the future of the
African race. He writes in his journal for July 8 1858: "Motley
called. I like him much. We agree wonderfully well about slavery,
and it is not often that I meet any person with whom I agree on
that subject. For I hate slavery from the bottom of my soul; and
yet I am made sick by the cant and the silly mock reasons of the
Abolitionists. The nigger driver and the negrophile are two odious
things to me. I must make Lady Macbeth's reservation: 'Had he not
resembled--,'"] The Governor must have looked back with regret to
that period in the history of the colony when he was underhanded
in the clerical department.

But his interest in the negro could bear ruder shocks than an
occasional outburst of eccentric fanaticism. He liked his work,
because he liked those for whom he was working. "Poor people," he
writes, "one cannot help loving them. With all their trying
humours, they have a warmth of affection which is really
irresistible." For their sake he endured all the risk and worry
inseparable from a long engagement kept by the lady among
disapproving friends, and by the gentleman at Sierra Leone. He
stayed till the settlement had begun to thrive, and the Company
had almost begun to pay; and until the Home Government had given
marked tokens of favour and protection, which some years later
developed into a negotiation under which the colony was
transferred to the Crown. It was not till 1799 that he finally
gave up his appointment, and left a region which, alone among
men, he quitted with unfeigned, and, except in one particular,
with unmixed regret. But for the absence of an Eve, he regarded
the West Coast of Africa as a veritable Paradise, or, to use his
own expression, as a more agreeable Montpelier. With a temper
which in the intercourse of society was proof against being
ruffled by any possible treatment of any conceivable subject, to
the end of his life he showed faint signs of irritation if anyone
ventured in his presence to hint that Sierra Leone was unhealthy.

On his return to England he was appointed Secretary to the
Company, and was married at Bristol on the 26th of August, 1799.
A most close union it was, and, (though in latter years he
became fearfully absorbed in the leading object of his existence,
and ceased in a measure to be the companion that he had been,)
his love for his wife, and deep trust and confidence in her,
never failed. They took a small house in Lambeth for the first
twelve months. When Mrs. Macaulay was near her confinement, Mrs.
Babington, who belonged to the school of matrons who hold that
the advantage of country air outweighs that of London doctors,
invited her sister-in-law to Rothley Temple; and there, in a room
panelled from ceiling to floor, like every corner of the ancient
mansion, with oak almost black from age,--looking eastward across
the park and southward through an ivy-shaded window into a little
garden,--Lord Macaulay was born. It was on the 25th of October
1800, the day of St. Crispin, the anniversary of Agincourt, (as
he liked to say,) that he opened his eyes on a world which he was
destined so thoroughly to learn and so intensely to enjoy. His
father was as pleased as a father could be; but fate seemed
determined that Zachary Macaulay should not be indulged in any
great share of personal happiness. The next morning the noise of
a spinning-jenny, at work in a cottage, startled his horse as he
was riding past. He was thrown, and both arms were broken; and he
spent in a sick-room the remainder of the only holiday worth the
name which, (as far as can be traced in the family records,) he
ever took during his married life. Owing to this accident the
young couple were detained at Rothley into the winter; and the
child was baptised in the private chapel which formed part of the
house, on the 26th November 1800, by the names of Thomas
Babington;--the Rev. Aulay Macaulay, and Mr. and Mrs. Babington,
acting as sponsors.

The two years which followed were passed in a house in Birchin
Lane, where the Sierra Leone Company had its office. The only
place where the child could be taken for exercise, and what might
be called air, was Drapers' Gardens, which (already under
sentence to be covered with bricks and mortar at an early date)
lies behind Throgmorton Street, and within a hundred yards of the
Stock Exchange. To this dismal yard, containing as much gravel as
grass, and frowned upon by a board of Rules and Regulations
almost as large as itself, his mother used to convoy the nurse
and the little boy through the crowds that towards noon swarmed
along Cornhill and Threadneedle Street; and thither she would
return, after a due interval, to escort them back to Birchin
Lane. So strong was the power of association upon Macaulay's mind
that in after years Drapers' Garden was among his favourite
haunts. Indeed, his habit of roaming for hours through and
through the heart of the City, (a habit that never left him as
long as he could roam at all,) was due in part to the
recollection which caused him to regard that region as native
ground.

Baby as he was when he quitted it, he retained some impression
of his earliest home. He remembered standing up at the nursery
window by his father's side, looking at a cloud of black smoke
pouring out of a tall chimney. He asked if that was hell; an
inquiry that was received with a grave displeasure which at the
time he could not understand. The kindly father must have been
pained, almost against his own will, at finding what feature of
his creed it was that had embodied itself in so very material a
shape before his little son's imagination. When in after days
Mrs. Macaulay was questioned as to how soon she began to detect
in the child a promise of the future, she used to say that his
sensibilities and affections were remarkably developed at an age
which to her hearers appeared next to incredible. He would cry
for joy on seeing her after a few hours' absence, and, (till her
husband put a stop to it,) her power of exciting his feelings was
often made an exhibition to her friends. She did not regard this
precocity as a proof of cleverness; but, like a foolish young
mother, only thought that so tender a nature was marked for early
death.

The next move which the family made was into as healthy an
atmosphere, in every sense, as the most careful parent could wish
to select. Mr. Macaulay took a house in the High Street of
Clapham, in the part now called the Pavement, on the same side as
the Plough inn, but some doors nearer to the Common. It was a
roomy comfortable dwelling, with a very small garden behind, and
in front a very small one indeed, which has entirely disappeared
beneath a large shop thrown out towards the road-way by the
present occupier, who bears the name of Heywood. Here the boy
passed a quiet and most happy childhood. From the time that he
was three years old he read incessantly, for the most part lying
on the rug before the fire, with his book on the ground, and a
piece of bread and batter in his hand. A very clever woman, who
then lived in the house as parlour-maid, told how he used to sit
in his nankeen frock, perched on the table by her as she was
cleaning the plate, and expounding to her out of a volume as big
as himself. He did not care for toys, but was very fond of taking
his walk, when he would hold forth to his companion, whether
nurse or mother, telling interminable stories out of his own
head, or repeating what he had been reading in language far above
his years. His memory retained without shout effort the
phraseology of the book which he had been last engaged on, and he
talked, as the maid said, "quite printed words," which produced
an effect that appeared formal, and often, no doubt, exceedingly
droll. Mrs. Hannah More was fond of relating how she called at
Mr. Macaulay's, and was met by a fair, pretty, slight child, with
abundance of light hair, about four years of age, who came to the
front door to receive her, and tell her that his parents were
out, but that if she would be good enough to come in he would
bring her a glass of old spirits; a proposition which greatly
startled the good lady, who had never aspired beyond cowslip
wine. When questioned as to what he knew about old spirits, he
could only say that Robinson Crusoe often had some. About this
period his father took him on a visit to Lady Waldegrave at
Strawberry Hill, and was much pleased, to exhibit to his old
friend the fair bright boy, dressed in a green coat with red
cellar and cuffs, a frill at the throat, and white trousers.
After some time had been spent among the wonders of the Orford
Collection, of which he ever after carried a catalogue in his
head, a servant who was waiting upon the company in the great
gallery spilt some hot coffee over his legs. The hostess was all
kindness and compassion, and when, after a while, she asked how
he was feeling, the little fellow looked up in her face and
replied: "Thank you, madam, the agony is abated."

But it must not be supposed that his quaint manners proceeded
from affectation or conceit; for all testimony declares that a
more simple and natural child never lived, or a more lively and
merry one. He had at his command the resources of the Common; to
this day the most unchanged spot within ten miles of St. Paul's,
and which to all appearance will ere long hold that pleasant pre-
eminence within ten leagues. That delightful wilderness of gorse
bushes, and poplar groves, and gravel-pits, and ponds great and
small, was to little Tom Macaulay a region of inexhaustible
romance and mystery. He explored its recesses; he composed, and
almost believed, its legends; he invented for its different
features a nomenclature which has been faithfully preserved by
two generations of children. A slight ridge, intersected by deep
ditches, towards the west of the Common, the very existence of
which no one above eight years old would notice, was dignified
with the title of the Alps; while the elevated island, covered
with shrubs, that gives a name to the Mount pond, was regarded
with infinite awe as being the nearest approach within the
circuit of his observation to a conception of the majesty of
Sinai. Indeed, at this period his infant fancy was much exercised
with the threats and terrors of the Law. He had a little plot of
ground at the back of the house, marked out as his own by a Tory
of oyster-shells, which a maid one day threw away as rubbish. He
went straight to the drawing-room, where his mother was
entertaining some visitors, walked into the circle, and said very
solemnly: "Cursed be Sally; for it is written, Cursed is he that
removeth his neighbour's land-mark."

While still the merest child he was sent as a day-scholar to Mr.
Greaves, a shrewd Yorkshireman with a turn for science, who had
been originally brought to the neighbourhood in order to educate
a number of African youths sent over to imbibe Western
civilisation at the fountain-head. The poor fellows had found as
much difficulty in keeping alive at Clapham as Englishmen
experience at Sierra Leone; and, in the end, their tutor set up a
school for boys of his own colour, and at one time had charge of
almost the entire rising generation of the Common. Mrs. Macaulay
explained to Tom that he must learn to study without the solace
of bread and butter, to which he replied: "Yes, mama, industry
shall be my bread and attention my butter." But, as a matter of
fact, no one ever crept more unwillingly to school. Each several
afternoon he made piteous entreaties to be excused returning
after dinner, and was met by the unvarying formula: "No, Tom, if
it rains cats and dogs, you shall go."

His reluctance to leave home had more than one side to it. Not
only did his heart stay behind, but the regular lessons of the
class took him away from occupations which in his eyes were
infinitely more delightful and important; for these were probably
the years of his greatest literary activity. As an author he
never again had mere facility, or anything like so wide a range.
In September 1808, his mother writes: "My dear Tom continues to
show marks of uncommon genius. He gets on wonderfully in all
branches of his education, and the extent of his reading, and of
the knowledge he has derived from it, are truly astonishing in a
boy not yet eight years old. He is at the same time as playful as
a kitten. To give you some idea of the activity of his mind I
will mention a few circumstances that may interest you and Colin.
You will believe that to him we never appear to regard anything
he does as anything more than a schoolboy's amusement. He took it
into his head to write a compendium of Universal History about a
year ago, and he really contrived to give a tolerably connected
view of the leading events from the Creation to the present time,
filling about a quire of paper. He told me one day that he had
been writing a paper, which Henry Daly was to translate into
Malabar, to persuade the people of Travancore to embrace the
Christian religion. On reading it I found it to contain a very
clear idea of the leading facts and doctrines of that religion,
with some strong arguments for its adoption. He was so fired with
reading Scott's Lay and Marmion, the former of which he got
entirely, and the latter almost entirely, by heart, merely from
his delight in reading them, that he determined on writing
himself a poem in six cantos which he called the 'Battle of
Cheviot.' After he had finished about three of the cantos of
about 120 lines each, which he did in a couple of days, he became
tired of it. I make no doubt he would have finished his design,
but, as he was proceeding with it, the thought struck him of
writing an heroic poem to be called 'Olaus the Great, or the
Conquest of Mona,' in which, after the manner of Virgil, he might
introduce in prophetic song the future fortunes of the family;--
among others, those of the hero who aided in the fall of the
tyrant of Mysore, after having long suffered from his tyranny;
[General Macaulay had been one of Tippoo Sahib's prisoners] and
of another of his race who had exerted himself for the
deliverance of the wretched Africans. He has just begun it. He
has composed I know not how many hymns. I send you one, as a
specimen, in his own handwriting, which he wrote about six months
ago on one Monday morning while we were at breakfast."

The affection of the last generation of his relatives has
preserved all these pieces, but the piety of this generation will
refrain from submitting them to public criticism. A marginal
note, in which Macaulay has expressed his cordial approval of
Uncle Toby's [Tristram Shandy, chapter clxiii.] remark about the
great Lipsius, indicates his own wishes in the matter too clearly
to leave any choice for those who come after him. But there still
may be read in a boyish scrawl the epitome of Universal History,
from "a new king who knew not Joseph,"--down through Rameses, and
Dido, and Tydeus, and Tarquin, and Crassus, and Gallienus, and
Edward the Martyr,--to Louis, who "set off on a crusade against
the Albigenses," and Oliver Cromwell, who "was an unjust and
wicked man." The hymns remain, which Mrs. Hannah More, surely a
consummate judge of the article, pronounced to be "quite
extraordinary for such a baby." To a somewhat later period
probably belongs a vast pile of blank verse, entitled "Fingal, a
poem in xii books;" two of which are in a complete and connected
shape, while the rest of the story is lost amidst a labyrinth of
many hundred scattered lines, so transcribed as to suggest a
conjecture that the boy's demand for foolscap had outrun the
paternal generosity.

Of all his performances, that which attracted most attention at
the time was undertaken for the purpose of immortalising Olaus
Magnus, King of Norway, from whom the clan to which the bard
belonged was supposed to derive its name. Two cantos are extant,
of which there are several exemplars, in every stage of
calligraphy from the largest round hand downwards, a circumstance
which is apparently due to the desire on the part of each of the
little Macaulays to possess a copy of the great family epic. The
opening stanzas, each of which contains more lines than their
author counted years, go swinging along with plenty of animation
and no dearth of historical and geographical allusion.

 Day set on Cumbria's hills supreme,
 And, Menai, on thy silver stream.
 The star of day had reached the West.
 Now in the main it sank to rest.
 Shone great Eleindyn's castle tall:
 Shone every battery, every hall:
 Shone all fair Mona's verdant plain;
 But chiefly shone the foaming main.

And again

 "Long," said the Prince, "shall Olave's name
 Live in the high records of fame.
 Fair Mona now shall trembling stand
 That ne'er before feared mortal hand.
 Mona, that isle where Ceres' flower
 In plenteous autumn's golden hour
 Hides all the fields from man's survey
 As locusts hid old Egypt's day."

The passage containing a prophetic mention of his father and
uncle after the manner of the sixth book of the Aeneid, for the
sake of which, according to Mrs. Macaulay, the poem was
originally designed, can nowhere be discovered. It is possible
that in the interval between the conception and the execution the
boy happened to light upon a copy of the Rolliad. If such was the
case, he already had too fine a sense of humour to have
persevered in his original plan after reading that masterpiece of
drollery. It is worthy of note that the voluminous writings of
his childhood, dashed off at headlong speed in the odds and ends
of leisure from school-study and nursery routine, are not only
perfectly correct in spelling and grammar, but display the same
lucidity of meaning, and scrupulous accuracy in punctuation and
the other minor details of the literary art, which characterise
his mature works.

Nothing could be more judicious than the treatment that Mr. and
Mrs. Macaulay adopted towards their boy. They never handed his
productions about, or encouraged him to parade his powers of
conversation or memory. They abstained from any word or act
which might foster in him a perception of his own genius with as
much care as a wise millionaire expends on keeping his son
ignorant of the fact that he is destined to be richer than his
comrades. "It was scarcely ever," writes one who knew him well
from the very first, "that the consciousness was expressed by
either of his parents of the superiority of their son over other
children. Indeed, with his father I never remember any such
expression. What I most observed myself was his extraordinary
command of language. When he came to describe to his mother any
childish play, I took care to be present, when I could, that I
might listen to the way in which he expressed himself, often
scarcely exceeded in his later years. Except this trifle, I
remember him only as a good-tempered boy, always occupied,
playing with his sisters without assumption of any kind." One
effect of this early discipline showed itself in his freedom
from vanity and susceptibility,--those qualities which, coupled
together in our modern psychological dialect under the head of
"self-consciousness," are supposed to be the besetting defects
of the literary character. Another result was his habitual
over-estimate of the average knowledge possessed by mankind.
Judging others by himself, he credited the world at large with
an amount of information which certainly few have the ability to
acquire, or the capacity to retain. If his parents had not been
so diligent in concealing from him the difference between his
own intellectual stores and those of his neighbours, it is
probable that less would have been heard of Lord Macaulay's
Schoolboy.

The system pursued at home was continued at Barley Wood, the
place where the Misses More resided from 1802 onwards. Mrs.
Macaulay gladly sent her boy to a house where he was encouraged
without being spoiled, and where he never failed to be a welcome
guest. The kind old ladies made a real companion of him, and
greatly relished his conversation; while at the same time, with
their ideas on education, they would never have allowed him, even
if he had been so inclined, to forget that he was a child. Mrs.
Hannah More, who had the rare gift of knowing how to live with
both young and old, was the most affectionate and the wisest of
friends, and readily undertook the superintendence of his
studies, his pleasures, and his health. She would keep him with
her for weeks, listening to him as he read prose by the ell,
declaimed poetry by the hour, and discussed and compared his
favourite heroes, ancient, modern, and fictitious, under all
points of view and in every possible combination; coaxing him
into the garden under pretence of a lecture on botany; sending
him from his books to run round the grounds, or play at cooking
in the kitchen; giving him Bible lessons which invariably ended
in a theological argument, and following him with her advice and
sympathy through his multifarious literary enterprises. ["The
next time," (my uncle once said to us,) "that I saw Hannah More
was in 1807. The old ladies begged my parents to leave me with
them for a week, and this visit was a great event in my life. In
parlour and kitchen they could not make enough of me. They taught
me to cook; and I was to preach, and they got in people from the
fields and I stood on a chair, and preached sermons. I might have
been indicted for holding a conventicle."] She writes to his
father in 1809: "I heartily hope that the sea air has been the
means of setting you up, and Mrs. Macaulay also, and that the
dear little poet has caught his share of bracing . . . . Tell Tom
I desire to know how 'Olaus' goes on. The sea, I suppose,
furnished him with some new images."

The broader and more genial aspect under which life showed itself
to the boy at Barley Wood has left its trace in a series of
childish squibs and parodies, which may still be read with an
interest that his Cambrian and Scandinavian rhapsodies fail to
inspire. The most ambitious of these lighter efforts is a
pasquinade occasioned by some local scandal, entitled "Childe
Hugh and the labourer, a pathetic ballad." The "Childe" of the
story was a neighbouring baronet, and the "Abbot" a neighbouring
rector, and the whole performance, intended, as it was, to mimic
the spirit of Percy's Reliques, irresistibly suggests a
reminiscence of John Gilpin. It is pleasant to know that to Mrs.
Hannah More was due the commencement of what eventually became
the most readable of libraries, as is shown in a series of
letters extending over the entire period of Macaulay's education.
When he was six years old she writes; "Though you are a little
boy now, you will one day, if it please God, be a man; but long
before you are a man I hope you will be a scholar. I therefore
wish you to purchase such books as will be useful and agreeable
to you _then_, and that you employ this very small sum in laying a
little tiny corner-stone for your future library." A year or two
afterwards she thanks him for his "two letters, so neat and free
from blots. By this obvious improvement you have entitled
yourself to another book. You must go to Hatchard's and choose. I
think we have nearly exhausted the Epics. What say you to a
little good prose? Johnson's Hebrides, or Walton's Lives, unless
you would like a neat edition of Cowper's poems or Paradise Lost
for your own eating? In any case choose something which you do
not possess. I want you to become a complete Frenchman, that I
may give you Racine, the only dramatic poet I know in any modern
language that is perfectly pure and good. I think you have hit
off the Ode very well, and I am much obliged to you for the
Dedication." The poor little author was already an adept in the
traditional modes of requiting a patron.

He had another Maecenas in the person of General Macaulay, who
came back from India in 1810. The boy greeted him with a copy of
verses, beginning

 "Now safe returned from Asia's parching strand,
  Welcome, thrice welcome to thy native land."

To tell the unvarnished truth, the General's return was not
altogether of a triumphant character. After very narrowly
escaping with his life from an outbreak at Travancore, incited by
a native minister who owed him a grudge, he had given proof of
courage and spirit during some military operations which ended in
his being brought back to the Residency with flying colours. But,
when the fighting was over, he countenanced, and perhaps
prompted, measures of retaliation which were ill taken by his
superiors at Calcutta. In his congratulatory effusion the nephew
presumes to remind the uncle that on European soil there still
might be found employment for so redoubtable a sword.

 "For many a battle shall be lost and won
  Ere yet thy glorious labours shall be done."

The General did not take the hint, and spent the remainder of his
life peacefully enough between London, Bath, and the Continental
capitals. He was accustomed to say that his travelling carriage
was his only freehold; and, wherever he fixed his temporary
residence, he had the talent of making himself popular. At Geneva
he was a universal favourite; he always was welcome at Coppet;
and he gave the strongest conceivable proof of a cosmopolitan
disposition by finding himself equally at home at Rome and at
Clapham. When in England he lived much with his relations, to
whom he was sincerely attached. He was generous in a high degree,
and the young people owed to him books which they otherwise could
never have obtained, and treats and excursions which formed the
only recreations that broke the uniform current of their lives.
They regarded their uncle Colin as the man of the world of the
Macaulay family.

Zachary Macaulay's circumstances during these years were good,
and constantly improving. For some time he held the post of
Secretary to the Sierra Leone Company, with a salary of L500 per
annum. He subsequently entered into partnership with a nephew,
and the firm did a large business as African merchants under the
names of Macaulay and Babington. The position of the father was
favourable to the highest interests of his children. A boy has
the best chance of being well brought up in a household where
there is solid comfort, combined with thrift and simplicity; and
the family was increasing too fast to leave any margin for
luxurious expenditure. Before the eldest son had completed his
thirteenth year he had three brothers and five sisters.

[It was in the course of his thirteenth year that the boy wrote
his "Epitaph on Henry Martyn."

 Here Martyn lies. In manhood's early bloom
 The Christian hero finds a Pagan tomb.
 Religion, sorrowing o'er her favourite son,
 Points to the glorious trophies that he won.
 Eternal trophies! not with carnage red,
 Not stained with tears by hapless captives shed,
 But trophies of the Cross. For that dear name,
 Through every form of danger, death, and shame,
 Onward he journeyed to a happier shore,
 Where danger, death and shame assault no more."]

In the course of 1812 it began to be evident that Tom had got
beyond the educational capabilities of Clapham; and his father
seriously contemplated the notion of removing to London in order
to place him as a day-scholar at Westminster. Thorough as was the
consideration which the parents gave to the matter, their
decision was of more importance than they could at the time
foresee. If their son had gone to a public school, it is more
than probable that he would have turned out a different man, and
have done different work. So sensitive and homeloving a boy might
for a while have been too depressed to enter fully unto the ways
of the place; but, as he gained confidence, he could not have
withstood the irresistible attractions which the life of a great
school exercises over a vivid eager nature, and he would have
sacrificed to passing pleasures and emulations a part, at any
rate, of those years which, in order to be what he was, it was
necessary that he should spend wholly among his books.
Westminster or Harrow might have sharpened his faculties for
dealing with affairs and with men; but the world at large would
have lost more than he could by any possibility have gained. If
Macaulay had received the usual education of a young Englishman,
he might in all probability have kept his seat for Edinburgh; but
he could hardly have written the Essay on Von Ranke, or the
description of England in the third chapter of the History.

Mr. Macaulay ultimately fixed upon a private school, kept by the
Rev. Mr. Preston, at Little Shelford, a village in the immediate
vicinity of Cambridge. The motives which guided this selection
were mainly of a religious nature. Mr. Preston held extreme Low
Church opinions, and stood in the good books of Mr. Simeon, whose
word had long been law in the Cambridge section of the
Evangelical circle. But whatever had been the inducement to make
it, the choice proved singularly fortunate. The tutor, it is
true, was narrow in his views, and lacked the taste and judgment
to set those views before his pupils in an attractive form.
Theological topics dragged into the conversation at unexpected
moments, inquiries about their spiritual state, and long sermons
which had to be listened to under the dire obligation of
reproducing them in an epitome, fostered in the minds of some of
the boys a reaction against the outward manifestations of
religion;--a reaction which had already begun under the strict
system pursued in their respective homes. But, on the other hand,
Mr. Preston knew both how to teach his scholars, and when to
leave them to teach themselves. The eminent judge, who divided
grown men into two sharply defined and most uncomplimentary
categories, was accustomed to say that private schools made poor
creatures, and public schools sad dogs; but Mr. Preston succeeded
in giving a practical contradiction to Sir William Maine's
proposition. His pupils, who were limited to an average of a
dozen at a time, got far beyond their share of honours at the
university and of distinction in after life. George Stainforth, a
grandson of Sir Francis Baring, by his success at Cambridge was
the first to win the school an honourable name, which was more
than sustained by Henry Malden, now Greek Professor at University
College, London, and by Macaulay himself. Shelford was strongly
under the influence of the neighbouring university; an influence
which Mr. Preston, himself a fellow of Trinity, wisely
encouraged. The boys were penetrated with Cambridge ambitions and
ways of thought; and frequent visitors brought to the table,
where master and pupils dined in common, the freshest Cambridge
gossip of the graver sort.

Little Macaulay received much kindness from Dean Milner, the
President of Queen's College, then at the very summit of a
celebrity which is already of the past. Those who care to search
among the embers of that once brilliant reputation can form a
fair notion of what Samuel Johnson would have been if he had
lived a generation later, and had been absolved from the
necessity of earning his bread by the enjoyment of ecclesiastical
sinecures, and from any uneasiness as to his worldly standing by
the possession of academical dignities and functions. The Dean
who had boundless goodwill for all his fellow-creatures at every
period of life, provided that they were not Jacobins or sceptics,
recognised the promise of the boy, and entertained him at his
college residence on terms of friendliness, and almost of
equality. After one of these visits he writes to Mr. Macaulay;
"Your lad is a fine fellow. He shall stand before kings, he shall
not stand before mean men."

Shelford: February 22, 1813.

My dear Papa,--As this is a whole holiday, I cannot find a better
time for answering your letter. With respect to my health, I am
very well, and tolerably cheerful, as Blundell, the best and most
clever of all the scholars, is very kind, and talks to me, and
takes my part. He is quite a friend of Mr. Preston's. The other
boys, especially Lyon, a Scotch boy, and Wilberforce, are very
good-natured, and we might have gone on very well had not one,
a Bristol fellow, come here. He is unanimously alloyed to be a
queer fellow, and is generally characterised as a foolish boy,
and by most of us as an ill-natured one. In my learning I do
Xenophon every day, and twice a week the Odyssey, in which I am
classed with Wilberforce, whom all the boys allow to be very
clever, very droll, and very impudent. We do Latin verses trice a
week, and I have not yet been laughed at, as Wilberforce is the
only one who hears them, being in my class. We are exercised also
once a week in English composition, and once in Latin
composition, and letters of persons renowned in history to each
other. We get by heart Greek grammar or Virgil every evening. As
for sermon-writing, I have hitherto got off with credit, and I
hope I shall keep up my reputation. We have had the first meeting
of our debating society the other day, when a vote of censure was
moved for upon Wilberforce, but he getting up said, "Mr.
President, I beg to second the motion." By this means he escaped.
The kindness which Mr. Preston shows me is very great. He always
assists me in what I cannot do, and takes me to walk out with him
every now and then. My room is a delightful snug little chamber,
which nobody can enter, as there is a trick about opening the
door. I sit like a king, with my writing-desk before me; for,
(would you believe it?) there is a writing-desk in my chest of
drawers; my books on one side, my box of papers on the other, with
my arm-chair and my candle; for every boy has a candlestick,
snuffers, and extinguisher of his own. Being pressed for room, I
will conclude what I have to say to-morrow, and ever remain,

Your affectionate son,

THOMAS B. MACAULAY.

The youth who on this occasion gave proof of his parentage by his
readiness and humour was Wilberforce's eldest son. A fortnight
later on, the subject chosen for discussion was "whether Lord
Wellington or Marlborough was the greatest general. A very warm
debate is expected."

Shelford: April 20, 1813.

My dear Mama,--Pursuant to my promise I resume my pen to write to
you with the greatest pleasure. Since I wrote to you yesterday, I
have enjoyed myself more than I have ever done since I came to
Shelford. Mr. Hodson called about twelve o'clock yesterday
morning with a pony for me, and took me with him to Cambridge.
How surprised and delighted was I to learn that I was to take a
bed at Queen's College in Dean Milner's apartments! Wilberforce
arrived soon after, and I spent the day very agreeably, the Dean
amusing me with the greatest kindness. I slept there, and came
home on horseback to-day just in time for dinner. The Dean has
invited me to come again, and Mr. Preston has given his consent.
The books which I am at present employed in reading to myself
are, in English, Plutarch's Lives, and Milner's Ecclesiastical
History; in French, Fenelon's Dialogues of the Dead. I shall send
you back the volumes of Madame de Genlis's petits romans as soon
as possible, and I should be very much obliged for one or two
more of them. Everything now seems to feel the influence of
spring. The trees are all out. The lilacs are in bloom. The days
are long, and I feel that I should be happy were it not that I
want home. Even yesterday, when I felt more real satisfaction
than I have done for almost three months, I could not help
feeling a sort of uneasiness, which indeed I have always felt
more or less since I have been here, and which is the only thing
that hinders me from being perfectly happy. This day two months
will put a period to my uneasiness.

"Fly fast the hours, and dawn th' expected morn."

Every night when I lie down I reflect that another day is cut off
from the tiresome time of absence.

Your affectionate son,

THOMAS B. MACAULAY.

Shelford: April 26 1813.

My dear Papa,--Since I have given you a detail of weekly duties,
I hope you will be pleased to be informed of my Sunday's
occupations. It is quite a day of rest here, and I really look to
it with pleasure through the whole of the week. After breakfast
we learn a chapter in the Greek Testament that is with the aid of
our Bibles, and without doing it with a dictionary like other
lessons. We then go to church. We dine almost as soon as we come
back, and we are left to ourselves till afternoon church. During
this time I employ myself in reading, and Mr. Preston lends me
any books for which I ask him, so that I am nearly as well off in
this respect as at home, except for one thing, which, though I
believe it is useful, is not very pleasant. I can only ask for
one book at a time, and cannot touch another till I have read it
through. We then go to church, and after we come hack I read as
before till tea-time. After tea we write out the sermon. I cannot
help thinking that Mr. Preston uses all imaginable means to make
us forget it, for he gives us a glass of wine each on Sunday, and
on Sunday only, the very day when we want to have all our
faculties awake; and some do literally go to sleep during the
sermon, and look rather silly when they wake. I, however, have
not fallen into this disaster.

Your affectionate son,

THOMAS B. MACAULAY.

The constant allusions to home politics and to the progress of
the Continental struggle, which occur throughout Zachary
Macaulay's correspondence with his son, prove how freely, and on
what an equal footing, the parent and child already conversed on
questions of public interest. The following letter is curious as
a specimen of the eagerness with which the boy habitually flung
himself into the subjects which occupied his father's thoughts.
The renewal of the East India Company's charter was just then
under the consideration of Parliament, and the whole energies of
the Evangelical party were exerted in order to signalise the
occasion by securing our Eastern dominions as a field for the
spread of Christianity. Petitions against the continued exclusion
of missionaries were in course of circulation throughout the
island, the drafts of which had been prepared by Mr. Macaulay.

Shelford: May 8, 1813.

My dear Papa,--As on Monday it will be out of my power to write,
since the examination subjects are to be given out I write to-day
instead to answer your kind and long letter.

I am very much pleased that the nation seems to take such
interest in the introduction of Christianity into India. My
Scotch blood begins to boil at the mention of the 1,750 names
that went up from a single country parish. Ask Mama and Selina if
they do not now admit my argument with regard to the superior
advantages of the Scotch over the English peasantry.

As to my examination preparations, I will if you please give you
a sketch of my plan. On Monday, the day on which the examination
subjects are given out, I shall begin. My first performance will
be my verses and my declamation. I shall then translate the Greek
and Latin. The first time of going over I shall mark the passages
which puzzle me, and then return to them again. But I shall have
also to rub up my Mathematics, (by the bye, I begin the second
book of Euclid to-day,) and to study whatever History may be
appointed for the examination. I shall not be able to avoid
trembling, whether I know my subjects or not. I am however
intimidated at nothing but Greek. Mathematics suit my taste,
although, before I came, I declaimed against them, and asserted
that, when I went to College, it should not be to Cambridge. I am
occupied with the hope of lecturing Mama and Selina upon
Mathematics, as I used to do upon Heraldry, and to change Or, and
Argent, and Azure, and Gules, for squares, and points, and
circles, and angles, and triangles, and rectangles, and
rhomboids, and in a word "all the pomp and circumstance" of
Euclid. When I come home I shall, if my purse is sufficient,
bring a couple of rabbits for Selina and Jane.

Your affectionate son,

THOMAS B. MACAULAY.

It will be seen that this passing fondness for mathematics soon
changed into bitter disgust.

Clapham May 28, 1813.

My dear Tom,--I am very happy to hear that you have so far
advanced in your different prize exercises, and with such little
fatigue. I know you write with great ease to yourself, and would
rather write ten poems than prune one; but remember that
excellence is not attained at first. All your pieces are much
mended after a little reflection, and therefore take some
solitary walks, and think over each separate thing. Spare no time
or trouble to render each piece as perfect as you can, and then
leave the event without one anxious thought. I have always
admired a saying of one of the old heathen philosophers. When a
friend was condoling with him that he so well deserved of the
gods, and yet that they did not shower their favours on him, as
on some others less worthy, he answered, "I will, however,
continue to deserve well of them." So do you, my dearest. Do
your best because it is the will of God you should improve every
faculty to the utmost now, and strengthen the powers of your mind
by exercise, and then in future you will be better enabled to
glorify God with all your powers and talents, be they of a more
humble, or higher order, and you shall not fail to be received
into everlasting habitations, with the applauding voice of your
Saviour, "Well done, good and faithful servant." You see how
ambitious your mother is. She must have the wisdom of her son
acknowledged before Angels, and an assembled world. My wishes can
soar no higher, and they can be content with nothing less for any
of my children. The first time I saw your face, I repeated those
beautiful lines of Watts' cradle hymn,

 Mayst thou live to know and fear Him,
 Trust and love Him all thy days
 Then go dwell for ever near Him,
 See His face, and sing His praise.

and this is the substance of all my prayers for you. In less than
a month you and I shall, I trust, be rambling over the Common,
which now looks quite beautiful.

I am ever, my dear Tom,

Your affectionate mother,

SELINA MACAULAY.

The commencement of the second half-year at school, perhaps the
darkest season of a boy's existence, was marked by an unusually
severe and prolonged attack of home-sickness. It would be cruel
to insert the first letter written after the return to Shelford
from the summer holidays. That which follows it is melancholy
enough.

Shelford: August 14. 1813.

My dear Mama,--I must confess that I have been a little
disappointed at not receiving a letter from home to-day. I hope,
however, for one to-morrow. My spirits are far more depressed by
leaving home than they were last half-year. Everything brings
home to my recollection. Everything I read, or see, or hear,
brings it to my mind. You told me I should be happy when I once
came here, but not an hour passes in which I do not shed tears at
thinking of home. Every hope, however unlikely to be realised,
affords me some small consolation. The morning on which I went,
you told me that possibly I might come home before the holidays.
If you can confirm this hope, believe me when I assure you that
there is nothing which I would not give for one instant's sight
of home. Tell me in your next, expressly, if you can, whether or
no there is any likelihood of my coming home before the holidays.
If I could gain Papa's leave, I should select my birthday on
October 25 as the time which I should wish to spend at that home
which absence renders still dearer to me. I think I see you
sitting by Papa just after his dinner, reading my letter, and
turning to him, with an inquisitive glance, at the end of the
paragraph. I think too that I see his expressive shake of the
head at it. O, may I be mistaken! You cannot conceive what an
alteration a favourable answer would produce in me. If your
approbation of my request depends upon my advancing in study, I
will work like a cart-horse. If you should refuse it, you will
deprive me of the most pleasing illusion which I ever experienced
in my life. Pray do not fail to write speedily.

Your dutiful and affectionate son,

T. B. MACAULAY.

His father answered him in a letter of strong religious
complexion, full of feeling, and even of beauty, but too long for
reproduction in a biography that is not his own.

Mr. Macaulay's deep anxiety for his son's welfare sometimes
induced him to lend too ready an ear to busybodies, who informed
him of failings in the boy which would have been treated more
lightly, and perhaps more wisely, by a less devoted father. In
the early months of 1814 he writes as follows, after hearing the
tale of some guest of Mr. Preston whom Tom had no doubt
contradicted at table in presence of the assembled household.

London: March 4, 1814.

My dear Tom,--In taking up my pen this morning a passage in
Cowper almost involuntarily occurred to me. You will find it at
length in his "Conversation."

 "Ye powers who rule the Tongue, if such there are,
  And make colloquial happiness your care,
  Preserve me from the thing I dread and hate,
  A duel in the form of a debate.
  Vociferated logic kills me quite.
  A noisy man is always in the right."

You know how much such a quotation as this would fall in with my
notions, averse as I am to loud and noisy tones, and self-
confident, overwhelming, and yet perhaps very unsound arguments.
And you will remember how anxiously I dwelt upon this point while
you were at home. I have been in hopes that this half-year would
witness a great change in you in this respect. My hopes, however,
have been a little damped by something which I heard last week
through a friend, who seemed to have received an impression that
you had gained a high distinction among the young gentlemen at
Shelford by the loudness and vehemence of your tones. Now, my
dear Tom, you cannot doubt that this gives me pain; and it does
so not so much on account of the thing itself, as because I
consider it a pretty infallible test of the mind within. I do
long and pray most earnestly that the ornament of a meek and
quiet spirit may be substituted for vehemence and self-
confidence, and that you may be as much distinguished for the
former as ever you have been for the latter. It is a school in
which I am not ambitious that any child of mine should take a
high degree.

If the people of Shelford be as bad as you represent them in your
letters, what are they but an epitome of the world at large? Are
they ungrateful to you for your kindnesses? Are they foolish, and
wicked, and wayward in the use of their faculties? What is all
this but what we ourselves are guilty of every day? Consider how
much in our case the guilt of such conduct is aggravated by our
superior knowledge. We shall not have ignorance to plead in its
extenuation, as many of the people of Shelford may have. Now,
instead of railing at the people of Shelford, I think the best
thing which you and your schoolfellows could do would be to try
to reform them. You can buy and distribute useful and striking
tracts, as well as Testaments, among such as can read. The cheap
Repository and Religious Tract Society will furnish tracts suited
to all descriptions of persons; and for those who cannot read--
why should you not institute a Sunday school to be taught by
yourselves, and in which appropriate rewards being given for good
behaviour, not only at school but through the week, great effects
of a moral kind might soon be produced? I have exhausted my
paper, and must answer the rest of your letter in a few days. In
the meantime,

I am ever your most affectionate father,

ZACHARY MACAULAY.

A father's prayers are seldom fulfilled to the letter. Many years
were to elapse before the son ceased to talk loudly and with
confidence; and the literature that he was destined to
distribute through the world was of another order from that which
Mr. Macaulay here suggests. The answer, which is addressed to the
mother, affords a proof that the boy could already hold his own.
The allusions to the Christian Observer, of which his father was
editor, and to Dr. Herbert Marsh, with whom the ablest pens of
Clapham were at that moment engaged in hot and embittered
controversy, are thrown in with an artist's hand.

Shelford: April 11. 1814.

My dear Mama,--The news is glorious indeed. Peace! Peace with a
Bourbon, with a descendant of Henri Quatre, with a prince who is
bound to us by all the ties of gratitude. I have some hopes that
it will be a lasting peace; that the troubles of the last twenty
years may make kings and nations wiser. I cannot conceive a
greater punishment to Buonaparte than that which the allies have
inflicted on him. How can his ambitious mind support it? All his
great projects and schemes, which once made every throne in
Europe tremble, are buried in the solitude of an Italian isle.
How miraculously everything has been conducted! We almost seem to
hear the Almighty saying to the fallen tyrant, "For this cause
have I raised thee up, that I might show in thee My power."

As I am in very great haste with this letter, I shall have but
little time to write. I am sorry to hear that some nameless
friend of Papa's denounced my voice as remarkably loud. I have
accordingly resolved to speak in a moderate key except on the
undermentioned special occasions. Imprimis, when I am speaking at
the same time with three others. Secondly, when I am praising the
Christian Observer. Thirdly, when I am praising Mr. Preston or
his sisters I may be allowed to speak in my loudest voice, that
they may hear me.

I saw to-day that greatest of churchmen, that pillar of
Orthodoxy, that true friend to the Liturgy, that mortal enemy to
the Bible Society,--Herbert Marsh, D.D., Professor of Divinity on
Lady Margaret's foundation. I stood looking at him for about ten
minutes, and shall always continue to maintain that he is a very
ill-favoured gentleman as far as outward appearance is concerned.
I am going this week to spend a day or two at Dean Milner's,
where I hope, nothing unforeseen preventing, to see you in about
two months' time.

Ever your affectionate son,

T.B. MACAULAY.

In the course of the year 1814 Mr. Preston removed his establishment
to Aspenden Hall near Buntingford, in Hertfordshire; a large
old-fashioned mansion, standing amidst extensive shrubberies, and
a pleasant undulating domain sprinkled with fine timber. The house
has been rebuilt within the last twenty years, and nothing remains
of it except the dark oak panelling of the hall in which the
scholars made their recitations on the annual speech day. The very
pretty church, which stands hard by within the grounds, was
undergoing restoration in 1873 and by this time the only existing
portion of the former internal fittings is the family pew, in
which the boys sat on drowsy summer afternoons, doing what they
could to keep their impressions of the second sermon distinct from
their reminiscences of the morning. Here Macaulay spent four most
industrious years, doing less and less in the class-room as time
went on, but enjoying the rare advantage of studying Greek and
Latin by the side of such a scholar as Malden. The two companions
were equally matched in age and classical attainments, and at the
university maintained a rivalry so generous as hardly to deserve
the name. Each of the pupils had his own chamber, which the others
were forbidden to enter under the penalty of a shilling fine. This
prohibition was in general not very strictly observed; but the
tutor had taken the precaution of placing Macaulay in a room next
his own;--a proximity which rendered the position of an intruder
so exceptionally dangerous that even Malden could not remember
having once passed his friend's threshold during the whole of
their stay at Aspenden.

In this seclusion, removed from the delight of family
intercourse, (the only attraction strong enough to draw him from
his books,) the boy read widely, unceasingly, more than rapidly.
The secret of his immense acquirements lay in two invaluable
gifts of nature,--an unerring memory, and the capacity for taking
in at a glance the contents of a printed page. During the first
part of his life he remembered whatever caught his fancy without
going through the process of consciously getting it by heart. As a
child, during one of the numerous seasons when the social duties
devolved upon Mr. Macaulay, he accompanied his father on an
afternoon call, and found on a table the Lay of the Last
Minstrel, which he had never before met with. He kept himself
quiet with his prize while the elders were talking, and, on his
return home, sat down upon his mother's bed, and repeated to her
as many cantos as she had the patience or the strength to listen
to. At one period of his life he was known to say that, if by
some miracle of Vandalism all copies of Paradise Lost and the
Pilgrim's Progress were destroyed off the face of the earth, he
would undertake to reproduce them both from recollection whenever
a revival of learning came. In 1813, while waiting in a Cambridge
coffee-room for a postchaise which was to take him to his school,
he picked up a county newspaper containing two such specimens of
provincial poetical talent as in those days might be read in the
corner of any weekly journal. One piece was headed "Reflections
of an Exile;" while the other was a trumpery parody on the Welsh
ballad "Ar hyd y nos," referring to some local anecdote of an
ostler whose nose had been bitten off by a filly. He looked them
once through, and never gave them a thought for forty years, at
the end of which time he repeated them both without missing,--or,
as far as he knew, changing,--a single word.

[Sir William Stirling Maxwell says, in a letter with which he has
honoured me: "Of his extraordinary memory I remember Lord Jeffrey
telling me an instance. They had had a difference about a
quotation from Paradise Lost, and made a wager about it; the
wager being a copy of the hook, which, on reference to the
passage, it was found Jeffrey had won. The bet was made just
before, and paid immediately after, the Easter vacation. On
putting the volume into Jeffrey's hand, your uncle said, 'I don't
think you will find me tripping again. I knew it, I thought,
pretty well before; but I am sure I know it now.' Jeffrey
proceeded to examine him, putting him on at a variety of the
heaviest passages--the battle of the angels--the dialogues of
Adam and the archangels,--and found him ready to declaim them
all, till he begged him to stop. He asked him how he had acquired
such a command of the poem, and had for answer: 'I had him in the
country, and I read it twice over, and I don't think that I shall
ever forget it again.' At the same time he told Jeffrey that he
believed he could repeat everything of his own he had ever
printed, and nearly all he had ever written, 'except, perhaps,
some of my college exercises.'

"I myself had an opportunity of seeing and hearing a remarkable
proof of your uncle's hold upon the most insignificant verbiage
that chance had poured into his ear. I was staying with him at
Bowood, in the winter of 1852. Lord Elphinstone--who had been
many years before Governor of Madras,--was telling one morning at
breakfast of a certain native barber there, who was famous, in
his time, for English doggrel of his own making, with which he
was wont to regale his customers. 'Of course,' said Lord
Elphinstone, 'I don't remember any of it; but was very funny, and
used to be repeated in society.' Macaulay, who was sitting a good
way off, immediately said: 'I remember being shaved by the
fellow, and he recited a quantity of verse to me during the
operation, and here is some of it;' and then he went off in a
very queer doggrel about the exploits of Bonaparte, of which I
recollect the recurring refrain--

 But when he saw the British boys,
 He up and ran away.

It is hardly conceivable that he had ever had occasion to recall
that poem since the day when he escaped from under the poet's
razor.]

As he grew older, this wonderful power became impaired so far
that getting by rote the compositions of others was no longer an
involuntary process. He has noted in his Lucan the several
occasions on which he committed to memory his favourite passages
of an author whom he regarded as unrivalled among rhetoricians;
and the dates refer to 1836, when he had just turned the middle
point of life. During his last years, at his dressing-table in
the morning, he would learn by heart one or another of the little
idylls in which Martial expatiates on the enjoyments of a Spanish
country-house, or a villa-farm in the environs of Rome;--those
delicious morsels of verse which, (considering the sense that
modern ideas attach to the name,) it is an injustice to class
under the head of epigrams.

Macaulay's extraordinary faculty of assimilating printed matter
at first sight remained the same through life. To the end he read
books more quickly than other people skimmed them, and skimmed
them as fast as anyone else could turn the leaves. "He seemed to
read through the skin," said one who had often watched the
operation. And this speed was not in his case obtained at the
expense of accuracy. Anything which had once appeared in type,
from the highest effort of genius down to the most detestable
trash that ever consumed ink and paper manufactured for better
things, had in his eyes an authority which led him to look upon
misquotation as a species of minor sacrilege.

With these endowments, sharpened by an insatiable curiosity, from
his fourteenth year onward he was permitted to roam almost at
will over the whole expanse of literature. He composed little
beyond his school exercises, which themselves bear signs of
having been written in a perfunctory manner. At this period he
had evidently no heart in anything but his reading. Before
leaving Shelford for Aspenden he had already invoked the epic
muse for the last time.

 "Arms and the man I sing, who strove in vain
  To save green Erin from a foreign reign."

The man was Roderic, king of Connaught, whom he got tired of
singing before he had well completed two books of the poem.
Thenceforward he appears never to have struck his lyre, except in
the first enthusiasm aroused by the intelligence of some
favourable turn of fortune on the Continent. The flight of
Napoleon from Russia was celebrated in a "Pindaric Ode" duly
distributed into strophes and antistrophes; and, when the allies
entered Paris, the school put his services into requisition to
petition for a holiday in honour of the event. He addressed his
tutor in a short poem, which begins with a few sonorous and
effective couplets, grows more and more like the parody on
Fitzgerald in "Rejected Addresses," and ends in a peroration of
which the intention is unquestionably mock-heroic:

 "Oh, by the glorious posture of affairs,
  By the enormous price that Omnium hears,
  By princely Bourbon's late recovered Crown,
  And by Miss Fanny's safe return from town,
  Oh, do not thou, and thou alone, refuse
  To show thy pleasure at this glorious news!"

Touched by the mention of his sister, Mr. Preston yielded and
young Macaulay never turned another verse except at the bidding
of his schoolmaster, until, on the eve of his departure for
Cambridge, he wrote between three and four hundred lines of a
drama, entitled "Don Fernando," marked by force and fertility of
diction, but somewhat too artificial to be worthy of publication
under a name such as his. Much about the same time he
communicated to Malden the commencement of a burlesque poem on
the story of Anthony Babington; who, by the part that he took in
the plots against the life of Queen Elizabeth, had given the
family a connection with English history which, however
questionable, was in Macaulay's view better than none.

 "Each, says the proverb, has his taste. 'Tis true.
  Marsh loves a controversy; Coates a play;
  Bennet a felon; Lewis Way a Jew;
  The Jew the silver spoons of Lewis Way.
  The Gipsy Poetry, to own the truth,
  Has been my love through childhood and in youth."

It is perhaps as well that the project to all appearance stopped
with the first stanza, which in its turn was probably written for
the sake of a single line. The young man had a better use for his
time than to spend it in producing frigid imitations of Beppo.

He was not unpopular among his fellow-pupils, who regarded him
with pride and admiration, tempered by the compassion which his
utter inability to play at any sort of game would have excited in
every school, private or public alike. He troubled himself very
little about the opinion of those by whom he was surrounded at
Aspenden. It required the crowd and the stir of a university to
call forth the social qualities which he possessed in so large a
measure. The tone of his correspondence during these years
sufficiently indicates that he lived almost exclusively among
books. His letters, which had hitherto been very natural and
pretty, began to smack of the library, and please less than those
written in early boyhood. His pen was overcharged with the
metaphors and phrases of other men; and it was not till maturing
powers had enabled him to master and arrange the vast masses of
literature which filled his memory that his native force could
display itself freely through the medium of a style which was all
his own. In 1815 he began a formal literary correspondence, after
the taste of the previous century, with Mr. Hudson, a gentleman
in the Examiner's Office of the East India House.

Aspenden Hall: August 22, 1815.

Dear Sir,--The Spectator observes, I believe in his first paper,
that we can never read an author with much zest unless we are
acquainted with his situation. I feel the same in my epistolary
correspondence; and, supposing that in this respect we may be
alike, I will just tell you my condition. Imagine a house in the
middle of pretty large grounds, surrounded by palings. These I
never pass. You may therefore suppose that I resemble the Hermit
of Parnell.

 "As yet by books and swains the world he knew,
  Nor knew if books and swains report it true."

If you substitute newspapers and visitors for books and swains,
you may form an idea of what I know of the present state of
things. Write to me as one who is ignorant of every event except
political occurrences. These I learn regularly; but if Lord Byron
were to publish melodies or romances, or Scott metrical tales
without number, I should never see them, or perhaps hear of them,
till Christmas. Retirement of this kind, though it precludes me
from studying the works of the hour, is very favourable for the
employment of "holding high converse with the mighty dead."

I know not whether "peeping at the world through the loopholes of
retreat" be the best way of forming us for engaging in its busy
and active scenes. I am sure it is not a way to my taste. Poets
may talk of the beauties of nature, the enjoyments of a country
life, and rural innocence; but there is another kind of life
which, though unsung by bards, is yet to me infinitely superior
to the dull uniformity of country life. London is the place for
me. Its smoky atmosphere, and its muddy river, charm me more than
the pure air of Hertfordshire, and the crystal currents of the
river Rib. Nothing is equal to the splendid varieties of London
life, "the fine flow of London talk," and the dazzling brilliancy
of London spectacles. Such are my sentiments, and, if ever I
publish poetry, it shall not be pastoral. Nature is the last
goddess to whom my devoirs shall be paid.

Yours most faithfully,

THOMAS B. MACAULAY.

This votary of city life was still two months short of completing
his fifteenth year!

Aspenden Hall: August 23, 1815.

My dear Mama,--You perceive already in so large a sheet, and so
small a hand, the promise of a long, a very long letter, longer,
as I intend it, than all the letters which you send in a half-
year together. I have again begun my life of sterile monotony,
unvarying labour, the dull return of dull exercises in dull
uniformity of tediousness. But do not think that I complain.

 My mind to me a kingdom is,
 Such perfect joy therein I find
 As doth exceed all other bliss
 That God or nature hath assigned.

Assure yourself that I am philosopher enough to be happy,--I
meant to say not particularly unhappy,--in solitude; but man is
an animal made for society. I was gifted with reason, not to
speculate in Aspenden Park, but to interchange ideas with some
person who can understand me. This is what I miss at Aspenden.
There are several here who possess both taste and reading; who
can criticise Lord Byron and Southey with much tact and "savoir
du metier." But here it is not the fashion to think. Hear what I
have read since I came here. Hear and wonder! I have in the first
place read Boccacio's Decameron, a tale of a hundred cantos. He
is a wonderful writer. Whether he tells in humorous or familiar
strains the follies of the silly Calandrino, or the witty pranks
of Buffalmacco and Bruno, or sings in loftier numbers

 Dames, knights, and arms, and love, the feats that spring
 From courteous minds and generous faith,

or lashes with a noble severity and fearless independence the
vices of the monks and the priestcraft of the established
religion, he is always elegant, amusing, and, what pleases and
surprises most in a writer of so unpolished an age, strikingly
delicate and chastised. I prefer him infinitely to Chaucer. If
you wish for a good specimen of Boccacio, as soon as you have
finished my letter, (which will come, I suppose, by dinner-time,)
send Jane up to the library for Dryden's poems, and you will find
among them several translations from Boccacio, particularly one
entitled "Theodore and Honoria."

But, truly admirable as the bard of Florence is, I must not
permit myself to give him more than his due share of my letter. I
have likewise read Gil Blas, with unbounded admiration of the
abilities of Le Sage. Malden and I have read Thalaba together,
and are proceeding to the Curse of Kehama. Do not think, however,
that I am neglecting more important studies than either Southey
or Boccacio. I have read the greater part of the History of James
I. and Mrs. Montague's essay on Shakspeare, and a great deal of
Gibbon. I never devoured so many books in a fortnight. John
Smith, Bob Hankinson, and I, went over the Hebrew Melodies
together. I certainly think far better of them than we used to do
at Clapham. Papa may laugh, and indeed he did laugh me out of my
taste at Clapham; but I think that there is a great deal of
beauty in the first melody, "She walks in beauty," though indeed
who it is that walks in beauty is not very exactly defined. My
next letter shall contain a production of my muse, entitled "An
Inscription for the Column of Waterloo," which is to be shown to
Mr. Preston to-morrow. What he may think of it I do not know. But
I am like my favourite Cicero about my own productions. It is all
one to me what others think of them. I never like them a bit less
for being disliked by the rest of mankind. Mr. Preston has
desired me to bring him up this evening two or three subjects for
a Declamation. Those which I have selected are as follows: 1st, a
speech in the character of Lord Coningsby, impeaching the Earl of
Oxford; 2nd, an essay on the utility of standing armies; 3rd, an
essay on the policy of Great Britain with regard to continental
possessions. I conclude with sending my love to Papa, Selina,
Jane, John, ("but he is not there," as Fingal pathetically says,
when in enumerating his sons who should accompany him to the
chase he inadvertently mentions the dead Ryno,) Henry, Fanny,
Hannah, Margaret, and Charles. Valete.

T.B. MACAULAY.

This exhaustive enumeration of his brothers and sisters invites
attention to that home where he reigned supreme. Lady Trevelyan
thus describes their life at Clapham: "I think that my father's
strictness was a good counterpoise to the perfect worship of your
uncle by the rest of the family. To us he was an object of
passionate love and devotion. To us he could do no wrong. His
unruffled sweetness of temper, his unfailing flow of spirits, his
amusing talk, all made his presence so delightful that his wishes
and his tastes were our law. He hated strangers; and his notion
of perfect happiness was to see us all working round him while he
read aloud a novel, and then to walk all together on the Common,
or, if it rained, to have a frightfully noisy game of hide-and-
seek. I have often wondered how our mother could ever have
endured our noise in her little house. My earliest recollections
speak of the intense happiness of the holidays, beginning with
finding him in Papa's room in the morning; the awe at the idea of
his having reached home in the dark after we were in bed, and the
Saturnalia which at once set in;--no lessons; nothing but fun and
merriment for the whole six weeks. In the year 1816 we were at
Brighton for the summer holidays, and he read to us Sir Charles
Grandison. It was always a habit in our family to read aloud
every evening. Among the books selected I can recall Clarendon,
Burnet, Shakspeare, (a great treat when my mother took the
volume,) Miss Edgeworth, Mackenzie's Lounger and Mirror, and, as
a standing dish, the Quarterly and the Edinburgh Reviews. Poets
too, especially Scott and Crabbe, were constantly chosen. Poetry
and novels, except during Tom's holidays, were forbidden in the
daytime, and stigmatised as 'drinking drams in the morning.'"

Morning or evening, Mr. Macaulay disapproved of novel-reading;
but, too indulgent to insist on having his own way in any but
essential matters, he lived to see himself the head of a family
in which novels were more read, and better remembered, than in
any household of the United Kingdom. The first warning of the
troubles that were in store for him was an anonymous letter
addressed to him as editor of the Christian Observer, defending
works of fiction, and eulogising Fielding and Smollett. This he
incautiously inserted in his periodical, and brought down upon
himself the most violent objurgations from scandalised
contributors, one of whom informed the public that he had
committed the obnoxious number to the flames, and should
thenceforward cease to take in the Magazine. The editor replied
with becoming spirit; although by that time he was aware that the
communication, the insertion of which in an unguarded moment had
betrayed him into a controversy for which he had so little heart,
had proceeded from the pen of his son. Such was young Macaulay's
first appearance in print, if we except the index to the
thirteenth volume of the Christian Observer, which he drew up
during his Christmas holidays of 1814. The place where he
performed his earliest literary work can be identified with
tolerable certainty. He enjoyed the eldest son's privilege of a
separate bedchamber; and there, at the front window on the top
story, furthest from the Common and nearest to London, we can
fancy him sitting, apart from the crowded play-room, keeping
himself warm as best he might, and travelling steadily through
the blameless pages the contents of which it was his task to
classify for the convenience of posterity.

Lord Macaulay used to remark that Thackeray introduced too much
of the Dissenting element into his picture of Clapham in the
opening chapters of "The Newcomes." The leading people of the
place,--with the exception of Mr. William Smith, the Unitarian
member of Parliament,--were one and all staunch Churchmen; though
they readily worked in concert with those religious communities
which held in the main the same views, and pursued the same
objects, as themselves. Old John Thornton, the earliest of the
Evangelical magnates, when he went on his annual tour to the
South Coast or the Scotch mountains, would take with him some
Independent or Wesleyan minister who was in need of a holiday;
and his followers in the next generation had the most powerful
motives for maintaining the alliance which he had inaugurated.
They could not neglect such doughty auxiliaries in the memorable
war which they waged against cruelty, ignorance, and irreligion,
and in their less momentous skirmishes with the votaries of the
stage, the racecourse, and the card-table. Without the aid of
nonconformist sympathy, and money, and oratory, and organisation,
their operations would have been doomed to certain failure. The
cordial relations entertained with the members of other
denominations by those among whom his youth was passed did much
to indoctrinate Macaulay with a lively and genuine interest in
sectarian theology. He possessed a minute acquaintance, very rare
among men of letters, with the origin and growth of the various
forms of faith and practice which have divided the allegiance of
his countrymen; not the least important of his qualifications for
writing the history of an epoch when the national mind gave
itself to religious controversy even more largely than has been
its wont.

The method of education in vogue among the Clapham families was
simple, without being severe. In the spacious gardens, and the
commodious houses of an architecture already dating a century
back, which surrounded the Common, there was plenty of freedom,
and good fellowship, and reasonable enjoyment for young and old
alike. Here again Thackeray has not done justice to a society
that united the mental culture, and the intellectual activity,
which are developed by the neighbourhood of a great capital, with
the wholesome quiet and the homely ways of country life. Hobson
and Brian Newcome are not fair specimens of the effect of Clapham
influences upon the second generation. There can have been
nothing vulgar, and little that was narrow, in a training which
produced Samuel Wilberforce, and Sir James Stephen, and Charles
and Robert Grant, and Lord Macaulay. The plan on which children
were brought up in the chosen home of the Low Church party,
during its golden age, will bear comparison with systems about
which, in their day, the world was supposed never to tire of
hearing, although their ultimate results have been small indeed.

It is easy to trace whence the great bishop and the great writer
derived their immense industry. Working came as naturally as
walking to sons who could not remember a time when their fathers
idled. "Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Babington have never appeared
downstairs lately, except to take a hasty dinner, and for half an
hour after we have supped. The slave-trade now occupies them nine
hours daily. Mr. Babington told me last night that he had fourteen
hundred folio pages to read, to detect the contradictions, and to
collect the answers which corroborate Mr. Wilberforce's assertions
in his speeches. These, with more than two thousand pages to be
abridged, must be done within a fortnight, and they talk of
sitting up one night in every week to accomplish it. The two
friends begin to look very ill, but they are in excellent spirits,
and at this moment I hear them laughing at some absurd questions
in the examination." Passages such as this are scattered broadcast
through the correspondence of Wilberforce and his friends.
Fortitude, and diligence, and self- control, and all that makes
men good and great, cannot be purchased from professional
educators. Charity is not the only quality which begins at home.
It is throwing away money to spend a thousand a year on the
teaching of three boys, if they are to return from school only to
find the older members of their family intent on amusing
themselves at any cost of time and trouble, or sacrificing
self-respect in ignoble efforts to struggle into a social grade
above their own. The child will never place his aims high, and
pursue them steadily, unless the parent has taught him what
energy, and elevation of purpose, mean not less by example than by
precept.

In that company of indefatigable workers none equalled the
labours of Zachary Macaulay. Even now, when he has been in his
grave for more than the third of a century, it seems almost an
act of disloyalty to record the public services of a man who
thought that he had done less than nothing if his exertions met
with praise, or even with recognition. The nature and value of
those services may be estimated from the terms in which a very
competent judge, who knew how to weigh his words, spoke of the
part which Mr. Macaulay played in one only of his numerous
enterprises,--the suppression of slavery and the slave-trade.
"That God had called him into being to wage war with this
gigantic evil became his immutable conviction. During forty
successive years he was ever burdened with this thought. It was
the subject of his visions by day and of his dreams by night. To
give them reality he laboured as men labour for the honours of a
profession or for the subsistence of their children. In that
service he sacrificed all that a man may lawfully sacrifice--
health, fortune, repose, favour, and celebrity. He died a poor
man, though wealth was within his reach. He devoted himself to
the severest toil, amidst allurements to luxuriate in the
delights of domestic and social intercourse, such as few indeed
have encountered. He silently permitted some to usurp his hardly-
earned honours, that no selfish controversy might desecrate their
common cause. He made no effort to obtain the praises of the
world, though he had talents to command, and a temper peculiarly
disposed to enjoy them. He drew upon himself the poisoned shafts
of calumny, and, while feeling their sting as generous spirits
only can feel it, never turned a single step aside from his path
to propitiate or to crush the slanderers."

Zachary Macaulay was no mere man of action. It is difficult to
understand when it was that he had time to pick up his knowledge
of general literature; or how he made room for it in a mind so
crammed with facts and statistics relating to questions of the day
that when Wilberforce was at a loss for a piece of information he
used to say, "Let us look it out in Macaulay." His private papers,
which are one long register of unbroken toil, do nothing to clear
up the problem. Highly cultivated, however, he certainly was, and
his society was in request with many who cared little for the
objects which to him were everything. That he should have been
esteemed and regarded by Lord Brougham, Francis Homer, and Sir
James Mackintosh, seems natural enough, but there is something
surprising in finding him in friendly and frequent intercourse
with some of his most distinguished French contemporaries.
Chateaubriand, Sismondi, the Duc de Broglie, Madame de Stael, and
Dumont, the interpreter of Bentham, corresponded with him freely
in their own language, which he wrote to admiration. The
gratification that his foreign acquaintance felt at the sight of
his letters would have been unalloyed but for the pamphlets and
blue-books by which they were too often accompanied. It is not
difficult to imagine the feelings of a Parisian on receiving two
quarto volumes, with the postage only in part pre-paid, containing
the proceedings of a Committee on Apprenticeship in the West
Indies, and including the twelve or fifteen thousand questions and
answers on which the Report was founded. It would be hard to meet
with a more perfect sample of the national politeness than the
passage in which M. Dumont acknowledges one of the less formidable
of these unwelcome gifts. "Mon cher Ami,--Je ne laisserai pas
partir Mr. Inglis sans le charger de quelques lignes pour vous,
afin de vous remercier du Christian Observer que vous avez eu la
bonte de m'envoyer. Vous savez que j'ai a great taste for it; mais
il faut vous avouer une triste verite, c'est que je manque
absolument de loisir pour le lire. Ne m'en envoyez plus; car je me
sens peine d'avoir sous les yeux de si bonnes choses, dont je n'ai
pas le temps de tue nourrir."

"In the year 1817," Lady Trevelyan writes, "my parents made a
tour in Scotland with your uncle. Brougham gave them a letter to
Jeffrey, who hospitably entertained them; but your uncle said
that Jeffrey was not at all at his ease, and was apparently so
terrified at my father's religious reputation that he seemed
afraid to utter a joke. Your uncle complained grievously that
they travelled from manse to manse, and always came in for very
long prayers and expositions. [Macaulay writes in his journal of
August 8, 1859: "We passed my old acquaintance, Dumbarton castle,
I remembered my first visit to Dumbarton, and the old minister,
who insisted on our eating a bit of cake with him, and said a
grace over it which might have been prologue to a dinner of the
Fishmongers' Company, or the Grocers' Company."] I think, with
all the love and reverence with which your uncle regarded his
father's memory, there mingled a shade of bitterness that he had
not met quite the encouragement and appreciation from him which
he received from others. But such a son as he was! Never a
disrespectful word or look; always anxious to please and amuse;
and at last he was the entire stay and support of his father's
declining years.

"Your uncle was of opinion that the course pursued by his father
towards him during his youth was not judicious. But here I am
inclined to disagree with him. There was no want of proof of the
estimation in which his father held him, corresponding with him
from a very early age as with a man, conversing with him freely,
and writing of him most fondly. But, in the desire to keep down
any conceit, there was certainly in my father a great outward
show of repression and depreciation. Then the faults of your
uncle were peculiarly those that my father had no patience with.
Himself precise in his arrangements, writing a beautiful hand,
particular about neatness, very accurate and calm, detesting
strong expressions, and remarkably self-controlled; while his
eager impetuous boy, careless of his dress, always forgetting to
wash his hands and brush his hair, writing an execrable hand, and
folding his letters with a great blotch for a seal, was a
constant care and irritation. Many letters to your uncle have I
read on these subjects. Sometimes a specimen of the proper way of
folding a letter is sent him, (those were the sad days before
envelopes were known,) and he is desired to repeat the experiment
till he succeeds. General Macaulay's fastidious nature led him to
take my father's line regarding your uncle, and my youthful soul
was often vexed by the constant reprimands for venial
transgressions. But the great sin was the idle reading, which was
a thorn in my father's side that never was extracted. In truth,
he really acknowledged to the full your uncle's abilities, and
felt that if he could only add his own morale, his unwearied
industry, his power of concentrating his energies on the work in
hand, his patient painstaking calmness, to the genius and fervour
which his son possessed, then a being might be formed who could
regenerate the world. Often in later years I have heard my
father, after expressing an earnest desire for some object,
exclaim, 'If I had only Tom's power of speech!' But he should
have remembered that all gifts are not given to one, and that
perhaps such a union as he coveted is even impossible. Parents
must be content to see their children walk in their own path, too
happy if through any road they attain the same end, the living
for the glory of God and the good of man."

From a marvellously early date in Macaulay's life public affairs
divided his thoughts with literature, and, as he grew to manhood,
began more and more to divide his aspirations. His father's house
was much used as a centre of consultation by members of
Parliament who lived in the suburbs on the Surrey side of London;
and the boy could hardly have heard more incessant, and assuredly
not more edifying, political talk if he had been brought up in
Downing Street. The future advocate and interpreter of Whig
principles was not reared in the Whig faith. Attached friends of
Pitt, who in personal conduct, and habits of life, certainly came
nearer to their standard than his great rival,--and warmly in
favour of a war which, to their imagination, never entirely lost
its early character of an internecine contest with atheism.--the
Evangelicals in the House of Commons for the most part acted with
the Tories. But it may be doubted whether, in the long run, their
party would not have been better without them. By the zeal, the
munificence, the laborious activity, with which they pursued
their religious and semi-religious enterprises, they did more to
teach the world how to get rid of existing institutions than by
their votes and speeches at Westminster they contributed to
preserve them. [Macaulay, writing to one of his sisters in 1844,
says: "I think Stephen's article on the Clapham Sect the best
thing he ever did, I do not think with you that the Claphamites
were men too obscure for such delineation. The truth is that from
that little knot of men emanated all the Bible Societies, and
almost all the Missionary Societies, in the world. The whole
organisation of the Evangelical party was their work. The share
which they had in providing means for the education of the people
was great. They were really the destroyers of the slave-trade,
and of slavery. Many of those whom Stephen describes were public
men of the greatest weight, Lord Teignmouth governed India in
Calcutta, Grant governed India in Leadenhall Street, Stephen's
father was Perceval's right-hand man in the House of Commons. It
is needless to speak of Wilberforce. As to Simeon, if you knew
what his authority and influence were, and how they extended from
Cambridge to the most remote corners of England, you would allow
that his real sway in the Church was far greater than that of any
primate. Thornton, to my surprise, thinks the passage about my
father unfriendly. I defended Stephen. The truth is that he asked
my permission to draw a portrait of my father for the Edinburgh
Review. I told him that I had only to beg that he would not give
it the air of a puff; a thing which, for myself and for my
friends, I dread far more than any attack. My influence over the
Review is so well known that a mere eulogy of my father appearing
in that work would only call forth derision. I therefore am
really glad that Stephen has introduced into his sketch some
little characteristic traits which, in themselves, were not
beauties."] With their May meetings, and African Institutions,
and Anti-slavery Reporters, and their subscriptions of tens of
thousands of pounds, and their petitions bristling with hundreds
of thousands of signatures, and all the machinery for informing
opinion and bringing it to bear on ministers and legislators
which they did so much to perfect and even to invent, they can be
regarded as nothing short of the pioneers and fuglemen of that
system of popular agitation which forms a leading feature in our
internal history during the past half-century. At an epoch when
the Cabinet which they supported was so averse to manifestations
of political sentiment that a Reformer who spoke his mind in
England was seldom long out of prison, and in Scotland ran a very
serious risk of transportation, Toryism sat oddly enough on men
who spent their days in the committee-room and their evenings on
the platform, and each of whom belonged to more Associations
combined for the purpose of influencing Parliament than he could
count on the fingers of both his hands.

There was something incongruous in their position; and as time
went on they began to perceive the incongruity. They gradually
learned that measures dear to philanthropy might be expected to
result from the advent to power of their opponents; while their
own chief too often failed them at a pinch out of what appeared
to them an excessive, and humiliating, deference to interests
powerfully represented on the benches behind him. Their eyes were
first opened by Pitt's change of attitude with regard to the
object that was next all their hearts. There is something almost
pathetic in the contrast between two entries in Wilberforce's
diary, of which the first has become classical, but the second is
not so generally known. In 1787, referring to the movement
against the slave-trade, he says: "Pitt recommended me to
undertake its conduct, as a subject suited to my character and
talents. At length, I well remember, after a conversation in the
open air at the root of an old tree at Holwood, just above the
vale of Keston, I resolved to give notice on a fit occasion in
the House of Commons of my intention to bring the subject
forward." Twelve years later Mr. Henry Thornton had brought in a
bill for confining the trade within certain limits upon the coast
of Africa. "Upon the second reading of this bill," writes
Wilberforce, "Pitt coolly put off the debate when I had
manifested a design of answering P.'s speech, and so left
misrepresentations without a word. William Smith's anger;--Henry
Thornton's coolness;--deep impression on me, but conquered, I
hope, in a Christian way."

Besides instructing their successors in the art of carrying on a
popular movement, Wilberforce and his followers had a lesson to
teach, the value of which not so many perhaps will be disposed to
question. In public life, as in private, they habitually had the
fear of God before their eyes. A mere handful as to number, and
in average talent very much on a level with the mass of their
colleagues;--counting in their ranks no orator, or minister, or
boroughmonger;--they commanded the ear of the House, and exerted
on its proceedings an influence, the secret of which those who
have studied the Parliamentary history of the period find it only
too easy to understand. To refrain from gambling and ball-giving,
to go much to church and never to the theatre, was not more at
variance with the social customs of the day than it was the
exception in the political world to meet with men who looked to
the facts of the case and not to the wishes of the minister, and
who before going into the lobby required to be obliged with a
reason instead of with a job. Confidence and respect, and (what
in the House of Commons is their unvarying accompaniment) power,
were gradually, and to a great extent involuntarily, accorded to
this group of members. They were not addicted to crotchets, nor
to the obtrusive and unseasonable assertion of conscientious
scruples. The occasions on which they made proof of independence
and impartiality were such as justified, and dignified, their
temporary renunciation of party ties. They interfered with
decisive effect in the debates on the great scandals of Lord
Melville and the Duke of York, and in more than one financial or
commercial controversy that deeply concerned the national
interests, of which the question of the retaining the Orders in
Council was a conspicuous instance. A boy who, like young
Macaulay, was admitted to the intimacy of politicians such as
these, and was accustomed to hear matters of state discussed
exclusively from a public point of view without any afterthought
of ambition, or jealousy, or self-seeking, could hardly fail to
grow up a patriotic and disinterested man. "What is far better
and more important than all is this, that I believe Macaulay to
be incorruptible. You might lay ribbons, stars, garters, wealth,
titles before him in vain. He has an honest genuine love of his
country, and the world would not bribe him to neglect her
interests." Thus said Sydney Smith, who of all his real friends
was the least inclined to over-praise him.

The memory of Thornton and Babington, and the other worthies of
their day and set, is growing dim, and their names already mean
little in our ears. Part of their work was so thoroughly done
that the world, as its wont is, has long ago taken the credit of
that work to itself. Others of their undertakings, in weaker
hands than theirs, seem out of date among the ideas and beliefs
which now are prevalent. At Clapham, as elsewhere, the old order
is changing, and not always in a direction which to them would be
acceptable or even tolerable. What was once the home of Zachary
Macaulay stands almost within the swing of the bell of a stately
and elegant Roman Catholic chapel; and the pleasant mansion of
Lord Teignmouth, the cradle of the Bible Society, is now a
religious house of the Redemptorist Order. But in one shape or
another honest performance always lives, and the gains that
accrued from the labours of these men are still on the right side
of the national ledger. Among the most permanent of those gains
is their undoubted share in the improvement of our political
integrity by direct, and still more by indirect, example. It
would be ungrateful to forget in how large a measure it is due to
them that one, whose judgments upon the statesmen of many ages
and countries have been delivered to an audience vast beyond all
precedent, should have framed his decisions in accordance with
the dictates of honour and humanity, of ardent public spirit and
lofty public virtue.

CHAPTER II.

1818--1824.

Macaulay goes to the University--His love for Trinity College--
His contemporaries at Cambridge--Charles Austin--The Union
Debating Society--University studies, successes, and failures--
The Mathematical Tripos--The Trinity Fellowship--William the
Third--Letters--Prize poems--Peterloo--Novel-reading--The Queen's
Trial--Macaulay's feeling towards his mother--A Reading-party--
Hoaxing an editor--Macaulay takes pupils.

IN October 1818 Macaulay went into residence at Trinity College,
Cambridge. Mr. Henry Sykes Thornton, the eldest son of the member
for Southwark, was his companion throughout his university
career. The young men lived in the same lodgings, and began by
reading with the same tutor; a plan which promised well, because,
in addition to what was his own by right, each had the benefit of
the period of instruction paid for by the other. But two hours
were much the same as one to Macaulay, in whose eyes algebra and
geometry were so much additional material for lively and
interminable argument. Thornton reluctantly broke through the
arrangement, and eventually stood highest among the Trinity
wranglers of his year; an elevation which he could hardly have
attained if he had pursued his studies in company with one who
regarded every successive mathematical proposition as an open
question. A Parliamentary election took place while the two
friends were still quartered together in Jesus Lane. A tumult in
the neighbouring street announced that the citizens were
expressing their sentiments by the only channel which was open to
them before the days of Reform; and Macaulay, to whom any
excitement of a political nature was absolutely irresistible,
dragged Thornton to the scene of action, and found the mob
breaking the windows of the Hoop hotel, the head-quarters of the
successful candidates. His ardour was cooled by receiving a dead
cat full in the face. The man who was responsible for the animal
came up and apologised very civilly, assuring him that there was
no town and gown feeling in the matter, and that the cat had been
meant for Mr. Adeane. "I wish," replied Macaulay, "that you had
meant it for me, and hit Mr. Adeane."

After no long while he removed within the walls of Trinity, and
resided first in the centre rooms of Bishop's Hostel, and
subsequently in the Old Court, between the Gate and the Chapel.
The door, which once bore his name, is on the ground floor, to the
left hand as you face the staircase. In more recent years,
undergraduates who are accustomed to be out after lawful hours
have claimed a right of way through the window which looks
towards the town;--to the great annoyance of any occupant who is
too good-natured to refuse the accommodation to others, and too
steady to need it himself. This power of surreptitious entry had
not been discovered in Macaulay's days; and, indeed, he would
have cared very little for the privilege of spending his time
outside walls which contained within them as many books as even
he could read, and more friends than even he could talk to.
Wanting nothing beyond what his college had to give, he revelled
in the possession of leisure and liberty, in the almost complete
command of his own time, in the power of passing at choice from
the most perfect solitude to the most agreeable company. He
keenly appreciated a society which cherishes all that is genuine,
and is only too out-spoken in its abhorrence of pretension and
display:--a society in which a man lives with those whom he
likes, and with those only; choosing his comrades for their own
sake, and so indifferent to the external distinctions of wealth
and position that no one who has entered fully into the spirit of
college life can ever unlearn its priceless lesson of manliness
and simplicity.

Of all his places of sojourn during his joyous and shining
pilgrimage through the world, Trinity, and Trinity alone, had any
share with his home in Macaulay's affection and loyalty. To the
last he regarded it as an ancient Greek, or a mediaeval Italian,
felt towards his native city. As long as he had place and
standing there, he never left it willingly or returned to it
without delight. The only step in his course about the wisdom of
which he sometimes expressed misgiving was his preference of a
London to a Cambridge life. The only dignity that in his later
days he was known to covet was an honorary fellowship, which
would have allowed him again to look through his window upon the
college grass-plots, and to sleep within sound of the splashing
of the fountain; again to breakfast on commons, and dine beneath
the portraits of Newton and Bacon on the dais of the hall; again
to ramble by moonlight round Neville's cloister, discoursing the
picturesque but somewhat exoteric philosophy which it pleased him
to call by the name of metaphysics. From the door of his rooms,
along the wall of the Chapel, there runs a flagged pathway which
affords an acceptable relief from the rugged pebbles that
surround it. Here as a Bachelor of Arts he would walk, book in
hand, morning after morning throughout the long vacation, reading
with the same eagerness and the same rapidity whether the volume
was the most abstruse of treatises, the loftiest of poems, or the
flimsiest of novels. That was the spot where in his failing years
he specially loved to renew the feelings of the past; and some
there are who can never revisit it without the fancy that there,
if anywhere, his dear shade must linger.

He was fortunate in his contemporaries. Among his intimate
friends were the two Coleridges--Derwent, the son, and Henry
Nelson, who was destined to be the son-in-law of the poet; and
how exceptional that destiny was the readers of Sara Coleridge's
letters are now aware. Hyde Villiers, whom an untimely death
alone prevented from taking an equal place in a trio of
distinguished brothers, was of his year, though not of his
college. [Lord Clarendon, and his brothers, were all Johnians.]
In the year below were the young men who now bear the titles of
Lord Grey, Lord Belper, and Lord Romilly; [This paragraph was
written in the summer of 1874. Three of Macaulay's old college
friends, Lord Romilly, Moultrie, and Charles Austin, died, in the
hard winter that followed, within a few days of each other.] and
after the same interval came Moultrie, who in his "Dream of
Life," with a fidelity which he himself pronounced to have been
obtained at some sacrifice of grace, has told us how the heroes
of his time looked and lived, and Charles Villiers, who still
delights our generation by showing us how they talked. Then there
was Praed, fresh from editing the Etonian, as a product of
collective boyish effort unique in its literary excellence and
variety; and Sidney Walker, Praed's gifted school fellow, whose
promise was blighted by premature decay of powers; and Charles
Austin, whose fame would now be more in proportion to his
extraordinary abilities, had not his unparalleled success as an
advocate tempted him before his day to retire from the toils of a
career of whose rewards he already had enough.

With his vigour and fervour, his depth of knowledge and breadth
of humour, his close reasoning illustrated by an expansive
imagination,--set off, as these gifts were, by the advantage, at
that period of life so irresistible, of some experience of the
world at home and abroad,--Austin was indeed a king among his
fellows.

                         "Grave, sedate,
 And (if the looks may indicate the age,)
 Our senior some few years; no keener wit,
 No intellect more subtle, none more bold,
 Was found in all our host."

So writes Moultrie, and the testimony of his verse is borne out
by John Stuart Mill's prose. "The impression he gave was that of
boundless strength, together with talents which, combined with
such apparent force of will and character, seemed capable of
dominating the world." He certainly was the only man who ever
succeeded in dominating Macaulay. Brimming over with ideas that
were soon to be known by the name of Utilitarian, a panegyrist of
American institutions, and an unsparing assailant of
ecclesiastical endowments and hereditary privileges, he
effectually cured the young undergraduate of his Tory opinions,
which were never more than skin deep, and brought him nearer to
Radicalism than he ever was before or since. The report of this
conversion, of which the most was made by ill-natured tale-
bearers who met with more encouragement than they deserved,
created some consternation in the family circle; while the
reading set at Cambridge was duly scandalised at the influence
which one, whose classical attainments were rather discursive
than exact, had gained over a Craven scholar. To this hour men
may be found in remote parsonages who mildly resent the
fascination which Austin of Jesus exercised over Macaulay of
Trinity. [It was at this period of his career that Macaulay said
to the late Mr. Hampden Gurney: "Gurney, I have been a Tory, I am
a Radical; _but I never will be a Whig_."]

The day and the night together were too short for one who was
entering on the journey of life amidst such a band of travellers.
So long as a door was open, or a light burning, in any of the
courts, Macaulay was always in the mood for conversation and
companionship. Unfailing in his attendance at lecture and chapel,
blameless with regard to college laws and college discipline, it
was well for his virtue that no curfew was in force within the
precincts of Trinity. He never tired of recalling the days when
he supped at midnight on milk-punch and roast turkey, drank tea
in floods at an hour when older men are intent upon anything
rather than on the means of keeping themselves awake, and made
little of sitting over the fire till the bell rang for morning
chapel in order to see a friend off by the early coach. In the
license of the summer vacation, after some prolonged and festive
gathering, the whole party would pour out into the moonlight, and
ramble for mile after mile through the country, till the noise of
their wide-flowing talk mingled with the twittering of the birds
in the hedges which bordered the Coton pathway or the Madingley
road. On such occasions it must have been well worth the loss of
sleep to hear Macaulay plying Austin with sarcasms upon the
doctrine of the Greatest Happiness, which then had still some
gloss of novelty; putting into an ever-fresh shape the time-
honoured jokes against the Johnians for the benefit of the
Villierses; and urging an interminable debate on Wordsworth's
merits as a poet, in which the Coleridges, as in duty bound, were
ever ready to engage. In this particular field he acquired a
skill of fence which rendered him the most redoubtable of
antagonists. Many years afterwards, at the time when the Prelude
was fresh from the press, he was maintaining against the opinion
of a large and mixed society that the poem was unreadable. At
last, overborne by the united indignation of so many of
Wordsworth's admirers, he agreed that the question should be
referred to the test of personal experience; and on inquiry it
was discovered that the only individual present who had got
through the Prelude was Macaulay himself.

It is not only that the witnesses of these scenes unanimously
declare that they have never since heard such conversation in the
most renowned of social circles. The partiality of a generous
young man for trusted and admired companions may well colour his
judgment over the space of even half a century. But the estimate
of university contemporaries was abundantly confirmed by the
outer world. While on a visit to Lord Lansdowne at Bowood, years
after they had left Cambridge, Austin and Macaulay happened to
get upon college topics one morning at breakfast. When the meal
was finished they drew their chairs to either end of the chimney-
piece, and talked at each other across the hearth-rug as if they
were in a first-floor room in the Old Court of Trinity. The whole
company, ladies, artists, politicians, and diners-out, formed a
silent circle round the two Cantabs, and, with a short break for
lunch, never stirred till the bell warned them that it was time
to dress for dinner.

It has all irrevocably perished. With life before them, and each
intent on his own future, none among that troop of friends had
the mind to play Boswell to the others. One repartee survives,
thrown off in the heat of discussion, but exquisitely perfect in
all its parts. Acknowledged without dissent to be the best
applied quotation that ever was made within five miles of the
Fitzwilliam Museum, it is unfortunately too strictly classical
for reproduction in these pages.

We are more easily consoled for the loss of the eloquence which
then flowed so full and free in the debates of the Cambridge
Union. In 1820 that Society was emerging from a period of
tribulation and repression. The authorities of the university,
who, as old constituents of Mr. Pitt and warm supporters of Lord
Liverpool, had never been very much inclined to countenance the
practice of political discussion among the undergraduates, set
their faces against it more than ever at an epoch when the temper
of the time increased the tendency of young men to run into
extremes of partisanship. At length a compromise was extorted
from the reluctant hands of the Vice-Chancellor, and the Club was
allowed to take into consideration public affairs of a date
anterior to the century. It required less ingenuity than the
leaders of the Union had at their command to hit upon a method of
dealing with the present under the guise of the past. Motions
were framed that reflected upon the existing Government under
cover of a censure on the Cabinets of the previous generation.
Resolutions which called upon the meeting to declare that the
boon of Catholic Emancipation should have been granted in the
year 1795, or that our Commercial Policy previous to 1800 should
have been founded on the basis of Free Trade, were clearly
susceptible of great latitude of treatment. And, again, in its
character of a reading club, the Society, when assembled for the
conduct of private business, was at liberty to review the
political creed of the journals of the day in order to decide
which of them it should take in, and which it should discontinue.
The Examiner newspaper was the flag of many a hard-fought battle;
the Morning Chronicle was voted in and out of the rooms half-a-
dozen times within a single twelvemonth; while a series of
impassioned speeches on the burning question of interference in
behalf of Greek Independence were occasioned by a proposition of
Malden's "that 'e Ellenike salpigks' do lie upon the table."

At the close of the debates, which were held in a large room at
the back of the Red Lion in Petty Cury, the most prominent
members met for supper in the Hotel, or at Moultrie's lodgings,
which were situated close at hand. They acted as a self-appointed
Standing Committee, which watched over the general interests of
the Union, and selected candidates whom they put in nomination
for its offices. The Society did not boast a Hansard;--an
omission which, as time went on, some among its orators had no
reason to regret. Faint recollections still survive of a
discussion upon the august topic of the character of George the
Third. "To whom do we owe it," asked Macaulay, "that while Europe
was convulsed with anarchy and desolated with war, England alone
remained tranquil, prosperous, and secure? To whom but the Good
Old King? Why was it that, when neighbouring capitals were
perishing in the flames, our own was illuminated only for
triumphs? [This debate evidently made some noise in the
university world. There is an allusion to it in a squib of
Praed's, very finished and elegant, and beyond all doubt
contemporary. The passage relating to Macaulay begins with the
lines--"Then the favourite comes with his trumpets and drums,
And his arms and his metaphors crossed."] You may find the cause
in the same three words: the Good Old King." Praed, on the other
hand, would allow his late monarch neither public merits nor
private virtues. "A good man! If he had been a plain country
gentleman with no wider opportunities for mischief, he would at
least have bullied his footmen and cheated his steward."

Macaulay's intense enjoyment of all that was stirring and vivid
around him undoubtedly hindered him in the race for university
honours; though his success was sufficient to inspirit him at the
time, and to give him abiding pleasure in the retrospect. He
twice gained the Chancellor's medal for English verse, with poems
admirably planned, and containing passages of real beauty, but
which may not be republished in the teeth of the panegyric which,
within ten years after they were written, he pronounced upon Sir
Roger Newdigate. Sir Roger had laid down the rule that no
exercise sent in for the prize which he established at Oxford was
to exceed fifty lines. This law, says Macaulay, seems to have
more foundation in reason than is generally the case with a
literary canon, "for the world, we believe, is pretty well agreed
in thinking that the shorter a prize poem is, the better."

Trinity men find it difficult to understand how it was that he
missed getting one of the three silver goblets given for the best
English Declamations of the year. If there is one thing which all
Macaulay's friends, and all his enemies, admit, it is that he
could declaim English. His own version of the affair was that the
Senior Dean, a relative of the victorious candidate, sent for him
and said: "Mr. Macaulay, as you have not got the first cup, I do
not suppose that you will care for either of the others." He was
consoled, however, by the prize for Latin Declamation; and in
1821 he established his classical repute by winning a Craven
University scholarship in company with his friend Malden, and Mr.
George Long, who preceded Malden as Professor of Greek at
University College, London.

Macaulay detested the labour of manufacturing Greek and Latin
verse in cold blood as an exercise; and his Hexameters were never
up to the best Etonian mark, nor his Iambics to the highest
standard of Shrewsbury. He defined a scholar as one who reads
Plato with his feet on the fender. When already well on in his
third year he writes: "I never practised composition a single
hour since I have been at Cambridge." "Soak your mind with
Cicero," was his constant advice to students at that time of life
when writing Latin prose is the most lucrative of
accomplishments. The advantage of this precept was proved in the
Fellowship examination of the year 1824, when he obtained the
honour which in his eyes was the most desirable that Cambridge
had to give. The delight of the young man at finding himself one
of the sixty masters of an ancient and splendid establishment;
the pride with which he signed his first order for the college
plate, and dined for the first time at the high table in his own
right; the reflection that these privileges were the fruit, not
of favour or inheritance, but of personal industry and ability,--
were matters on which he loved to dwell long after the world had
loaded him with its most envied prizes. Macaulay's feeling on
this point is illustrated by the curious reverence which he
cherished for those junior members of the college who, some
ninety years ago, by a spirited remonstrance addressed to the
governing body, brought about a reform in the Trinity Fellowship
examination that secured to it the character for fair play, and
efficiency, which it has ever since enjoyed. In his copy of the
Cambridge Calendar for the year 1859, (the last of his life,)
throughout the list of the old mathematical Triposes the words
"one of the eight" appear in his hand-writing opposite the name
of each of these gentlemen. And I can never remember the time
when it was not diligently impressed upon me that, if I minded my
syntax, I might eventually hope to reach a position which would
give me three hundred pounds a year, a stable for my horse, six
dozen of audit ale every Christmas, a loaf and two pats of butter
every morning, and a good dinner for nothing, with as many
almonds and raisins as I could eat at dessert.

Macaulay was not chosen a Fellow until his last trial, nominally
for the amazing reason that his translations from Greek and
Latin, while faithfully representing the originals, were rendered
into English that was ungracefully bald and inornate. The real
cause was, beyond all doubt, his utter neglect of the special
study of the place; a liberty which Cambridge seldom allows to be
taken with impunity even by her most favoured sons. He used to
profess deep and lasting regret for his early repugnance to
scientific subjects; but the fervour of his penitence in after
years was far surpassed by the heartiness with which he inveighed
against mathematics as long as it was his business to learn them.
Everyone who knows the Senate House may anticipate the result.
When the Tripos of 1822 made its appearance, his name did not
grace the list. In short, to use the expressive vocabulary of the
university, Macaulay was gulfed--a mishap which disabled him from
contending for the Chancellor's medals, then the crowning
trophies of a classical career. "I well remember," says Lady
Trevelyan, "that first trial of my life. We were spending the
winter at Brighton when a letter came giving an account of the
event. I recollect my mother taking me into her room to tell me,
for even then it was known how my whole heart was wrapped up in
him, and it was thought necessary to break the news. When your
uncle arrived at Brighton, I can recall my mother telling him
that he had better go at once to his father, and get it over, and
I can see him as he left the room on that errand."

During the same year he engaged in a less arduous competition. A
certain Mr. Greaves of Fulbourn had long since provided a reward
of ten pounds for "the Junior Bachelor of Trinity College who
wrote the best essay on the Conduct and Character of William the
Third." As the prize is annual, it is appalling to reflect upon
the searching analysis to which the motives of that monarch must
by this time have been subjected. The event, however, may be
counted as an encouragement to the founders of endowments; for,
amidst the succession of juvenile critics whose attention was by
his munificence turned in the direction of his favourite hero,
Mr. Greaves had at last fallen in with the right man. It is more
than probable that to this old Cambridgeshire Whig was due the
first idea of that History in whose pages William of Orange
stands as the central figure. The essay is still in existence, in
a close neat hand, which twenty years of Reviewing never rendered
illegible. Originally written as a fair copy, but so disfigured
by repeated corrections and additions as to be unfit for the eyes
of the college authorities, it bears evident marks of having been
held to the flames, and rescued on second, and in this case it
will be allowed, on better thoughts. The exercise, (which is
headed by the very appropriate motto,

               "Primus qui legibus urbem
 Fundabit, Curibus parvis et paupere terra
 Missus in imperium magnum,")

is just such as will very likely be produced in the course of
next Easter term by some young man of judgment and spirit, who
knows his Macaulay by heart, and will paraphrase him without
scruple. The characters of James, of Shaftesbury, of William
himself; the Popish plot; the struggle over the Exclusion bill;
the reaction from Puritanic rigour into the license of the
Restoration, are drawn on the same lines and painted in the same
colours as those with which the world is now familiar. The style
only wants condensation, and a little of the humour which he had
not yet learned to transfer from his conversation to his
writings, in order to be worthy of his mature powers. He thus
describes William's lifelong enemy and rival, whose name he
already spells after his own fashion.

"Lewis was not a great general. He was not a great legislator.
But he was, in one sense of the words, a great king. He was a
perfect master of all the mysteries of the science of royalty,--
of all the arts which at once extend power and conciliate
popularity,--which most advantageously display the merits, or
most dexterously conceal the deficiencies, of a sovereign. He was
surrounded by great men, by victorious commanders, by sagacious
statesmen. Yet, while he availed himself to the utmost of their
services, he never incurred any danger from their rivalry. His
was a talisman which extorted the obedience of the proudest and
mightiest spirits. The haughty and turbulent warriors whose
contests had agitated France during his minority yielded to the
irresistible spell, and, like the gigantic slaves of the ring and
lamp of Aladdin, laboured to decorate and aggrandise a master
whom they could have crushed. With incomparable address he
appropriated to himself the glory of campaigns which had been
planned, and counsels which had been suggested, by others. The
arms of Turenne were the terror of Europe. The policy of Colbert
was the strength of France. But in their foreign successes, and
their internal prosperity, the people saw only the greatness and
wisdom of Lewis."

In the second chapter of the History much of this is compressed
into the sentence: "He had shown, in an eminent degree, two
talents invaluable to a prince,--the talent of choosing his
servants well, and the talent of appropriating to himself the
chief part of the credit of their acts."

In a passage that occurs towards the close of the essay may be
traced something more than an outline of the peroration in which,
a quarter of a century later on, he summed up the character and
results of the Revolution of 1688.

"To have been a sovereign, yet the champion of liberty; a
revolutionary leader, yet the supporter of social order, is the
peculiar glory of William. He knew where to pause. He outraged no
national prejudice. He abolished no ancient form. He altered no
venerable name. He saw that the existing institutions possessed
the greatest capabilities of excellence, and that stronger
sanctions, and clearer definitions, were alone required to make
the practice of the British constitution as admirable as the
theory. Thus he imparted to innovation the dignity and stability
of antiquity. He transferred to a happier order of things the
associations which had attached the people to their former
government. As the Roman warrior, before he assaulted Veii,
invoked its guardian gods to leave its walls, and to accept the
worship and patronise the cause of the besiegers, this great
prince, in attacking a system of oppression, summoned to his aid
the venerable principles and deeply seated feelings to which that
system was indebted for protection."

A letter, written during the latter years of his life, expresses
Macaulay's general views on the subject of University honours.
"If a man brings away from Cambridge self-knowledge, accuracy of
mind, and habits of strong intellectual exertion, he has gained
more than if he had made a display of showy superficial Etonian
scholarship, got three or four Browne's medals, and gone forth
into the world a schoolboy and doomed to be a schoolboy to the
last. After all, what a man does at Cambridge is, in itself,
nothing. If he makes a poor figure in life, his having been
Senior Wrangler or University scholar is never mentioned but with
derision. If he makes a distinguished figure, his early honours
merge in those of a later date. I hope that I do not overrate my
own place in the estimation of society. Such as it is, I would
not give a halfpenny to add to the consideration which I enjoy,
all the consideration that I should derive from having been
Senior Wrangler. But I often regret, and even acutely, my want of
a Senior Wrangler's knowledge of physics and mathematics; and I
regret still more some habits of mind which a Senior Wrangler is
pretty certain to possess." Like all men who know what the world
is, he regarded the triumph of a college career as of less value
than its disappointments. Those are most to be envied who soonest
learn to expect nothing for which they have not worked hard, and
who never acquire the habit, (a habit which an unbroken course of
University successes too surely breeds,) of pitying themselves
overmuch if ever in after life they happen to work in vain.

Cambridge: Wednesday.
(Post-mark, 1818)

My dear Mother,--King, I am absolutely certain, would take no
more pupils on any account. And, even if he would, he has
numerous applicants with prior claims. He has already six, who
occupy him six hours in the day, and is likewise lecturer to the
college. It would, however, be very easy to obtain an excellent
tutor. Lefevre and Malkin are men of first-rate mathematical
abilities, and both of our college. I can scarcely bear to write
on Mathematics or Mathematicians. Oh for words to express my
abomination of that science, if a name sacred to the useful and
embellishing arts may be applied to the perception and
recollection of certain properties in numbers and figures! Oh
that I had to learn astrology, or demonology, or school divinity!
Oh that I were to pore over Thomas Aquinas, and to adjust the
relation of Entity with the two Predicaments, so that I were
exempted from this miserable study! "Discipline" of the mind! Say
rather starvation, confinement, torture, annihilation! But it
must be. I feel myself becoming a personification of Algebra, a
living trigonometrical canon, a walking table of Logarithms. All
my perceptions of elegance and beauty gone, or at least going. By
the end of the term my brain will be "as dry as the remainder
biscuit after a voyage." Oh to change Cam for Isis! But such is
my destiny; and, since it is so, be the pursuit contemptible,
below contempt, or disgusting beyond abhorrence, I shall aim at
no second place. But three years! I cannot endure the thought. I
cannot bear to contemplate what I must have to undergo. Farewell
then Homer and Sophocles and Cicero.

 Farewell happy fields
 Where joy for ever reigns
 Hail, horrors, hail, Infernal world!

How does it proceed? Milton's descriptions have been driven out
of my head by such elegant expressions as the following

[Long mathematical formula]

My classics must be Woodhouse, and my amusements summing an
infinite series. Farewell, and tell Selina and Jane to be
thankful that it is not a necessary part of female education to
get a headache daily without acquiring one practical truth or
beautiful image in return. Again, and with affectionate love to
my Father, farewell wishes your most miserable and mathematical
son

T.B. MACAULAY.

Cambridge: November 9, 1818.

My dear Father,--Your letter, which I read with the greatest
pleasure, is perfectly safe from all persons who could make a bad
use of it. The Emperor Alexander's plans as detailed in the
conversation between him and Clarkson [Thomas Clarkson, the
famous assailant of slavery.] are almost superhuman; and tower as
much above the common hopes and aspirations of philanthropists as
the statue which his Macedonian namesake proposed to hew out of
Mount Athos excelled the most colossal works of meaner
projectors. As Burke said of Henry the Fourth's wish that every
peasant in France might have the chicken in his pot comfortably
on a Sunday, we may say of these mighty plans, "The mere wish,
the unfulfilled desire, exceeded all that we hear of the splendid
professions and exploits of princes." Yet my satisfaction in the
success of that noble cause in which the Emperor seems to be
exerting himself with so much zeal is scarcely so great as my
regret for the man who would have traced every step of its
progress with anxiety, and hailed its success with the most
ardent delight. Poor Sir Samuel Romilly! Quando ullum invenient
parem? How long may a penal code at once too sanguinary and too
lenient, half written in blood like Draco's, and half undefined
and loose as the common law of a tribe of savages, be the curse
and disgrace of the country? How many years may elapse before a
man who knows like him all that law can teach, and possesses at
the same time like him a liberality and a discernment of general
rights which the technicalities of professional learning rather
tend to blunt, shall again rise to ornament and reform our
jurisprudence? For such a man, if he had fallen in the maturity
of years and honours, and been borne from the bed of sickness to
a grave by the side of his prototype Hale amidst the tears of
nobles and senators, even then, I think, the public sorrow would
have been extreme. But that the last moments of an existence of
high thoughts and great virtues should have been passed as his
were passed! In my feelings the scene at Claremont [The death of
Princess Charlotte.] this time last year was mere dust in the
balance in comparison.

Ever your affectionate son,

T. B. M.

Cambridge: Friday, February 5, 1819.

My dear Father,--I have not of course had time to examine with
attention all your criticisms on Pompeii. [The subject of the
English poem for the Chancellor's prize of 1819 was the
Destruction of Pompeii.] I certainly am much obliged to you for
withdrawing so much time from more important business to correct
my effusions. Most of the remarks which I have examined are
perfectly just; but as to the more momentous charge, the want of
a moral, I think it might be a sufficient defence that, if a
subject is given which admits of none, the man who writes without
a moral is scarcely censurable. But is it the real fact that no
literary employment is estimable or laudable which does not lead
to the spread of moral truth or the excitement of virtuous
feeling? Books of amusement tend to polish the mind, to improve
the style, to give variety to conversation, and to lend a grace
to more important accomplishments. He who can effect this has
surely done something. Is no useful end served by that writer
whose works have soothed weeks of languor and sickness, have
relieved the mind exhausted from the pressure of employment by an
amusement which delights without enervating, which relaxes the
tension of the powers without rendering them unfit for future
exercise? I should not be surprised to see these observations
refuted; and I shall not be sorry if they are so. I feel
personally little interest in the question. If my life be a life
of literature, it shall certainly be one of literature directed
to moral ends.

At all events let us be consistent. I was amused in turning over
an old volume of the Christian Observer to find a gentleman
signing himself Excubitor, (one of our antagonists in the
question of novel-reading,) after a very pious argument on the
hostility of novels to a religious frame of mind, proceeding to
observe that he was shocked to hear a young lady who had
displayed extraordinary knowledge of modern ephemeral literature
own herself ignorant of Dryden's fables! Consistency with a
vengeance! The reading of modern poetry and novels excites a
worldly disposition and prevents ladies from reading Dryden's
fables! There is a general disposition among the more literary
part of the religious world to cry down the elegant literature of
our own times, while they are not in the slightest degree shocked
at atrocious profaneness or gross indelicacy when a hundred years
have stamped them with the title of classical. I say: "If you
read Dryden you can have no reasonable objection to reading
Scott." The strict antagonist of ephemeral reading exclaims, "Not
so. Scott's poems are very pernicious. They call away the mind
from spiritual religion, and from Tancred and Sigismunda." But I
am exceeding all ordinary limits. If these hasty remarks fatigue
you, impute it to my desire of justifying myself from a charge
which I should be sorry to incur with justice. Love to all at
home.

Affectionately yours,

T. B. M.

With or without a moral, the poem carried the day. The subject
for the next year was Waterloo. The opening lines of Macaulay's
exercise were pretty and simple enough to ruin his chance in an
academical competition.

 It was the Sabbath morn. How calm and fair
 Is the blest dawning of the day of prayer!
 Who hath not felt how fancy's mystic power
 With holier beauty decks that solemn hour;
 A softer lustre in its sunshine sees;
 And hears a softer music in its breeze?
 Who hath not dreamed that even the skylark's throat
 Hails that sweet morning with a gentler note?
 Fair morn, how gaily shone thy dawning smile
 On the green valleys of my native isle!
 How gladly many a spire's resounding height
 With peals of transport hailed thy newborn light!
 Ah! little thought the peasant then, who blest
 The peaceful hour of consecrated rest,
 And heard the rustic Temple's arch prolong
 The simple cadence of the hallowed song,
 That the same sun illumed a gory field,
 Where wilder song and sterner music pealed;
 Where many a yell unholy rent the air,
 And many a hand was raised,--but not in prayer.

The prize fell to a man of another college, and Trinity comforted
itself by inventing a story to the effect that the successful
candidate had run away from the battle.

In the summer of 1819 there took place a military affair, less
attractive than Waterloo as a theme for poets, but which, as far
as this country is concerned, has proved even more momentous in
its ultimate consequences. On the 16th of August a Reform
demonstration was arranged at Manchester resembling those which
were common in the Northern districts during the year 1866,
except that in 1819 women formed an important element in the
procession. A troop of yeomanry, and afterwards two squadrons of
hussars, were sent in among the crowd, which was assembled in St.
Peter's Fields, the site on which the Free Trade Hall now stands.
The men used their swords freely, and the horses their hoofs. The
people, who meant anything but fighting, trampled each other down
in the attempt to escape. Five or six lives were lost, and fifty
or sixty persons were badly hurt; but the painful impression
wrought upon the national conscience was well worth the price.
British blood has never since been shed by British hands in any
civic contest that rose above the level of a lawless riot. The
immediate result, however, was to concentrate and embitter party
feeling. The grand jury threw out the bills against the yeomen,
and found true bills against the popular orators who had called
the meeting together. The Common Councilmen of the City of
London, who had presented an Address to the Prince Regent
reflecting upon the conduct of the Government, were roundly
rebuked for their pains. Earl Fitzwilliam was dismissed from the
office of Lord Lieutenant, for taking part in a Yorkshire county
gathering which had passed resolutions in the same sense as the
Address from the City. On the other hand, a Peterloo medal was
struck, which is still treasured in such Manchester families as
have not learned to be ashamed of the old Manchester politics.

In this heated state of the political atmosphere the expiring
Toryism of the Anti-Slavery leaders flamed up once again. "I
declare," said Wilberforce, "my greatest cause of difference with
the democrats is their laying, and causing people to lay, so
great a stress on the concerns of this world as to occupy their
whole minds and hearts, and to leave a few scanty and lukewarm
thoughts for the heavenly treasure." Zachary Macaulay, who never
canted, and who knew that on the 16th of August the Manchester
Magistrates were thinking just as much or as little about
religion as the Manchester populace, none the less took the same
side as Wilberforce. Having formed for himself, by observations
made on the spot, a decided opinion that the authorities ought to
be supported, he was much disturbed by reports which came to him
from Cambridge.

September, 1819.

My dear Father,--My mother's letter, which has just arrived, has
given me much concern. The letter which has, I am sorry to learn,
given you and her uneasiness was written rapidly and thoughtlessly
enough, but can scarcely, I think, as far as I remember its
tenour, justify some of the extraordinary inferences which it has
occasioned. I can only assure you most solemnly that I am not
initiated into any democratical societies here, and that I know no
people who make politics a common or frequent topic of
conversation, except one man who is a determined Tory. It is true
that this Manchester business has roused some indignation here, as
at other places, and drawn philippics against the powers that be
from lips which I never heard opened before but to speak on
university contests or university scandal. For myself I have long
made it a rule never to talk on politics except in the most
general manner; and I believe that my most intimate associates
have no idea of my opinions on the questions of party. I can
scarcely be censured, I think, for imparting them to you;--which,
however, I should scarcely have thought of doing, (so much is my
mind occupied with other concerns,) had not your letter invited me
to state my sentiments on the Manchester business.

I hope that this explanation will remove some of your uneasiness.
As to my opinions, I have no particular desire to vindicate them.
They are merely speculative, and therefore cannot partake of the
nature of moral culpability. They are early formed, and I am not
solicitous that you should think them superior to those of most
people at eighteen. I will, however, say this in their defence.
Whatever the affectionate alarm of my dear mother may lead her to
apprehend, I am not one of the "sons of anarchy and confusion"
with whom she classes me. My opinions, good or bad, were learnt,
not from Hunt and Waithman, but from Cicero, from Tacitus, and
from Milton. They are the opinions which have produced men who
have ornamented the world, and redeemed human nature from the
degradation of ages of superstition and slavery. I may be wrong
as to the facts of what occurred at Manchester; but, if they be
what I have seen them stated, I can never repent speaking of them
with indignation. When I cease to feel the injuries of others
warmly, to detest wanton cruelty, and to feel my soul rise
against oppression, I shall think myself unworthy to be your son.

I could say a great deal more. Above all I might, I think, ask,
with some reason, why a few democratical sentences in a letter, a
private letter, of a collegian of eighteen, should be thought so
alarming an indication of character, when Brougham and other
people, who at an age which ought to have sobered them talk with
much more violence, are not thought particularly ill of? But I
have so little room left that I abstain, and will only add thus
much. Were my opinions as decisive as they are fluctuating, and
were the elevation of a Cromwell or the renown of a Hampden the
certain reward of my standing forth in the democratic cause, I
would rather have my lips sealed on the subject than give my
mother or you one hour of uneasiness. There are not so many
people in the world who love me that I can afford to pain them
for any object of ambition which it contains. If this assurance
be not sufficient, clothe it in what language you please, and
believe me to express myself in those words which you think the
strongest and most solemn. Affectionate love to my mother and
sisters. Farewell.

T. B. M.

Cambridge: January 5, 1820.

My dear Father,--Nothing that gives you disquietude can give me
amusement. Otherwise I should have been excessively diverted by
the dialogue which you have reported with so much vivacity; the
accusation; the predictions; and the elegant agnomen of "the
novel-reader" for which I am indebted to this incognito. I went
in some amazement to Malden, Romilly, and Barlow. Their
acquaintance comprehends, I will venture to say, almost every man
worth knowing in the university in every field of study. They had
never heard the appellation applied to me by any man. Their
intimacy with me would of course prevent any person from speaking
to them on the subject in an insulting manner; for it is not
usual here, whatever your unknown informant may do, for a
gentleman who does not wish to be kicked downstairs to reply to a
man who mentions another as his particular friend, "Do you mean
the blackguard or the novel-reader?" But I am fully convinced
that had the charge prevailed to any extent it must have reached
the ears of one of those whom I interrogated. At all events I
have the consolation of not being thought a novel-reader by three
or four who are entitled to judge upon the subject, and whether
their opinion be of equal value with that of this John-a-Nokes
against whom I have to plead I leave you to decide.

But stronger evidence, it seems, is behind. This gentleman was in
company with me. Alas that I should never have found out how
accurate an observer was measuring my sentiments, numbering the
novels which I criticised, and speculating on the probability of
my being plucked. "I was familiar with all the novels whose names
he had ever heard." If so frightful an accusation did not stun me
at once, I might perhaps hint at the possibility that this was to
be attributed almost as much to the narrowness of his reading on
this subject as to the extent of mine. There are men here who are
mere mathematical blocks; who plod on their eight hours a day to
the honours of the Senate House; who leave the groves which
witnessed the musings of Milton, of Bacon, and of Gray, without
one liberal idea or elegant image, and carry with them into the
world minds contracted by unmingled attention to one part of
science, and memories stored only with technicalities. How often
have I seen such men go forth into society for people to stare at
them, and ask each other how it comes that beings so stupid in
conversation, so uninformed on every subject of history, of
letters, and of taste, could gain such distinction at Cambridge!

It is in such circles, which, I am happy to say, I hardly know
but by report, that knowledge of modern literature is called
novel-reading; a commodious name, invented by ignorance and
applied by envy, in the same manner as men without learning call
a scholar a pedant, and men without principle call a Christian a
Methodist. To me the attacks of such men are valuable as
compliments. The man whose friend tells him that he is known to
be extensively acquainted with elegant literature may suspect
that he is flattering him; but he may feel real and secure
satisfaction when some Johnian sneers at him for a novel-reader.
[My uncle was fond of telling us how he would walk miles out of
Cambridge in order to meet the coach which brought the last new
Waverley novel.]

As to the question whether or not I am wasting time, I shall
leave that for time to answer. I cannot afford to sacrifice a day
every week in defence and explanation as to my habits of reading.
I value, most deeply value, that solicitude which arises from
your affection for me; but let it not debar me from justice and
candour. Believe me ever, my dear Father,

Your most affectionate son,

T. B. M.

The father and son were in sympathy upon what, at this distance
of time, appears as the least inviting article of the Whig creed.
They were both partisans of the Queen. Zachary Macaulay was
inclined in her favour by sentiments alike of friendship, and of
the most pardonable resentment. Brougham, her illustrious
advocate, had for ten years been the main hope and stay of the
movement against Slavery and the Slave Trade; while the John
Bull, whose special mission it was to write her down, honoured
the Abolitionist party with its declared animosity. However full
its columns might be of libels upon the honour of the wives and
daughters of Whig statesmen, it could always find room for
calumnies against Mr. Macaulay which in ingenuity of fabrication,
and in cruelty of intention, were conspicuous even among the
contents of the most discreditable publication that ever issued
from the London press. When Queen Caroline landed from the
Continent in June 1820 the young Trinity undergraduate greeted
her Majesty with a complimentary ode, which certainly little
resembled those effusions that, in the old courtly days, an
University was accustomed to lay at the feet of its Sovereign.
The piece has no literary value, and is curious only as
reflecting the passion of the hour. The first and last stanzas
run as follows:--

 Let mirth on every visage shine
 And glow in every soul.
 Bring forth, bring forth, the oldest wine,
 And crown the largest bowl.
 Bear to her home, while banners fly
 From each resounding steeple,
 And rockets sparkle in the sky,
 The Daughter of the People.
 E'en here, for one triumphant day,
 Let want and woe be dumb,
 And bonfires blaze, and schoolboys play.
 Thank Heaven, our Queen is come.

     *   *   *   *

 Though tyrant hatred still denies
 Each right that fits thy station,
 To thee a people's love supplies
 A nobler coronation;
 A coronation all unknown
 To Europe's royal vermin;
 For England's heart shall be thy throne,
 And purity thine ermine;
 Thy Proclamation our applause,
 Applause denied to some;
 Thy crown our love; thy shield our laws.
 Thank Heaven, our Queen is come!

Early in November, warned by growing excitement outside the House
of Lords, and by dwindling majorities within, Lord Liverpool
announced that the King's Ministers had come to the determination
not to proceed further with the Bill of Pains and Penalties. The
joy which this declaration spread through the country has been
described as "beyond the scope of record."

Cambridge: November 13, 1820.

My dear Father,--All here is ecstasy. "Thank God, the country is
saved," were my first words when I caught a glimpse of the papers
of Friday night. "Thank God, the country is saved," is written on
every face and echoed by every voice. Even the symptoms of
popular violence, three days ago so terrific, are now displayed
with good humour and received with cheerfulness. Instead of
curses on the Lords, on every post and every wall is written,
"All is as it should be;" "Justice done at last;" and similar
mottoes expressive of the sudden turn of public feeling. How the
case may stand in London I do not know; but here the public
danger, like all dangers which depend merely on human opinions
and feelings, has disappeared from our sight almost in the
twinkling of an eye. I hope that the result of these changes may
be the secure reestablishment of our commerce, which I suppose political
apprehension must have contributed to depress. I hope, at least,
that there is no danger to our own fortunes of the kind at which
you seem to hint. Be assured however, my dear Father, that, be
our circumstances what they may, I feel firmly prepared to
encounter the worst with fortitude, and to do my utmost to
retrieve it by exertion. The best inheritance you have already
secured to me,--an unblemished name and a good education. And for
the rest, whatever calamities befall us, I would not, to speak
without affectation, exchange adversity consoled, as with us it
must ever be, by mutual affection and domestic happiness, for
anything which can be possessed by those who are destitute of the
kindness of parents and sisters like mine. But I think, on
referring to your letter, that I insist too much upon the
signification of a few words. I hope so, and trust that
everything will go well. But it is chapel time, and I must
conclude.

Ever most affectionately yours,

T.B. MACAULAY.

Trin. Coll.: March 25, 1821.

My dear Mother,--I entreat you to entertain no apprehensions
about my health. My fever, cough, and sore-throat have all
disappeared for the last four days. Many thanks for your
intelligence about poor dear John's recovery, which has much
exhilarated me. Yet I do not know whether illness to him is not
rather a prerogative than an evil. I am sure that it is well
worth while being sick to be nursed by a mother. There is nothing
which I remember with such pleasure as the time when you nursed
me at Aspenden. The other night, when I lay on my sofa very ill
and hypochondriac, I was thinking over that time. How sick, and
sleepless, and weak I was, lying in bed, when I was told that you
were come! How well I remember with what an ecstasy of joy I saw
that face approaching me, in the middle of people that did not
care if I died that night except for the trouble of burying me!
The sound of your voice, the touch of your hand, are present to
me now, and will be, I trust in God, to my last hour. The very
thought of these things invigorated me the other day; and I
almost blessed the sickness and low spirits which brought before
me associated images of a tenderness and an affection, which,
however imperfectly repaid, are deeply remembered. Such scenes
and such recollections are the bright half of human nature and
human destiny. All objects of ambition, all rewards of talent,
sink into nothing compared with that affection which is
independent of good or adverse circumstances, excepting that it
is never so ardent, so delicate, or so tender as in the hour of
languor or distress. But I must stop. I had no intention of
pouring out on paper what I am much more used to think than to
express. Farewell, my dear Mother.

Ever yours affectionately,

T.B. MACAULAY.

Macaulay liked Cambridge too well to spend the long vacation
elsewhere except under strong compulsion; but in 1821, with the
terrors of the Mathematical Tripos already close at hand, he was
persuaded into joining a reading party in Wales with a Mr. Bird
as tutor. Eardley Childers, the father of the statesman of that
name, has preserved a pleasant little memorial of the expedition.

To Charles Smith Bird, Eardley Childers, Thos. B. Macaulay,
William Clayton Walters, Geo. B. Paley, Robert Jarratt, Thos.
Jarratt, Edwin Kempson, Ebenezer Ware, Wm. Cornwall, John
Greenwood, J. Lloyd, and Jno. Wm. Gleadall, Esquires.

Gentlemen,--We the undersigned, for ourselves and the inhabitants
in general of the town of Llanrwst in the county of Denbigh,
consider it our duty to express to you the high sense we
entertain of your general good conduct and demeanour during your
residence here, and we assure you that we view with much regret
the period of your separation and departure from amongst us. We
are very sensible of the obligation we are under for your
uniformly benevolent and charitable exertions upon several public
occasions, and we feel peculiar pleasure in thus tendering to you
individually our gratitude and thanks.

Wishing you all possible prosperity and happiness in your future
avocations, we subscribe ourselves with unfeigned respect,
Gentlemen,

Your most obedient servants,

REV. JOHN TILTEY,

&c., &c.

(25 signatures.)

In one respect Macaulay hardly deserved his share of this
eulogium. A scheme was on foot in the town to found an auxiliary
branch of the Bible Society. A public meeting was called, and Mr.
Bird urged his eloquent pupil to aid the project with a specimen
of Union rhetoric. Macaulay, however, had had enough of the Bible
Society at Clapham, and sturdily refused to come forward as its
champion at Llanrwst.

Llanrwst: July--, 1821.

My dear Mother,--You see I know not how to date my letter. My
calendar in this sequestered spot is as irregular as Robinson
Crusoe's after he had missed one day in his calculation. I have
no intelligence to send you, unless a battle between a drunken
attorney and an impudent publican which took place here yesterday
may deserve the appellation. You may perhaps be more interested
to hear that I sprained my foot, and am just recovering from the
effects of the accident by means of opodeldoc which I bought at
the tinker's. For all trades and professions here lie in a most
delightful confusion. The druggist sells hats; the shoemaker is
the sole bookseller, if that dignity may be allowed him on the
strength of the three Welsh Bibles, and the guide to Caernarvon,
which adorn his window; ink is sold by the apothecary; the grocer
sells ropes, (a commodity which, I fear, I shall require before
my residence here is over,) and tooth-brushes. A clothes-brush is
a luxury yet unknown to Llanrwst. As to books, for want of any
other English literature, I intend to learn Paradise Lost by
heart at odd moments. But I must conclude. Write to me often, my
dear Mother, and all of you at home, or you may have to answer
for my drowning myself, like Gray's bard, in "Old Conway's
foaming flood," which is most conveniently near for so poetical
an exit.

Ever most affectionately yours,

T. B. M.


Llanrwst: August 32, 1821.

My dear Father,--I have just received your letter, and cannot but
feel concerned at the tone of it. I do not think it quite fair to
attack me for filling my letters with remarks on the King's Irish
expedition. It has been the great event of this part of the
world. I was at Bangor when he sailed. His bows, and the Marquis
of Anglesea's fete, were the universal subjects of conversation;
and some remarks on the business were as natural from me as
accounts of the coronation from you in London. In truth I have
little else to say. I see nothing that connects me with the world
except the newspapers. I get up, breakfast, read, play at quoits,
and go to bed. This is the history of my life. It will do for
every day of the last fortnight.

As to the King, I spoke of the business, not at all as a
political, but as a moral question,--as a point of correct
feeling and of private decency. If Lord were to issue tickets for
a gala ball immediately after receiving intelligence of the
sudden death of his divorced wife, I should say the same. I
pretend to no great insight into party politics; but the question
whether it is proper for any man to mingle in festivities while
his wife's body lies unburied is one, I confess, which I thought
myself competent to decide. But I am not anxious about the fate
of my remarks, which I have quite forgot, and which, I dare say,
were very foolish. To me it is of little importance whether the
King's conduct were right or wrong; but it is of great importance
that those whom I love should not think me a precipitate, silly,
shallow sciolist in politics, and suppose that every frivolous
word that falls from my pen is a dogma which I mean to advance as
indisputable; and all this only because I write to them without
reserve; only because I love them well enough to trust them with
every idea which suggests itself to me. In fact, I believe that I
am not more precipitate or presumptuous than other people, but
only more open. You cannot be more fully convinced than I am how
contracted my means are of forming a judgment. If I chose to
weigh every word that I uttered or wrote to you, and, whenever I
alluded to politics, were to labour and qualify my expressions as
if I were drawing up a state paper, my letters might be a great
deal wiser, but would not be such letters as I should wish to
receive from those whom I loved. Perfect love, we are told,
casteth out fear. If I say, as I know I do, a thousand wild and
inaccurate things, and employ exaggerated expressions about
persons or events in writing to you or to my mother, it is not, I
believe, that I want power to systematise my ideas or to measure
my expressions, but because I have no objection to letting you
see my mind in dishabille. I have a court dress for days of
ceremony and people of ceremony, nevertheless. But I would not
willingly be frightened into wearing it with you; and I hope you
do not wish me to do so.

Ever yours,

T. B. M.

To hoax a newspaper has, time out of mind, been the special
ambition of undergraduate wit. In the course of 1821 Macaulay
sent to the Morning Post a burlesque copy of verses, entitled
"Tears of Sensibility." The editor fell an easy victim, but
unfortunately did not fall alone.

 No pearl of ocean is so sweet
 As that in my Zuleika's eye.
 No earthly jewel can compete
 With tears of sensibility.

 Like light phosphoric on the billow,
 Or hermit ray of evening sky,
 Like ripplings round a weeping willow
 Are tears of sensibility.

 Like drops of Iris-coloured fountains
 By which Endymion loved to lie,
 Like dew-gems on untrodden mountains
 Are tears of sensibility.

 While Zephyr broods o'er moonlight rill
 The flowerets droop as if to die,
 And from their chaliced cup distil
 The tears of sensibility.

 The heart obdurate never felt
 One link of Nature's magic tie
 If ne'er it knew the bliss to melt
 In tears of sensibility.

 The generous and the gentle heart
 Is like that balmy Indian tree
 Which scatters from the wounded part
 The tears of sensibility.

 Then oh! ye Fair, if Pity's ray
 E'er taught your snowy breasts to sigh,
 Shed o'er my contemplative lay
 The tears of sensibility.

November 2, 1821.

My dear Mother,--I possess some of the irritability of a poet, and
it has been a good deal awakened by your criticisms. I could not
have imagined that it would have been necessary for me to have
said that the execrable trash entitled "Tears of Sensibility" was
merely a burlesque on the style of the magazine verses of the day.
I could not suppose that you could have suspected me of
_seriously_ composing such a farrago of false metaphor and
unmeaning epithet. It was meant solely for a caricature on the
style of the poetasters of newspapers and journals; and, (though I
say it who should not say it,) has excited more attention and
received more praise at Cambridge than it deserved. If you have
it, read it over again, and do me the justice to believe that such
a compound of jargon, nonsense, false images, and exaggerated
sentiment, is not the product of my serious labours. I sent it to
the Morning Post, because that paper is the ordinary receptacle of
trash of the description which I intended to ridicule, and its
admission therefore pointed the jest. I see, however, that for the
future I must mark more distinctly when I intend to be ironical.

Your affectionate son

T. B. M.

Cambridge: July 26, 1822.

My dear Father,--I have been engaged to take two pupils for nine
months of the next year. They are brothers, whose father, a Mr.
Stoddart, resides at Cambridge. I am to give them an hour a day,
each; and am to receive a hundred guineas. It gives me great
pleasure to be able even in this degree to relieve you from the
burden of my expenses here. I begin my tutorial labours to-
morrow. My pupils are young, one being fifteen and the other
thirteen years old, but I hear excellent accounts of their
proficiency, and I intend to do my utmost for them. Farewell.

T. B. M.

A few days later on he writes "I do not dislike teaching whether
it is that I am more patient than I had imagined, or that I have
not yet had time to grow tired of my new vocation. I find, also,
what at first sight may appear paradoxical, that I read much more
in consequence, and that the regularity of habits necessarily
produced by a periodical employment which cannot be procrastinated
fully compensates for the loss of the time which is consumed in
tuition."

Trinity College, Cambridge: October 1, 1824.

My dear Father,--I was elected Fellow this morning, shall be
sworn in to-morrow, and hope to leave Cambridge on Tuesday for
Rothley Temple. The examiners speak highly of the manner in which
I acquitted myself, and I have reason to believe that I stood
first of the candidates.

I need not say how much I am delighted by my success, and how
much I enjoy the thought of the pleasure which it will afford to
you, my mother, and our other friends. Till I become a Master of
Arts next July the pecuniary emolument which I shall derive will
not be great. For seven years from that time it will make me
almost an independent man.

Malden is elected. You will take little interest in the rest of
our Cambridge successes and disappointments.

Yours most affectionately,

T. B. M.

CHAPTER III.

1824-30.

Macaulay is called to the bar--Does not make it a serious
profession--Speech before the Anti-Slavery Society--Knight's
Quarterly Magazine--The Edinburgh Review and the Essay on Milton-
-Macaulay's personal appearance and mode of existence--His
defects and virtues, likings and antipathies--Croker Sadler--
Zachary Macaulay's circumstances--Description of the family habits
of life in Great Ormond Street--Macaulay's sisters--Hannah
Macaulay--the Judicious Poet--Macaulay's humour in conversation--
His articles in the Review--His attacks on the Utilitarians and
on Southey--Blackwood's Magazine--Macaulay is made Commissioner
of Bankruptcy--Enters Parliament--Letters from Circuit and
Edinburgh.

MACAULAY was called to the bar in 1826, and joined the Northern
circuit. On the evening that he first appeared at mess, when the
company were retiring for the night, he was observed to be
carefully picking out the longest candle. An old King's Counsel,
who noticed that he had a volume under his arm, remonstrated with
him on the danger of reading in bed, upon which he rejoined with
immense rapidity of utterance "I always read in bed at home; and,
if I am not afraid of committing parricide, and matricide, and
fratricide, I can hardly be expected to pay any special regard to
the lives of the bagmen of Leeds." And, so saying, he left his
hearers staring at one another, and marched off to his room,
little knowing that, before many years were out, he would have
occasion to speak much more respectfully of the Leeds bagmen.

Under its social aspect Macaulay heartily enjoyed his legal
career. He made an admirable literary use of the Saturnalia which
the Northern circuit calls by the name of "Grand Night," when
personalities of the most pronounced description are welcomed by
all except the object of them, and forgiven even by him. His hand
may be recognised in a macaronic poem, written in Greek and
English, describing the feast at which Alexander murdered Clitus.
The death of the victim is treated with an exuberance of
fantastic drollery, and a song, put into the mouth of Nearchus,
the admiral of the Macedonian fleet, and beginning with the lines

 "When as first I did come back from ploughing the salt water
  They paid me off at Salamis, three minae and a quarter,--"

is highly Aristophanic in every sense of the word.

He did not seriously look to the bar as a profession. No
persuasion would induce him to return to his chambers in the
evening, according to the practice then in vogue. After the first
year or two of the period during which he called himself a
barrister he gave up even the pretence of reading law, and spent
many more hours under the gallery of the House of Commons, than in
all the Courts together. The person who knew him best said of him:
"Throughout life he never really applied himself to any pursuit
that was against the grain." Nothing is more characteristic of the
man than the contrast between his unconquerable aversion to the
science of jurisprudence at the time when he was ostensibly
preparing himself to be an advocate, and the zest with which, on
his voyage to India, he mastered that science in principle and
detail as soon as his imagination was fired by the prospect of the
responsibilities of a law-giver.

He got no business worth mention, either in London or on circuit.
Zachary Macaulay, who was not a man of the world, did what he
could to make interest with the attorneys, and, as a last
resource, proposed to his son to take a brief in a suit which he
himself had instituted against the journal that had so grossly
libelled him. "I am rather glad," writes Macaulay from York in
March 1827, "that I was not in London, if your advisers thought it
right that I should have appeared as your counsel. Whether it be
contrary to professional etiquette I do not know; but I am sure
that it would be shocking to public feeling, and particularly
imprudent against adversaries whose main strength lies in
detecting and exposing indecorum or eccentricity. It would have
been difficult to avoid a quarrel with Sugden, with Wetherell, and
with old Lord Eldon himself. Then the John Bull would have been
upon us with every advantage. The personal part of the
consideration it would have been my duty, and my pleasure and
pride also, to overlook; but your interests must have suffered."

Meanwhile he was busy enough in fields better adapted than the
law to his talents and his temperament. He took a part in a
meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society held at Freemasons' Tavern,
on the 25th of June 1824, with the Duke of Gloucester in the
chair. The Edinburgh Review described his speech as "a display of
eloquence so signal for rare and matured excellence that the most
practised orator may well admire how it should have come from one
who then for the first time addressed a public assembly."

Those who know what the annual meeting of a well-organised and
disciplined association is, may imagine the whirlwind of cheers
which greeted the declaration that the hour was at hand when "the
peasant of the Antilles will no longer crawl in listless and
trembling dejection round a plantation from whose fruits he must
derive no advantage, and a hut whose door yields him no
protection; but, when his cheerful and voluntary labour is
performed, he will return with the firm step and erect brow of a
British citizen from the field which is his freehold to the
cottage which is his castle."

Surer promise of aptitude for political debate was afforded by
the skill with which the young speaker turned to account the
recent trial for sedition, and death in prison, of Smith, the
Demerara missionary; an event which was fatal to Slavery in the
West Indies in the same degree as the execution of John Brown was
its deathblow in the United States. "When this country has been
endangered either by arbitrary power or popular delusion, truth
has still possessed one irresistible organ, and justice one
inviolable tribunal. That organ has been an English press, and
that tribunal an English jury. But in those wretched islands we
see a press more hostile to truth than any censor, and juries
more insensible to justice than any Star Chamber. In those
islands alone is exemplified the full meaning of the most
tremendous of the curses denounced against the apostate Hebrews,
'I will curse your blessings.' We can prove this assertion out of
the mouth of our adversaries. We remember, and God Almighty
forbid that we ever should forget, how, at the trial of Mr.
Smith, hatred regulated every proceeding, was substituted for
every law, and allowed its victim no sanctuary in the house of
mourning, no refuge in the very grave. Against the members of
that court-martial the country has pronounced its verdict. But
what is the line of defence taken by its advocates? It has been
solemnly and repeatedly declared in the House of Commons that a
jury composed of planters would have acted with far more
injustice than did this court;--this court which has never found
a single lawyer to stake his professional character on the
legality of its proceedings. The argument is this. Things have
doubtless been done which should not have been done. The court-
martial sat without a jurisdiction; it convicted without
evidence; it condemned to a punishment not warranted by law. But
we must make allowances. We must judge by comparison. 'Mr Smith
ought to have been very thankful that it was no worse. Only think
what would have been his fate if he had been tried by a jury of
planters!' Sir, I have always lived under the protection of the
British laws, and therefore I am unable to imagine what could be
worse; but, though I have small knowledge, I have a large faith;
I by no means presume to set any limits to the possible injustice
of a West Indian judicature. And since the colonists maintain
that a jury composed of their own body not only possibly might,
but necessarily must, have acted with more iniquity than this
court-martial, I certainly shall not dispute the assertion,
though I am utterly unable to conceive the mode."

That was probably the happiest half-hour of Zachary Macaulay's
life. "My friend," said Wilberforce, when his turn came to speak,
"would doubtless willingly bear with all the base falsehoods, all
the vile calumnies, all the detestable artifices which have been
aimed against him, to render him the martyr and victim of our
cause, for the gratification he has this day enjoyed in hearing
one so dear to him plead such a cause in such a manner." Keen as
his pleasure was, he took it in his own sad way. From the first
moment to the last, he never moved a muscle of his countenance,
but sat with his eyes fixed on a piece of paper, on which he
seemed to be writing with a pencil. While talking with his son
that evening, he referred to what had passed only to remark that
it was ungraceful in so young a man to speak with folded arms in
the presence of royalty.

In 1823 the leading members of the cleverest set of boys who ever
were together at a public school found themselves collected once
more at Cambridge. Of the former staff of the Etonian, Praed,
Moultrie, Nelson Coleridge, and, among others, Mr. Edmond Beales,
so well known to our generation as an ardent politician, were now
in residence at King's or Trinity. Mr. Charles Knight, too
enterprising a publisher to let such a quantity of youthful
talent run to waste, started a periodical, which was largely
supported by undergraduates and Bachelors of Arts, among whom the
veterans of the Eton press formed a brilliant, and, as he vainly
hoped, a reliable nucleus of contributors.

Knight's Quarterly Magazine is full of Macaulay, and of Macaulay
in the attractive shape which a great author wears while he is
still writing to please no one but himself. He unfortunately did
not at all please his father. In the first number, besides a
great deal of his that is still worth reading, there were printed
under his adopted signature of Tristram Merton two little poems,
the nature of which may be guessed from Praed's editorial
comments. "Tristram Merton, I have a strong curiosity to know who
Rosamond is. But you will not tell me; and, after all, as far as
your verses are concerned, the surname is nowise germane to the
matter. As poor Sheridan said, it is too formal to be registered
in love's calendar." And again: "Tristram, I hope Rosamond and
your Fair Girl of France will not pull caps; but I cannot forbear
the temptation of introducing your Roxana and Statira to an
admiring public." The verses were such as any man would willingly
look back to having written at two and twenty; but their
appearance occasioned real misery to Zachary Macaulay, who indeed
disapproved of the whole publication from beginning to end, with
the exception of an article on West Indian Slavery which his son
had inserted with the most filial intention, but which, it must
be allowed, was not quite in keeping with the general character
of the magazine.

July 9, 1823.

My dear Father,--I have seen the two last letters which you have
sent to my mother. They have given me deep pain; but pain without
remorse. I am conscious of no misconduct, and whatever uneasiness
I may feel arises solely from sympathy for your distress.

You seem to imagine that the book is edited, or principally
written, by friends of mine. I thought that you had been aware
that the work is conducted in London, and that my friends and
myself are merely contributors, and form a very small proportion
of the contributors. The manners of almost all of my acquaintances
are so utterly alien from coarseness, and their morals from
libertinism, that I feel assured that no objection of that nature
can exist to their writings. As to my own contributions I can only
say that the Roman Story was read to my mother before it was
published, and would have been read to you if you had happened to
be at home. Not one syllable of censure was uttered.

The Essay on the Royal Society of Literature was read to you. I
made the alterations which I conceived that you desired, and
submitted them afterwards to my mother. As to the poetry which
you parallel with Little's, if anything vulgar or licentious has
been written by myself, I am willing to bear the consequences. If
anything of that cast has been written by my friends, I allow
that a certain degree of blame attaches to me for having chosen
them at least indiscreetly. If, however, a bookseller of whom we
knew nothing has coupled improper productions with ours in a work
over which we had no control, I cannot plead guilty to anything
more than misfortune; a misfortune in which some of the most
rigidly moral and religious men of my acquaintance have
participated in the present instance.

I am pleading at random for a book which I never saw. I am
defending the works of people most of whose names I never heard.
I am therefore writing under great disadvantages. I write also in
great haste. I am unable even to read over what I have written.

Affectionately yours

T. B. M.

Moved by the father's evident unhappiness, the son promised never
to write again for the obnoxious periodical. The second number
was so dull and decorous that Zachary Macaulay, who felt that, if
the magazine went on through successive quarters reforming its
tone in the same proportion, it would soon be on a level of
virtue with the Christian Observer, withdrew his objection; and
the young man wrote regularly till the short life of the
undertaking ended in something very like a quarrel between the
publisher and his contributors. It is not the province of
biography to dilate upon works which are already before the
world; and the results of Macaulay's literary labour during the
years 1823 and 1824 have been, perhaps, only too freely
reproduced in the volumes which contain his miscellaneous
writings. It is, however, worthy of notice that among his earlier
efforts in literature his own decided favourite was "the
Conversation between Mr. Abraham Cowley and Mr. John Milton
touching the great Civil War." But an author, who is exempt from
vanity, is inclined to rate his own works rather according as
they are free from faults than as they abound in beauties; and
Macaulay's readers will very generally give the preference to two
fragmentary sketches of Roman and Athenian society which sparkle
with life, and humour, and a masculine vigorous fancy that had
not yet learned to obey the rein. Their crude but genuine merit
suggests a regret that he did not in after days enrich the
Edinburgh Review with a couple of articles on classical subjects,
as a sample of that ripened scholarship which produced the
Prophecy of Capys, and the episode relating to the Phalaris
controversy in the Essay on Sir William Temple.

Rothley Temple: October 7, 1824.

My dear Father,--As to Knight's Magazine, I really do not think
that, considering the circumstances under which it is conducted,
it can be much censured. Every magazine must contain a certain
quantity of mere ballast, of no value but as it occupies space.
The general tone and spirit of the work will stand a comparison,
in a moral point of view, with any periodical publication not
professedly religious. I will venture to say that nothing has
appeared in it, at least since the first number, from the pen of
any of my friends, which can offend the most fastidious. Knight
is absolutely in our hands, and most desirous to gratify us all,
and me in particular. When I see you in London I will mention to
you a piece of secret history which will show you how important
our connection with this work may possibly become.

Yours affectionately

T. B. M.

The "piece of secret history" above referred to was beyond a
doubt the commencement of Macaulay's connection with the
Edinburgh Review. That famous periodical, which for three and
twenty years had shared in and promoted the rising fortunes of
the Liberal cause, had now attained its height--a height
unequalled before or since--of political, social, and literary
power. To have the entry of its columns was to command the most
direct channel for the spread of opinions, and the shortest road
to influence and celebrity. But already the anxious eye of the
master seemed to discern symptoms of decline. Jeffrey, in Lord
Cockburn's phrase, was "growing feverish about new writers." In
January 1825 he says in a letter to a friend in London: "Can you
not lay your hands on some clever young man who would write for
us? The original supporters of the work are getting old, and
either too busy or too stupid, and here the young men are mostly
Tories." Overtures had already been made to Macaulay, and that
same year his article on Milton appeared in the August number.

The effect on the author's reputation was instantaneous. Like
Lord Byron, he awoke one morning and found himself famous. The
beauties of the work were such as all men could recognise, and
its very faults pleased. The redundance of youthful enthusiasm,
which he himself unsparingly condemns in the preface to his
collected essays, seemed graceful enough in the eyes of others,
if it were only as a relief from the perverted ability of that
elaborate libel on our great epic poet which goes by the name of
Dr. Johnson's Life of Milton. Murray declared that it would be
worth the copyright of Childe Harold to have Macaulay on the
staff of the Quarterly. The family breakfast table in Bloomsbury
was covered with cards of invitation to dinner from every quarter
of London, and his father groaned in spirit over the conviction
that thenceforward the law would be less to him than ever. A warm
admirer of Robert Hall, Macaulay heard with pride how the great
preacher, then wellnigh worn out with that long disease, his
life, was discovered lying on the floor, employed in learning by
aid of grammar and dictionary enough Italian to enable him to
verify the parallel between Milton and Dante. But the compliment
that of all others came most nearly home,--the only commendation
of his literary talent which even in the innermost domestic
circle he was ever known to repeat,--was the sentence with which
Jeffrey acknowledged the receipt of his manuscript: "The more I
think, the less I can conceive where you picked up that style."

Macaulay's outward man was never better described than in two
sentences of Praed's Introduction to Knight's Quarterly Magazine.
"There came up a short manly figure, marvellously upright, with a
bad neckcloth, and one hand in his waistcoat pocket. ["I well
remember," writes Sir William Stirling Maxwell, "the first time I
met him,--in 1845 or '46, I think,--at dinner at the house of his
old friend, Sir John Macleod. I did not know him by sight, and,
when he came into the room with two or three other guests, I
supposed that he was announced as General--I forget what. The
party was large, and I was on the other side of the table, and a
good way off, and I was very soon struck by the amazing number of
subjects on which he seemed at home;--politics, home and
foreign,--French literature, and Hebrew poetry;--and I remember
thinking, 'This is a General with a singularly well-stored mind
and badly tied neckcloth.' Till, at last, a remark on the prose
of Dryden led me to conclude that it could be no one but the
Great Essayist."] Of regular beauty he had little to boast; but
in faces where there is an expression of great power, or of great
good humour, or both, you do not regret its absence." This
picture, in which every touch is correct, tells all that there is
to be told. He had a massive head, and features of a powerful and
rugged cast, but so constantly lit up by every joyful and
ennobling emotion that it mattered little if, when absolutely
quiescent, his face was rather homely than handsome. While
conversing at table no one thought him otherwise than good-
looking; but, when he rose, he was seen to be short and stout in
figure. "At Holland House, the other day," writes his sister
Margaret in September 1831, "Tom met Lady Lyndhurst for the first
time. She said to him: 'Mr. Macaulay, you are so different to
what I expected. I thought you were dark and thin, but you are
fair, and really, Mr. Macaulay, you are fat."' He at all times
sat and stood straight, full, and square; and in this respect
Woolner, in the fine statue at Cambridge, has missed what was
undoubtedly the most marked fact in his personal appearance.

He dressed badly, but not cheaply. His clothes, though ill put on,
were good, and his wardrobe was always enormously overstocked.
Later in life he indulged himself in an apparently inexhaustible
succession of handsome embroidered waistcoats, which he used to
regard with much complacency. He was unhandy to a degree quite
unexampled in the experience of all who knew him. When in the open
air he wore perfectly new dark kid gloves, into the fingers of
which he never succeeded in inserting his own more than half way.
After be had sailed for India there were found in his chambers
between fifty and sixty strops, hacked into strips and splinters,
and razors without beginning or end. About the same period he hurt
his hand, and was reduced to send for a barber. After the
operation, he asked what was to pay. "Oh, Sir," said the man,
"whatever you usually give the person who shaves you." "In that
case," said Macaulay, "I should give you a great gash on each
cheek."

During an epoch when, at our principal seats of education,
athletic pursuits are regarded as a leading object of existence
rather than as a means of health and recreation, it requires some
boldness to confess that Macaulay was utterly destitute of bodily
accomplishments, and that he viewed his deficiencies with supreme
indifference. He could neither swim, nor row, nor drive, nor
skate, nor shoot. He seldom crossed a saddle, and never
willingly. When in attendance at Windsor as a cabinet minister he
was informed that a horse was at his disposal. "If her Majesty
wishes to see me ride," he said, "she must order out an
elephant." The only exercise in which he can be said to have
excelled was that of threading crowded streets with his eyes
fixed upon a book. He might be seen in such thoroughfares as
Oxford Street, and Cheapside, walking as fast as other people
walked, and reading a great deal faster than anybody else could
read. As a pedestrian he was, indeed, above the average. Till he
had passed fifty he thought nothing of going on foot from the
Albany to Clapham, and from Clapham on to Greenwich; and, while
still in the prime of life, he was for ever on his feet indoors
as well as out. "In those days," says his cousin Mrs. Conybeare,
"he walked rapidly up and down a room as he talked. I remember on
one occasion, when he was making a call, he stopped short in his
walk in the midst of a declamation on some subject, and said,
'You have a brick floor here.' The hostess confessed that it was
true, though she hoped that it had been disguised by double
matting and a thick carpet. He said that his habit of always
walking enabled him to tell accurately the material he was
treading on."

His faults were such as give annoyance to those who dislike a man
rather than anxiety to those who love him. Vehemence, over-
confidence, the inability to recognise that there are two sides
to a question or two people in a dialogue, are defects which
during youth are perhaps inseparable from gifts like those with
which he was endowed. Moultrie, speaking of his undergraduate
days, tells us that

                                    "To him
 There was no pain like silence--no constraint
 So dull as unanimity. He breathed
 An atmosphere of argument, nor shrank
 From making, where he could not find, excuse
 For controversial fight."

At Cambridge he would say of himself that, whenever anybody
enunciated a proposition, all possible answers to it rushed into
his mind at once; and it was said of him by others that he had no
politics except the opposite of those held by the person with
whom he was talking. To that charge, at any rate, he did not long
continue liable. He left college a staunch and vehement Whig,
eager to maintain against all comers, and at any moment, that
none but Whig opinions had a leg to stand upon. His cousin George
Babington, a rising surgeon, with whom at one time he lived in
the closest intimacy, was always ready to take up the Tory
cudgels. The two friends "would walk up and down the room,
crossing each other for hours, shouting one another down with a
continuous simultaneous storm of words, until George at length
yielded to arguments and lungs combined. Never, so far as I
remember, was there any loss of temper. It was a fair, good-
humoured battle in not very mannerly lists."

Even as a very young man nine people out of ten liked nothing
better than to listen to him, which was fortunate; because in his
early days he had scanty respect of persons, either as regarded
the choice of his topics, or the quantity of his words. But with
his excellent temper, and entire absence of conceit, he soon
began to learn consideration for others in small things as well
as in great. By the time he was fairly launched in London he was
agreeable in company, as well as forcible and amusing.
Wilberforce speaks of his "unruffled good-humour." Sir Robert
Inglis, a good observer with ample opportunity of forming a
judgment, pronounced that he conversed and did not dictate, and
that he was loud but never overbearing. As far back as the year
1826 Crabb Robinson gave a very favourable account of his
demeanour in society, which deserves credence as the testimony of
one who liked his share of talk, and was not willing to be put in
the background for anybody. "I went to James Stephen, and drove
with him to his house at Hendon. A dinner party. I had a most
interesting companion in young Macaulay, one of the most
promising of the rising generation I have seen for a long time.
He has a good face,--not the delicate features of a man of genius
and sensibility, but the strong lines and well-knit limbs of a
man sturdy in body and mind. Very eloquent and cheerful.
Overflowing with words, and not poor in thought. Liberal in
opinion, but no radical. He seems a correct as well as a full
man. He showed a minute knowledge of subjects not introduced by
himself."

So loyal and sincere was Macaulay's nature that he was unwilling
to live upon terms of even apparent intimacy with people whom he
did not like, or could not esteem; and, as far as civility
allowed, he avoided their advances, and especially their
hospitality. He did not choose, he said, to eat salt with a man
for whom he could not say a good word in all companies. He was
true throughout life to those who had once acquired his regard
and respect. Moultrie says of him

 "His heart was pure and simple as a child's
  Unbreathed on by the world: in friendship warm,
  Confiding, generous, constant; and, though now
  He ranks among the great ones of the earth
  And hath achieved such glory as will last
  To future generations, he, I think,
  Would sup on oysters with as right good will
  In this poor home of mine as e'er he did
  On Petty Cury's classical first floor
  Some twenty years ago."

He loved to place his purse, his influence, and his talents at
the disposal of a friend; and anyone whom he called by that name
he judged with indulgence, and trusted with a faith that would
endure almost any strain. If his confidence proved to have been
egregiously misplaced, which he was always the last to see, he
did not resort to remonstrance or recrimination. His course under
such circumstances he described in a couplet from an old French
comedy:

 "Le bruit est pour le fat, la plainte pour le sot;
  L'honnete homme trompe s'eloigne et ne dit mot.

["La Coquette corrigee. Comedie par Mr. Delanoue, 1756." In his
journal of February 15, 1851, after quoting the couplet, Macaulay
adds: "Odd that two lines of a damned play, and, it should seem,
a justly damned play, should have lived near a century and have
become proverbial."]

He was never known to take part in any family quarrel, or
personal broil, of any description whatsoever. His conduct in
this respect was the result of self-discipline, and did not
proceed from any want of sensibility. "He is very sensitive,"
said his sister Margaret, "and remembers long, as well as feels
deeply, anything in the form of slight." Indeed, at college his
friends used to tell him that his leading qualities were
"generosity and vindictiveness." Courage he certainly did not
lack. During the years when his spirit was high, and his pen cut
deep, and when the habits of society were different from what
they are at present, more than one adversary displayed symptoms
of a desire to meet him elsewhere than on paper. On these
occasions, while showing consideration for his opponent, he
evinced a quiet but very decided sense of what was due to
himself, which commanded the respect of all who were implicated,
and brought difficulties that might have been grave to an
honourable and satisfactory issue.

He reserved his pugnacity for quarrels undertaken on public
grounds, and fought out with the world looking on as umpire. In
the lists of criticism and of debate it cannot be denied that, as
a young man, he sometimes deserved the praise which Dr. Johnson
pronounced upon a good hater. He had no mercy for bad writers,
and notably for bad poets, unless they were in want of money; in
which case he became within his means, the most open-handed of
patrons. He was too apt to undervalue both the heart and the head
of those who desired to maintain the old system of civil and
religious exclusion, and who grudged political power to their
fellow-countrymen, or at any rate to those of their fellow-
countrymen whom he was himself prepared to enfranchise.
Independent, frank, and proud almost to a fault, he detested the
whole race of jobbers and time-servers, parasites and scandal-
mongers, led-captains, led-authors, and led-orators. Some of his
antipathies have stamped themselves indelibly upon literary
history. He attributed to the Right Honourable John Wilson
Croker, Secretary to the Admiralty during the twenty years
preceding 1830, qualities which excited his disapprobation beyond
control, and possibly beyond measure. His judgment has been
confirmed by the public voice, which identifies Croker with the
character of Rigby in Mr. Disraeli's Coningsby.

Macaulay was the more formidable as an opponent because he could
be angry without losing his command of the situation. His first
onset was terrific; but in the fiercest excitement of the melee he
knew when to call a halt. A certain member of Parliament named
Michael Thomas Sadler had fallen foul of Malthus, and very foul
indeed of Macaulay, who in two short and telling articles took
revenge enough for both. [Macaulay writes to Mr. Napier in
February 1831: "People here think that I have answered Sadler
completely. Empson tells me that Malthus is well pleased, which is
a good sign. As to Blackwood's trash I could not get through it.
It bore the same relation to Sadler's pamphlet that a bad hash
bears to a bad joint."] He writes on this subject to Mr. Macvey
Napier, who towards the close of 1829 had succeeded Jeffrey in the
editorship of the Edinburgh Review: "The position which we have
now taken up is absolutely impregnable, and, if we were to quit
it, though we might win a more splendid victory, we should expose
ourselves to some risk. My rule in controversy has always been
that to which the Lacedaemonians adhered in war: never to break
the ranks for the purpose of pursuing a beaten enemy." He had,
indeed, seldom occasion to strike twice. Where he set his mark,
there was no need of a second impression. The unduly severe fate
of those who crossed his path during the years when his blood was
hot teaches a serious lesson on the responsibilities of genius.
Croker, and Sadler, and poor Robert Montgomery, and the other less
eminent objects of his wrath, appear likely to enjoy just so much
notoriety, and of such a nature, as he has thought fit to deal
out to them in his pages; and it is possible that even Lord
Ellenborough may be better known to our grand-children by
Macaulay's oration on the gates of Somnauth than by the noise
of his own deeds, or the echo of his own eloquence.

When Macaulay went to college he was justified in regarding
himself as one who would not have to work for his bread. His
father, who believed himself to be already worth a hundred
thousand pounds, had statedly declared to the young man his
intention of making him, in a modest way, an eldest son; and had
informed him that, by doing his duty at the university, he would
earn the privilege of shaping his career at choice. In 1818 the
family removed to London, and set up an establishment on a scale
suited to their improved circumstances in Cadogan Place, which,
in everything except proximity to Bond Street, was then hardly
less rural than Clapham. But the prosperity of the house of
Macaulay and Babington was short-lived. The senior member of the
firm gave his whole heart, and five-sixths of his time, to
objects unconnected with his business; and he had selected a
partner who did not possess the qualities necessary to compensate
for his own deficiencies. In 1819 the first indications of
possible disaster begin to show themselves in the letters to and
from Cambridge; while waiting for a fellowship Macaulay was glad
to make a hundred guineas by taking pupils; and, as time went on,
it became evident that he was to be an eldest son only in the
sense that, throughout the coming years of difficulty and
distress, his brothers and sisters would depend mainly upon him
for comfort, guidance, and support. He acknowledged the claim
cheerfully, lovingly, and, indeed, almost unconsciously. It was
not in his disposition to murmur over what was inevitable, or to
plume himself upon doing what was right. He quietly took up the
burden which his father was unable to bear; and, before many
years had elapsed, the fortunes of all for whose welfare he
considered himself responsible were abundantly assured. In the
course of the efforts which he expended on the accomplishment of
this result he unlearned the very notion of framing his method of
life with a view to his own pleasure; and such was his high and
simple nature, that it may well be doubted whether it ever
crossed his mind that to live wholly for others was a sacrifice
at all.

He resided with his father in Cadogan Place, and accompanied him
when, under the pressure of pecuniary circumstances, he removed
to a less fashionable quarter of the town. In 1823 the family
settled in 50 Great Ormond Street, which runs east and west for
some three hundred yards through the region bounded by the
British Museum, the Foundling Hospital, and Gray's Inn Road. It
was a large rambling house, at the corner of Powis Place, and was
said to have been the residence of Lord Chancellor Thurlow at the
time when the Great Seal was stolen from his custody. It now
forms the east wing of an Homoeopathic hospital. Here the
Macaulays remained till 1831. "Those were to me," says Lady
Trevelyan, "years of intense happiness. There might be money
troubles, but they did not touch us. Our lives were passed after
a fashion which would seem indeed strange to the present
generation. My father, ever more and more engrossed in one
object, gradually gave up all society; and my mother never could
endure it. We had friends, of course, with whom we stayed out for
months together; and we dined with the Wilberforces, the Buxtons,
Sir Robert Inglis, and others; but what is now meant by
'society' was utterly unknown to us.

"In the morning there was some pretence of work and study. In the
afternoon your uncle always took my sister Margaret and myself a
long walk. We traversed every part of the City, Islington,
Clerkenwell, and the Parks, returning just in time for a six
o'clock dinner. What anecdotes he used to pour out about every
street, and square, and court, and alley! There are many places I
never pass without 'the tender grace of a day that is dead'
coming back to me. Then, after dinner, he always walked up and
down the drawing-room between us chatting till tea-time. Our
noisy mirth, his wretched puns, so many a minute, so many an
hour! Then we sang, none of us having any voices, and he, if
possible, least of all; but still the old nursery songs were set
to music, and chanted. My father, sitting at his own table, used
to look up occasionally, and push back his spectacles, and, I
dare say, wonder in his heart how we could so waste our time.
After tea the book then in reading was produced. Your uncle very
seldom read aloud himself of an evening, but walked about
listening, and commenting, and drinking water.

"The Sundays were in some respects trying days to him. My
father's habit was to read a long sermon to us all in the
afternoon, and again after evening service another long sermon
was read at prayer-time to the servants. Our doors were open to
sons of relations or friends; and cousins who were medical
students, or clerks in merchants' houses, came in regularly to
partake of our Sunday dinner and sermons. Sunday walking, for
walking's sake, was never allowed; and even going to a distant
church was discouraged. When in Cadogan Place, we always crossed
the Five Fields, where Belgrave Square now stands, to hear Dr.
Thorpe at the Lock Chapel, and bring him home to dine with us.
From Great Ormond Street, we attended St. John's Chapel in
Bedford Row, then served by Daniel Wilson, afterwards Bishop of
Calcutta. He was succeeded in 1826 by the Rev. Baptist Noel. Your
uncle generally went to church with us in the morning, and
latterly formed the habit of walking out of town, alone or with a
friend, in the after part of the day. I never heard that my
father took any notice of this; and, indeed, in the interior of
his own family, he never attempted in the smallest degree to
check his son in his mode of life, or in the expression of his
opinions.

"I believe that breakfast was the pleasantest part of the day to
my father. His spirits were then at their best, and he was most
disposed to general conversation. He delighted in discussing the
newspaper with his son, and lingered over the table long after
the meal was finished. On this account he felt it extremely when,
in the year 1829, your uncle went to live in chambers, and often
said to my mother that the change had taken the brightness out of
his day. Though your uncle generally dined with us, yet my father
was tired by the evening, so that the breakfast hour was a
grievous loss to him, as indeed it was to us all. Truly he was to
old and young alike the sunshine of our home; and I believe that
no one, who did not know him there, ever knew him in his most
brilliant, witty, and fertile vein."

That home was never more cheerful than during the eight years
which followed the close of Macaulay's college life. There had
been much quiet happiness at Clapham, and much in Cadogan Place;
but it was round the house in Great Ormond Street that the
dearest associations gathered. More than forty years afterwards,
when Lady Trevelyan was dying, she had herself driven to the
spot, as the last drive she ever took, and sat silent in her
carriage for many minutes with her eyes fixed upon those well-
known walls.

[In August 1857, Macaulay notes in his diary: "I sent the
carriage home, and walked to the Museum. Passing through Great
Ormond Street I saw a bill upon No. 50. I knocked, was let in,
and went over the house with a strange mixture of feelings. It is
more than twenty-six years since I was in it. The dining-room,
and the adjoining room, in which I once slept, are scarcely
changed--the same colouring on the wall, but more dingy. My
father's study much the same;--the drawing-rooms too, except the
papering. My bedroom just what it was. My mother's bedroom. I had
never been in it since her death. I went away sad."]

While warmly attached to all his nearest relations, Macaulay
lived in the closest and most frequent companionship with his
sisters Hannah and Margaret, younger than himself by ten and
twelve years respectively. His affection for these two, deep and
enduring as it was, had in it no element of blindness or
infatuation. Even in the privacy of a diary, or the confidence of
the most familiar correspondence, Macaulay, when writing about
those whom he loved, was never tempted to indulge in fond
exaggeration of their merits. Margaret, as will be seen in the
course of this narrative, died young, leaving a memory of outward
graces, and sweet and noble mental qualities, which is treasured
by all among whom her short existence was passed. As regards the
other sister, there are many alive who knew her for what she was;
and, for those who did not know her, if this book proves how much
of her brother's heart she had, and how well it was worth having,
her children will feel that they have repaid their debt even to
her.

Education in the Macaulay family was not on system. Of what are
ordinarily called accomplishments the daughters had but few, and
Hannah fewest of any; but, ever since she could remember
anything, she had enjoyed the run of a good standard library, and
had been allowed to read at her own time, and according to her
own fancy. There were two traits in her nature which are seldom
united in the same person: a vivid practical interest in the
realities which surrounded her, joined with the power of passing
at will into a world of literature and romance in which she found
herself entirely at home. The feeling with which Macaulay and his
sister regarded books differed from that of other people in kind
rather than in degree. When they were discoursing together about
a work of history or biography, a bystander would have supposed
that they had lived in the times of which the author treated, and
had a personal acquaintance with every human being who was
mentioned in his pages. Pepys, Addison, Horace Walpole, Dr.
Johnson, Madame de Genlis, the Duc de St. Simon, and the several
societies in which those worthies moved, excited in their minds
precisely the same sort of concern, and gave matter for
discussions of exactly the same type, as most people bestow upon
the proceedings of their own contemporaries. The past was to them
as the present, and the fictitious as the actual. The older
novels, which had been the food of their early years, had become
part of themselves to such an extent that, in speaking to each
other, they frequently employed sentences from dialogues in those
novels to express the idea, or even the business, of the moment.
On matters of the street or of the household they would use the
very language of Mrs. Elton and Mrs. Bennet, Mr. Woodhouse, Mr.
Collins, and John Thorpe, and the other inimitable actors on Jane
Austen's unpretending stage: while they would debate the love
affairs and the social relations of their own circle in a series
of quotations from Sir Charles Grandison or Evelina.

The effect was at times nothing less than bewildering. When Lady
Trevelyan married, her husband, whose reading had lain anywhere
rather than among the circulating libraries, used at first to
wonder who the extraordinary people could be with whom his wife
and his brother-in-law appeared to have lived. This style of
thought and conversation had for young minds a singular and a not
unhealthy fascination. Lady Trevelyan's children were brought up
among books, (to use the homely simile of an American author), as
a stable-boy among horses. The shelves of the library, instead of
frowning on us as we played and talked, seemed alive with kindly
and familiar faces. But death came, and came again, and then all
was changed, and changed as in an instant. There were many
favourite volumes out of which the spirit seemed to vanish at
once and for ever. We endeavoured unsuccessfully to revive by our
own efforts the amusement which we had been taught to find in the
faded flatteries and absurdities that passed between Miss Seward
and her admirers, or to retrace for ourselves the complications
of female jealousy which played round Cowper's tea-table at
Olney. We awoke to the discovery that the charm was not in us,
nor altogether in the books themselves. The talisman, which
endowed with life and meaning all that it touched, had passed
away from among us, leaving recollections which are our most
cherished, as they must ever be our proudest, possession.

Macaulay thought it probable that he could re-write Sir Charles
Grandison from memory, and certainly he might have done so with
his sister's help. But his intimate acquaintance with a work was
no proof of its merit. "There was a certain prolific author,"
says Lady Trevelyan, "named Mrs. Meeke, whose romances he all but
knew by heart; though he quite agreed in my criticism that they
were one just like another, turning on the fortunes of some young
man in a very low rank of life who eventually proves to be the
son of a Duke. Then there was a set of books by a Mrs. Kitty
Cuthbertson, most silly though readable productions, the nature
of which may be guessed from their titles:--'Santo Sebastiano, or
the Young Protector,' 'The Forest of Montalbano,' 'The Romance of
the Pyrenees,' and 'Adelaide, or the Countercharm.' I remember
how, when 'Santo Sebastiano' was sold by auction in India, he and
Miss Eden bid against each other till he secured it at a fabulous
price; and I possess it still."

As an indication of the thoroughness with which this literary
treasure has been studied, there appears on the last page an
elaborate computation of the number of fainting-fits that occur
in the course of the five volumes.

 Julia de Clifford . . . . . 11
 Lady Delamore . . . . . . .  4
 Lady Theodosia. . . . . . .  4
 Lord Glenbrook  . . . . . .  2
 Lord Delamore   . . . . . .  2
 Lady Enderfield . . . . . .  1
 Lord Ashgrove . . . . . . .  1
 Lord St. Orville  . . . . .  1
 Henry Mildmay . . . . . . .  1

A single passage, selected for no other reason than because it is
the shortest, will serve as a specimen of these catastrophes "One
of the sweetest smiles that ever animated the face of mortal now
diffused itself over the countenance of Lord St. Orville, as he
fell at the feet of Julia in a death-like swoon."

The fun that went on in Great Ormond Street was of a jovial, and
sometimes uproarious, description. Even when the family was by
itself, the school-room and the drawing-room were full of young
people; and friends and cousins flocked in numbers to a resort
where so much merriment was perpetually on foot. There were
seasons during the school holidays when the house overflowed with
noise and frolic from morning to night; and Macaulay, who at any
period of his life could literally spend whole days in playing
with children, was master of the innocent revels. Games of hide-
and-seek, that lasted for hours, with shouting and the blowing of
horns up and down the stairs and through every room, were varied
by ballads, which, like the Scalds of old, he composed during the
act of recitation, while the others struck in with the chorus. He
had no notion whatever of music, but an infallible ear for
rhythm. His knack of improvisation he at all times exercised
freely. The verses which he thus produced, and which he
invariably attributed to an anonymous author whom he styled "the
Judicious Poet," were exclusively for home consumption. Some of
these effusions illustrate a sentiment in his disposition which
was among the most decided, and the most frequently and loudly
expressed. Macaulay was only too easily bored, and those whom he
considered fools he by no means suffered gladly. He once amused
his sisters by pouring out whole Iliads of extempore doggrel upon
the head of an unfortunate country squire of their acquaintance,
who had a habit of detaining people by the button, and who was
especially addicted to the society of the higher order of clergy

 "His Grace Archbishop Manners Sutton
  Could not keep on a single button.
  As for Right Reverend John of Chester,
  His waistcoats open at the breast are.
  Our friend* has filled a mighty trunk
  With trophies torn from Doctor Monk
  And he has really tattered foully
  The vestments of Archbishop Howley
  No button could I late discern on
  The garments of Archbishop Vernon,
  And never had his fingers mercy
  Upon the garb of Bishop Percy.
  The buttons fly from Bishop Ryder
  Like corks that spring from bottled cyder,--"

[*The name of this gentleman has been concealed, as not being
sufficiently known by all to give point, but well enough
remembered by some to give pain.]

and so on, throughout the entire bench, until, after a good half-
hour of hearty and spontaneous nonsense, the girls would go
laughing back to their Italian and their drawing-boards.

He did not play upon words as a habit, nor did he interlard his
talk with far-fetched or overstrained witticisms. His humour,
like his rhetoric, was full of force and substance, and arose
naturally from the complexion of the conversation or the
circumstance of the moment. But when alone with his sisters, and,
in after years, with his nieces, he was fond of setting himself
deliberately to manufacture conceits resembling those on the
heroes of the Trojan War which have been thought worthy of
publication in the collected works of Swift. When walking in
London he would undertake to give some droll turn to the name of
every shopkeeper in the street, and, when travelling, to the name
of every station along the line. At home he would run through the
countries of Europe, the States of the Union, the chief cities of
our Indian Empire, the provinces of France, the Prime Ministers
of England, or the chief writers and artists of any given
century; striking off puns, admirable, endurable, and execrable,
but all irresistibly laughable, which followed each other in
showers like sparks from flint. Capping verses was a game of
which he never tired. "In the spring of 1829," says his cousin
Mrs. Conybeare, "we were staying in Ormond Street. My chief
recollection of your uncle during that visit is on the evenings
when we capped verses. All the family were quick at it, but his
astounding memory made him supereminent. When the time came for
him to be off to bed at his chambers, he would rush out of the
room after uttering some long-sought line, and would be pursued
to the top of the stairs by one of the others who had contrived
to recall a verse which served the purpose, in order that he
might not leave the house victorious; but he, with the hall-door
open in his hand, would shriek back a crowning effort, and go off
triumphant."

Nothing of all this can be traced in his letters before the year
1830. Up to that period he corresponded regularly with no one but
his father, between whom and himself there existed a strong
regard, but scanty sympathy or similarity of pursuits. It was not
until he poured out his mind almost daily to those who approached
him more nearly in age, and in tastes, that the lighter side of
his nature began to display itself on paper. Most of what he
addressed to his parents between the time when he left Cambridge,
and the time when he entered the House of Commons, may be
characterised as belonging to the type of duty- letters, treating
of politics, legal gossip, personal adventures, and domestic
incidents, with some reticence and little warmth or ease of
expression, The periodical insertion on the son's part of
anecdotes and observations bearing upon the question of Slavery
reminds the reader of those presents of tall recruits with which,
at judiciously chosen intervals, Frederic the Great used to
conciliate his terrible father. As between the Macaulays, these
little filial attentions acquire a certain gracefulness from the
fact that, in the circumstances of the family, they could be
prompted by no other motive than a dutiful and disinterested
affection.

It must not be supposed,--no one who examines the dates of his
successive essays will for a moment suppose,--that his attention
was distracted, or his energy dissipated, by trifles. Besides
the finished study of Machiavelli, and the masterly sketch of
our great civil troubles known as the article on Hallam's
Constitutional History, he produced much which his mature judgment
would willingly have allowed to die, but which had plenty of life
in it when it first appeared between the blue and yellow covers.
His most formidable enterprise, during the five earliest years of
his connection with the great Review, was that passage of arms
against the champions of the Utilitarian philosophy in which he
touched the mighty shields of James Mill and Jeremy Bentham, and
rode slashing to right and left through the ranks of their less
distinguished followers. Indeed, while he sincerely admired the
chiefs of the school, he had a young man's prejudice against their
disciples, many of whom he regarded as "persons who, having read
little or nothing, are delighted to be rescued from the sense of
their own inferiority by some teacher who assures them that the
studies which they have neglected are of no value, puts five or
six phrases into their mouths, lends them an odd number of the
Westminster Review, and in a month transforms them into
philosophers." It must be allowed that there was some colour for
his opinion. The Benthamite training may have stimulated the finer
intellects, (and they were not few,) which came within its
influence; but it is impossible to conceive anything more dreary
than must have been the condition of a shallow mind, with a native
predisposition to sciolism, after its owner had joined a society
"composed of young men agreeing in fundamental principles,
acknowledging Utility as their standard in ethics and politics,"
"meeting once a fortnight to read essays and discuss questions
conformably to the premises thus agreed on," and "expecting the
regeneration of mankind, not from any direct action on the
sentiments of unselfish benevolence and love of justice, but from
the effect of educated intellect enlightening the selfish
feelings." John Stuart Mill, with that candour which is the rarest
of his great qualities, gave a generous and authoritative
testimony to the merit of these attacks upon his father, and his
father's creed, which Macaulay himself lived to wish that he had
left unwritten.

["The author has been strongly urged to insert three papers on
the Utilitarian Philosophy, which, when they first appeared,
attracted some notice. * * * He has, however, determined to omit
these papers, not because he is disposed to retract a single
doctrine which they contain, but because he is unwilling to offer
what might be regarded as an affront to the memory of one from
whose opinions he still widely dissents, but to whose talents and
virtues he admits that he formerly did not do justice. * * It
ought to be known that Mr. Mill had the generosity, not only to
forgive, but to forget the unbecoming acrimony with which he had
been assailed, and was, when his valuable life closed, on terms
of cordial friendship with his assailant."--Preface to Macaulay's
Collected Essays.]

He was already famous enough to have incurred the inevitable
penalty of success in the shape of the pronounced hostility of
Blackwood's Magazine. The feelings which the leading contributors
to that periodical habitually entertained towards a young and
promising writer were in his case sharpened by political
partisanship; and the just and measured severity which he infused
into his criticism on Southey's "Colloquies of Society" brought
down upon him the bludgeon to whose strokes poetic tradition has
attributed the death of Keats. Macaulay was made of harder stuff,
and gave little heed to a string of unsavoury invectives
compounded out of such epithets as "ugly," "splay-footed," and
"shapeless;" such phrases as "stuff and nonsense," "malignant
trash," "impertinent puppy," and "audacity of impudence;" and
other samples from the polemical vocabulary of the personage who,
by the irony of fate, filled the Chair of Moral Philosophy at
Edinburgh. The substance of Professor Wilson's attacks consisted
in little more than the reiteration of that charge of intellectual
juvenility, which never fails to be employed as the last resource
against a man whose abilities are undoubted, and whose character
is above detraction.

"North. He's a clever lad, James.

"Shepherd. Evidently; and a clever lad he'll remain, depend ye
upon that, a' the days of his life. A clever lad thirty years auld
and some odds is to ma mind the maist melancholy sight in nature.
Only think of a clever lad o' three-score-and-ten, on his
deathbed, wha can look back on nae greater achievement than
having aince, or aiblins ten times, abused Mr. Southey in the
Embro' Review."

The prophecies of jealousy seldom come true. Southey's book died
before its author, with the exception of the passages extracted
by Macaulay, which have been reproduced in his essay a hundred
times, and more, for once that they were printed in the volumes
from which he selected them for his animadversion.

The chambers in which he ought to have been spending his days,
and did actually spend his nights between the years 1829 and
1834, were within five minutes' walk of the house in Great Ormond
Street. The building of which those chambers formed a part,--8
South Square, Gray's Inn,--has since been pulled down to make
room for an extension of the Library; a purpose which, in
Macaulay's eyes, would amply compensate for the loss of such
associations as might otherwise have attached themselves to the
locality. His Trinity fellowship brought him in nearly three
hundred pounds annually, and the Edinburgh Review nearly two
hundred. In January 1828, during the interregnum that separated
the resignation of Lord Goderich and the acceptance of the
Premiership by the Duke of Wellington, Lord Lyndhurst made him a
Commissioner of Bankruptcy; a rare piece of luck at a time when,
as Lord Cockburn tells us, "a youth of a Tory family, who was
discovered to have a leaning towards the doctrines of the
opposition, was considered as a lost son." "The Commission is
welcome," Macaulay writes to his father, "and I am particularly
glad that it has been given at a time when there is no ministry,
and when the acceptance of it implies no political obligation. To
Lord Lyndhurst I of course feel personal gratitude, and I shall
always take care how I speak of him."

The emoluments of the office made up his income, for the three or
four years during which he held it, to about nine hundred pounds
per annum. His means were more than sufficient for his wants, but
too small, and far too precarious, for the furtherance of the
political aspirations which now were uppermost in his mind.
"Public affairs," writes Lady Trevelyan, "were become intensely
interesting to him. Canning's accession to power, then his death,
the repeal of the Test Act, the Emancipation of the Catholics,
all in their turn filled his heart and soul. He himself longed to
be taking his part in Parliament, but with a very hopeless
longing.

"In February 1830 I was staying at Mr. Wilberforce's at Highwood
Hill when I got a letter from your uncle, enclosing one from Lord
Lansdowne, who told him that he had been much struck by the
articles on Mill, and that he wished to be the means of first
introducing their author to public life by proposing to him to
stand for the vacant seat at Calne. Lord Lansdowne expressly
added that it was your uncle's high moral and private character
which had determined him to make the offer, and that he wished in
no respect to influence his votes, but to leave him quite at
liberty to act according to his conscience. I remember flying
into Mr. Wilberforce's study, and, absolutely speechless, putting
the letter into his hands. He read it with much emotion, and
returned it to me, saying 'Your father has had great trials,
obloquy, bad health, many anxieties. One must feel as if Tom were
given him for a recompense.' He was silent for a moment, and then
his mobile face lighted up, and he clapped his hand to his ear,
and cried: 'Ah! I hear that shout again. Hear! Hear! What a life
it was!'"

And so, on the eve of the most momentous conflict that ever was
fought out by speech and vote within the walls of a senate-house,
the young recruit went gaily to his post in the ranks of that
party whose coming fortunes he was prepared loyally to follow,
and the history of whose past he was destined eloquently, and
perhaps imperishably, to record.

York: April 2, 1826.

My dear Father,--I am sorry that I have been unable to avail
myself of the letters of introduction which you forwarded to me.
Since I received them I have been confined to the house with a
cold; and, now that I am pretty well recovered, I must take my
departure for Pontefract. But, if it had been otherwise, I could
not have presented these recommendations. Letters of this sort
may be of great service to a barrister; but the barrister himself
must not be the bearer of them. On this subject the rule is most
strict, at least on our circuit. The hugging of the Bar, like the
Simony of the Church, must be altogether carried on by the
intervention of third persons. We are sensible of our dependence
on the attorneys, and proportioned to that sense of dependence is
our affectation of superiority. Even to take a meal with an
attorney is a high misdemeanour. One of the most eminent men
among us brought himself into a serious scrape by doing so. But
to carry a letter of introduction, to wait in the outer room
while it is being read, to be then ushered into the presence, to
receive courtesies which can only be considered as the
condescensions of a patron, to return courtesies which are little
else than the blessings of a beggar, would be an infinitely more
terrible violation of our professional code. Every barrister to
whom I have applied for advice has most earnestly exhorted me on
no account whatever to present the letters myself. I should
perhaps add that my advisers have been persons who cannot by any
possibility feel jealous of me.

In default of anything better I will eke out my paper with some
lines which I made in bed last night,--an inscription for a
picture of Voltaire.

 If thou would'st view one more than man and less,
 Made up of mean and great, of foul and fair,
 Stop here; and weep and laugh, and curse and bless,
 And spurn and worship; for thou seest Voltaire.
 That flashing eye blasted the conqueror's spear,
 The monarch's sceptre, and the Jesuit's beads
 And every wrinkle in that haggard sneer
 Hath been the grave of Dynasties and Creeds.
 In very wantonness of childish mirth
 He puffed Bastilles, and thrones, and shrines away,
 Insulted Heaven, and liberated earth.
 Was it for good or evil? Who shall say?

Ever affectionately yours

T. B. M.

York: July 21, 1826.

My dear Father,--The other day, as I was changing my neck-cloth
which my wig had disfigured, my good landlady knocked at the door
of my bedroom, and told me that Mr. Smith wished to see me, and
was in my room below. Of all names by which men are called there
is none which conveys a less determinate idea to the mind than
that of Smith. Was he on the circuit? For I do not know half the
names of my companions. Was he a special messenger from London?
Was he a York attorney coming to be preyed upon, or a beggar
coming to prey upon me, a barber to solicit the dressing of my
wig, or a collector for the Jews' Society? Down I went, and to my
utter amazement beheld the Smith of Smiths, Sydney Smith, alias
Peter Plymley. I had forgotten his very existence till I
discerned the queer contrast between his black coat and his snow-
white head, and the equally curious contrast between the clerical
amplitude of his person, and the most unclerical wit, whim, and
petulance of his eye. I shook hands with him very heartily; and
on the Catholic question we immediately fell, regretted Evans,
triumphed over Lord George Beresford, and abused the Bishops.
[These allusions refer to the general election which had recently
taken place.] He then very kindly urged me to spend the time
between the close of the Assizes and the commencement of the
Sessions at his house; and was so hospitably pressing that I at
last agreed to go thither on Saturday afternoon. He is to drive
me over again into York on Monday morning. I am very well pleased
at having this opportunity of becoming better acquainted with a
man who, in spite of innumerable affectations and oddities, is
certainly one of the wittiest and most original writers of our
times.

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. M.

Bradford: July 26, 1826.

My dear Father,--On Saturday I went to Sydney Smith's. His parish
lies three or four miles out of any frequented road. He is,
however, most pleasantly situated. "Fifteen years ago," said he
to me as I alighted at the gate of his shrubbery, "I was taken
up in Piccadilly and set down here. There was no house, and no
garden; nothing but a bare field." One service this eccentric
divine has certainly rendered to the Church. He has built the
very neatest, most commodious, and most appropriate rectory that
I ever saw. All its decorations are in a peculiarly clerical
style; grave, simple, and gothic. The bed-chambers are excellent,
and excellently fitted up; the sitting-rooms handsome; and the
grounds sufficiently pretty. Tindal and Parke, (not the judge of
course,) two of the best lawyers, best scholars, and best men in
England, were there. We passed an extremely pleasant evening, had
a very good dinner, and many amusing anecdotes.

After breakfast the next morning I walked to church with Sydney
Smith. The edifice is not at all in keeping with the rectory. It
is a miserable little hovel with a wooden belfry. It was,
however, well filled, and with decent people, who seemed to take
very much to their pastor. I understand that he is a very
respectable apothecary; and most liberal of his skill, his
medicine, his soul, and his wine, among the sick. He preached a
very queer sermon--the former half too familiar and the latter
half too florid, but not without some ingenuity of thought and
expression.

Sydney Smith brought me to York on Monday morning, in time for
the stage-coach which runs to Skipton. We parted with many
assurances of goodwill. I have really taken a great liking to
him. He is full of wit, humour, and shrewdness. He is not one of
those show-talkers who reserve all their good things for special
occasions. It seems to be his greatest luxury to keep his wife
and daughters laughing for two or three hours every day. His
notions of law, government, and trade are surprisingly clear and
just. His misfortune is to have chosen a profession at once above
him and below him. Zeal would have made him a prodigy; formality
and bigotry would have made him a bishop; but he could neither
rise to the duties of his order, nor stoop to its degradations.

He praised my articles in the Edinburgh Review with a warmth
which I am willing to believe sincere, because he qualified his
compliments with several very sensible cautions. My great danger,
he said, was that of taking a tone of too much asperity and
contempt in controversy. I believe that he is right, and I shall
try to mend.

Ever affectionately yours

T. B. M.

Lancaster: September 1, 1827.

My dear Father,--Thank Hannah from me for her pleasant letter. I
would answer it if I had anything equally amusing to say in
return; but here we have no news, except what comes from London,
and is as stale as inland fish before it reaches us. We have
circuit anecdotes to be sure; and perhaps you will be pleased to
hear that Brougham has been rising through the whole of this
struggle. At York Pollock decidedly took the lead. At Durham
Brougham overtook him, passed him at Newcastle, and got immensely
ahead of him at Carlisle and Appleby, which, to be sure, are the
places where his own connections lie. We have not been here quite
long enough to determine how he will succeed with the
Lancastrians. This has always hitherto been his least favourable
place. He appears to improve in industry and prudence. He learns
his story more thoroughly, and tells it more clearly, than
formerly. If he continues to manage causes as well as he has done
of late he must rise to the summit of the profession. I cannot
say quite so much for his temper, which this close and constant
rivalry does not improve. He squabbles with Pollock more than, in
generosity or policy, he ought to do. I have heard several of our
younger men wondering that he does not show more magnanimity. He
yawns while Pollock is speaking; a sign of weariness which, in
their present relation to each other, he would do well to
suppress. He has said some very good, but very bitter, things.
There was a case of a lead-mine. Pollock was for the proprietors,
and complained bitterly of the encroachments which Brougham's
clients had made upon this property, which he represented as of
immense value. Brougham said that the estimate which his learned
friend formed of the property was vastly exaggerated, but that it
was no wonder that a person who found it so easy to get gold for
his lead should appreciate that heavy metal so highly. The other
day Pollock laid down a point of law rather dogmatically. "Mr.
Pollock," said Brougham, "perhaps, before you rule the point, you
will suffer his Lordship to submit a few observations on it to
your consideration."

I received the Edinburgh paper which you sent me. Silly and
spiteful as it is, there is a little truth in it. In such cases I
always remember those excellent lines of Boileau

 "Moi, qu'une humeur trop libre, un esprit peu soumis,
  De bonne heure a pourvo d'utiles ennemis,
  Je dois plus a leur haine (il faut que je l'avoue)
  Qu'au faible et vain talent dont la France me loue.
  Sitot que sur un vice un pensent me confondre,
  C'est en me guerissant que je sais leur repondre."

This place disagrees so much with me that I shall leave it as
soon as the dispersion of the circuit commences,--that is, after
the delivery of the last batch of briefs; always supposing, which
may be supposed without much risk of mistake, that there are none
for me.

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. M.

It was about this period that the Cambridge Senate came to a
resolution to petition against the Catholic Claims. The minority
demanded a poll, and conveyed a hint to their friends in London.
Macaulay, with one or two more to help him, beat up the Inns of
Court for recruits, chartered a stage-coach, packed it inside and
out with young Whig Masters of Arts, and drove up King's Parade
just in time to turn the scale in favour of Emancipation. The
whole party dined in triumph at Trinity, and got back to town the
same evening; and the Tory journalists were emphatic in their
indignation at the deliberate opinion of the University having
been overridden by a coachful of "godless and briefless
barristers."

Court House, Pomfret: April 15, 1828.

My dear Mother,--I address this epistle to you as the least
undeserving of a very undeserving family. You, I think, have sent
me one letter since I left London. I have nothing here to do but
to write letters; and, what is not very often the case, I have
members of Parliament in abundance to frank them, and abundance
of matter to fill them with. My Edinburgh expedition has given me
so much to say that, unless I write off some of it before I come
home, I shall talk you all to death, and be voted a bore in every
house which I visit. I will commence with Jeffrey himself. I had
almost forgotten his person; and, indeed, I should not wonder if
even now I were to forget it again. He has twenty faces almost as
unlike each other as my father's to Mr. Wilberforce's, and
infinitely more unlike to each other than those of near relatives
often are; infinitely more unlike, for example, than those of the
two Grants. When absolutely quiescent, reading a paper, or
hearing a conversation in which he takes no interest, his
countenance shows no indication whatever of intellectual
superiority of any kind. But as soon as he is interested, and
opens his eyes upon you, the change is like magic. There is a
flash in his glance, a violent contortion in his frown, an
exquisite humour in his sneer, and a sweetness and brilliancy in
his smile, beyond anything that ever I witnessed. A person who
had seen him in only one state would not know him if he saw him
in another. For he has not, like Brougham, marked features which
in all moods of mind remain unaltered. The mere outline of his
face is insignificant. The expression is everything; and such
power and variety of expression I never saw in any human
countenance, not even in that of the most celebrated actors. I
can conceive that Garrick may have been like him. I have seen
several pictures of Garrick, none resembling another, and I have
heard Hannah More speak of the extraordinary variety of
countenance by which he was distinguished, and of the unequalled
radiance and penetration of his eye. The voice and delivery of
Jeffrey resemble his face. He possesses considerable power of
mimicry, and rarely tells a story without imitating several
different accents. His familiar tone, his declamatory tone, and
his pathetic tone are quite different things. Sometimes Scotch
predominates in his pronunciation; sometimes it is imperceptible.
Sometimes his utterance is snappish and quick to the last degree;
sometimes it is remarkable for rotundity and mellowness. I can
easily conceive that two people who had seen him on different
days might dispute about him as the travellers in the fable
disputed about the chameleon.

In one thing, as far as I observed, he is always the same and
that is the warmth of his domestic affections. Neither Mr.
Wilberforce, nor my uncle Babington, come up to him in this
respect. The flow of his kindness is quite inexhaustible. Not
five minutes pass without some fond expression, or caressing
gesture, to his wife or his daughter. He has fitted up a study
for himself; but he never goes into it. Law papers, reviews,
whatever he has to write, he writes in the drawing-room, or in
his wife's boudoir. When he goes to other parts of the country on
a retainer he takes them in the carriage with him. I do not
wonder that he should be a good husband, for his wife is a very
amiable woman. But I was surprised to see a man so keen and
sarcastic, so much of a scoffer, pouring himself out with such
simplicity and tenderness in all sorts of affectionate nonsense.
Through our whole journey to Perth he kept up a sort of mock
quarrel with his daughter; attacked her about novel-reading,
laughed her into a pet, kissed her out of it, and laughed her
into it again. She and her mother absolutely idolise him, and I
do not wonder at it.

His conversation is very much like his countenance and his voice,
of immense variety; sometimes plain and unpretending even to
flatness; sometimes whimsically brilliant and rhetorical almost
beyond the license of private discourse. He has many interesting
anecdotes, and tells them very well. He is a shrewd observer; and
so fastidious that I am not surprised at the awe in which many
people seem to stand when in his company. Though not altogether
free from affectation himself, he has a peculiar loathing for it
in other people, and a great talent for discovering and exposing
it. He has a particular contempt, in which I most heartily concur
with him, for the fadaises of bluestocking literature, for the
mutual flatteries of coteries, the handing about of vers de
societe, the albums, the conversaziones, and all the other
nauseous trickeries of the Sewards, Hayleys, and Sothebys. I am
not quite sure that he has escaped the opposite extreme, and that
he is not a little too desirous to appear rather a man of the
world, an active lawyer, or an easy careless gentleman, than a
distinguished writer. I must own that, when Jeffrey and I were by
ourselves, he talked much and very well on literary topics. His
kindness and hospitality to me were, indeed, beyond description,
and his wife was as pleasant and friendly as possible. I liked
everything but the hours. We were never up till ten, and never
retired till two hours at least after midnight. Jeffrey, indeed,
never goes to bed till sleep comes on him overpoweringly, and
never rises till forced up by business or hunger. He is extremely
well in health; so that I could not help suspecting him of being
very hypochondriac; for all his late letters to me have been
filled with lamentations about his various maladies. His wife
told me, when I congratulated her on his recovery, that I must
not absolutely rely on all his accounts of his own diseases. I
really think that he is, on the whole, the youngest-looking man
of fifty that I know, at least when he is animated.

His house is magnificent. It is in Moray Place, the newest pile
of buildings in the town, looking out to the Forth on one side,
and to a green garden on the other. It is really equal to the
houses in Grosvenor Square. Fine, however, as is the new quarter
of Edinburgh, I decidedly prefer the Old Town. There is nothing
like it in the island. You have been there, but you have not seen
the town, and no lady ever sees a town. It is only by walking on
foot through all corners at all hours that cities can be really
studied to good purpose. There is a new pillar to the memory of
Lord Melville; very elegant, and very much better than the man
deserved. His statue is at the top, with a wreath on the head
very like a nightcap drawn over the eyes. It is impossible to
look at it without being reminded of the fate which the original
most richly merited. But my letter will overflow even the ample
limits of a frank, if I do not conclude. I hope that you will be
properly penitent for neglecting such a correspondent when you
receive so long a dispatch, written amidst the bellowing of
justices, lawyers, criers, witnesses, prisoners, and prisoners'
wives and mothers.

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. M.

Lancaster: March 24, 1829.

My dear Father,--A single line to say that I am at Lancaster.
Where you all are I have not the very slightest notion. Pray let
me hear. That dispersion of the Gentiles which our friends the
prophets foretell seems to have commenced with our family.

Everything here is going on in the common routine. The only
things of peculiar interest are those which we get from the
London papers. All minds seem to be perfectly made up as to the
certainty of Catholic Emancipation having come at last. The
feeling of approbation among the barristers is all but unanimous.
The quiet townspeople here, as far as I can see, are very well
contented. As soon as I arrived I was asked by my landlady how
things had gone. I told her the division, which I had learned
from Brougham at Garstang. She seemed surprised at the majority.
I asked her if she was against the measure. "No; she only wished
that all Christians would live in peace and charity together." A
very sensible speech, and better than one at least of the members
for the county ever made in his life.

I implore you above everything, my dear Father, to keep up your
health and spirits. Come what may, the conveniences of life,
independence, our personal respectability, and the exercise of
the intellect and the affections, we are almost certain of
retaining; and everything else is a mere superfluity, to be
enjoyed, but not to be missed. But I ought to be ashamed of
reading you a lecture on qualities which you are so much more
competent to teach than myself.

Ever yours very affectionately

T. B. M.

To Macvey Napier, Esq.

50 Great Ormond Street, London:

January 25, 1830.

My dear Sir,--I send off by the mail of to-day an article on
Southey,--too long, I fear, to meet your wishes, but as short as
I could make it.

There were, by the bye, in my last article a few omissions made,
of no great consequence in themselves; the longest, I think, a
paragraph of twelve or fourteen lines. I should scarcely have
thought this worth mentioning, as it certainly by no means
exceeds the limits of that editorial prerogative which I most
willingly recognise, but that the omissions seemed to me, and to
one or two persons who had seen the article in its original
state, to be made on a principle which, however sound in itself,
does not I think apply to compositions of this description. The
passages omitted were the most pointed and ornamented sentences
in the review. Now, for high and grave works, a history for
example, or a system of political or moral philosophy, Doctor
Johnson's rule,--that every sentence which the writer thinks fine
ought to be cut out,--is excellent. But periodical works like
ours, which unless they strike at the first reading are not
likely to strike at all, whose whole life is a month or two, may,
I think, be allowed to be sometimes even viciously florid.
Probably, in estimating the real value of any tinsel which I may
put upon my articles, you and I should not materially differ. But
it is not by his own taste, but by the taste of the fish, that
the angler is determined in his choice of bait.

Perhaps after all I am ascribing to system what is mere accident.
Be assured, at all events, that what I have said is said in
perfect good humour, and indicates no mutinous disposition.

The Jews are about to petition Parliament for relief from the
absurd restrictions which lie on them,--the last relique of the
old system of intolerance. I have been applied to by some of them
in the name of the managers of the scheme to write for them in
the Edinburgh Review. I would gladly further a cause so good, and
you, I think, could have no objection.

Ever yours truly

T. B. MACAULAY.

Bowood: February 20, 1830.

My dear Father,--I am here in a very nice room, with perfect
liberty, and a splendid library at my command. It seems to be
thought desirable that I should stay in the neighbourhood, and
pay my compliments to my future constituents every other day.

The house is splendid and elegant, yet more remarkable for
comfort than for either elegance or splendour. I never saw any
great place so thoroughly desirable for a residence. Lord
Kerry tells me that his uncle left everything in ruin,--trees cut
down, and rooms unfurnished,--and sold the library, which was
extremely fine. Every book and picture in Bowood has been bought
by the present Lord, and certainly the collection does him great
honour.

I am glad that I stayed here. A burgess of some influence, who,
at the last election, attempted to get up an opposition to the
Lansdowne interest, has just arrived. I called on him this
morning, and, though he was a little ungracious at first,
succeeded in obtaining his promise. Without him, indeed, my
return would have been secure; but both from motives of interest
and from a sense of gratitude I think it best to leave nothing
undone which may tend to keep Lord Lansdowne's influence here
unimpaired against future elections.

Lord Kerry seems to me to be going on well. He has been in very
good condition, he says, this week; and hopes to be at the
election, and at the subsequent dinner. I do not know when I have
taken so much to so young a man. In general my intimacies have
been with my seniors; but Lord Kerry is really quite a favourite
of mine,--kind, lively, intelligent, modest, with the gentle
manners which indicate a long intimacy with the best society, and
yet without the least affectation. We have oceans of beer, and
mountains of potatoes, for dinner. Indeed, Lady Lansdowne drank
beer most heartily on the only day which she passed with us, and,
when I told her laughing that she set me at ease on a point which
had given me much trouble, she said that she would never suffer
any dandy novelist to rob her of her beer or her cheese.

The question between law and politics is a momentous one. As far
as I am myself concerned, I should not hesitate; but the interest
of my family is also to be considered. We shall see, however,
before long what my chance of success as a public man may prove
to be. At present it would clearly be wrong in me to show any
disposition to quit my profession.

I hope that you will be on your guard as to what you may say to
Brougham about this business. He is so angry at it that he cannot
keep his anger to himself. I know that he has blamed Lord
Lansdowne in the robing-room of the Court of King's Bench. The
seat ought, he says, to have been given to another man. If he
means Denman, I can forgive, and even respect him, for the
feeling which he entertains.

Believe me ever yours most affectionately

T. B. M.

CHAPTER IV.

1830-1832.

State of public affairs when Macaulay entered Parliament--His
maiden speech--The French Revolution of July 1830--Macaulay's
letters from Paris--The Palais Royal--Lafayette--Lardner's
Cabinet Cyclopaedia--The new Parliament meets--Fall of the Duke
of Wellington--Scene with Croker--The Reform Bill--Political
success--House of Commons life--Macaulay's party spirit--Loudon
Society--Mr. Thomas Flower Ellis--Visit to Cambridge--Rothley
Temple--Margaret Macaulay's Journal--Lord Brougham--Hopes of
Office--Macaulay as a politician--Letters to Hannah Macaulay, Mr.
Napier, and Mr. Ellis.

THROUGHOUT the last two centuries of our history there never was
a period when a man conscious of power, impatient of public
wrongs, and still young enough to love a fight for its own sake,
could have entered Parliament with a fairer prospect of leading a
life worth living, and doing work that would requite the pains,
than at the commencement of the year 1830.

In this volume, which only touches politics in order to show to
what extent Macaulay was a politician, and for how long,
controversies cannot appropriately be started or revived. This is
not the place to enter into a discussion on the vexed question as
to whether Mr. Pitt and his successors, in pursuing their system
of repression, were justified by the necessities of the long
French war. It is enough to assert, what few or none will deny,
that, for the space of more than a generation from 1790 onwards,
our country had, with a short interval, been governed on declared
reactionary principles. We, in whose days Whigs and Tories have
often exchanged office, and still more often interchanged
policies, find it difficult to imagine what must have been the
condition of the kingdom, when one and the same party almost
continuously held not only place, but power, throughout a period
when, to an unexampled degree, "public life was exasperated by
hatred, and the charities of private life soured by political
aversion."  [These expressions occur in Lord Cockburn's Memorials
of his Time.] Fear, religion, ambition, and self-interest,--
everything that could tempt and everything that could deter,--
were enlisted on the side of the dominant opinions. To profess
Liberal views was to be excluded from all posts of emolument,
from all functions of dignity, and from all opportunities of
public usefulness. The Whig leaders, while enjoying that security
for life and liberty which even in the worst days of our recent
history has been the reward of eminence, were powerless in the
Commons and isolated in the Lords. No motive but disinterested
conviction kept a handful of veterans steadfast round a banner
which was never raised except to be swept contemptuously down by
the disciplined and overwhelming strength of the ministerial
phalanx. Argument and oratory were alike unavailing under a
constitution which was indeed a despotism of privilege. The
county representation of England was an anomaly, and the borough
representation little better than a scandal. The constituencies
of Scotland, with so much else that of right belonged to the
public, had got into Dundas's pocket. In the year 1820 all the
towns north of Tweed together contained fewer voters than are now
on the rolls of the single burgh of Hawick, and all the counties
together contained fewer voters than are now on the register of
Roxburghshire. So small a band of electors was easily manipulated
by a party leader who had the patronage of India at his command.
The three Presidencies were flooded with the sons and nephews of
men who were lucky enough to have a seat in a Town Council, or a
superiority in a rural district; and fortunate it was for our
empire that the responsibilities of that noblest of all careers
soon educated young Indian Civil Servants into something higher
than mere adherents of a political party.

While the will of the nation was paralysed within the senate,
effectual care was taken that its voice should not be heard
without. The press was gagged in England, and throttled in
Scotland. Every speech, or sermon, or pamphlet, the substance of
which a Crown lawyer could torture into a semblance of sedition,
sent its author to the jail, the hulks, or the pillory. In any
place of resort where an informer could penetrate, men spoke
their minds at imminent hazard of ruinous fines, and protracted
imprisonment. It was vain to appeal to Parliament for redress
against the tyranny of packed juries, and panic-driven
magistrates. Sheridan endeavoured to retain for his countrymen
the protection of Habeas Corpus; but he could only muster forty-
one supporters. Exactly as many members followed Fox into the
lobby when he opposed a bill, which, interpreted in the spirit
that then actuated our tribunals, made attendance at an open
meeting summoned for the consideration of Parliamentary Reform a
service as dangerous as night-poaching, and far more dangerous
than smuggling. Only ten more than that number ventured to
protest against the introduction of a measure, still more
inquisitorial in its provisions and ruthless in its penalties,
which rendered every citizen who gave his attention to the
removal of public grievances liable at any moment to find himself
in the position of a criminal;--that very measure in behalf of
which Bishop Horsley had stated in the House of Peers that he
did not know what the mass of the people of any country had to do
with the laws, except to obey them.

Amidst a population which had once known freedom, and was still
fit to be entrusted with it, such a state of matters could not
last for ever. Justly proud of the immense success that they had
bought by their resolution, their energy, and their perseverance,
the Ministers regarded the fall of Napoleon as a party triumph
which could only serve to confirm their power. But the last
cannon-shot that was fired on the 18th of June, was in truth the
death-knell of the golden age of Toryism. When the passion and
ardour of the war gave place to the discontent engendered by a
protracted period of commercial distress, the opponents of
progress began to perceive that they had to reckon, not with a
small and disheartened faction, but with a clear majority of the
nation led by the most enlightened, and the most eminent, of its
sons. Agitators and incendiaries retired into the background, as
will always be the case when the country is in earnest; and
statesmen who had much to lose, but were not afraid to risk it,
stepped quietly and firmly to the front. The men, and the sons of
the men, who had so long endured exclusion from office, embittered
by unpopularity, at length reaped their reward. Earl Grey, who
forty years before had been hooted through the streets of North
Shields with cries of "No Popery," lived to bear the most
respected name in England; and Brougham, whose opinions differed
little from those for expressing which Dr. Priestley in 1791 had
his house burned about his ears by the Birmingham mob, was now the
popular idol beyond all comparison or competition.

In the face of such unanimity of purpose, guided by so much worth
and talent, the Ministers lost their nerve, and, like all rulers
who do not possess the confidence of the governed, began first to
make mistakes, and then to quarrel among themselves. Throughout
the years of Macaulay's early manhood the ice was breaking fast.
He was still quite young when the concession of Catholic
Emancipation gave a moral shock to the Tory party from which it
never recovered until the old order of things had finally passed
away. [Macaulay was fond of repeating an answer made to him by
Lord Clarendon in the year 1829. The young men were talking over
the situation, and Macaulay expressed curiosity as to the terms
in which the Duke of Wellington would recommend the Catholic
Relief Bill to the Peers. "Oh," said the other, "it will be easy
enough. He'll say 'My lords! Attention! Right about face!
March!'"] It was his fortune to enter into other men's labours
after the burden and heat of the day had already been borne, and
to be summoned into the field just as the season was at hand for
gathering in a ripe and long-expected harvest of beneficent
legislation.

On the 5th of April, 1830, he addressed the House of Commons on
the second reading of Mr. Robert Grant's bill for the Removal of
Jewish Disabilities. Sir James Mackintosh rose with him, but
Macaulay got the advantage of the preference that has always been
conceded to one who speaks for the first time after gaining his
seat during the continuance of a Parliament;--a privilege which,
by a stretch of generosity, is now extended to new members who
have been returned at a general election. Sir James subsequently
took part in the debate; not, as he carefully assured his
audience, "to supply any defects in the speech of his honourable
friend, for there were none that he could find, but principally
to absolve his own conscience." Indeed, Macaulay, addressing
himself to his task with an absence of pretension such as never
fails to conciliate the goodwill of the House towards a maiden
speech, put clearly and concisely enough the arguments in favour
of the bill;--arguments which, obvious, and almost common-place,
as they appear under his straightforward treatment, had yet to be
repeated during a space of six and thirty years before they
commended themselves to the judgment of our Upper Chamber.

"The power of which you deprive the Jew consists in maces, and
gold chains, and skins of parchment with pieces of wax dangling
from their edges. The power which you leave the Jew is the power
of principal over clerk, of master over servant, of landlord over
tenant. As things now stand, a Jew may be the richest man in
England. He may possess the means of raising this party and
depressing that; of making East Indian directors; of making
members of Parliament. The influence of a Jew may be of the first
consequence in a war which shakes Europe to the centre. His power
may come into play in assisting or thwarting the greatest plans
of the greatest princes; and yet, with all this confessed,
acknowledged, undenied, you would have him deprived of power!
Does not wealth confer power? How are we to permit all the
consequences of that wealth but one? I cannot conceive the nature
of an argument that is to bear out such a position. If we were to
be called on to revert to the day when the warehouses of Jews
were torn down and pillaged, the theory would be comprehensible.
But we have to do with a persecution so delicate that there is no
abstract rule for its guidance. You tell us that the Jews have no
legal right to power, and I am bound to admit it; but in the same
way, three hundred years ago they had no legal right to be in
England, and six hundred years ago they had no legal right to the
teeth in their heads. But, if it is the moral right we are to
look at, I hold that on every principle of moral obligation the
Jew has a right to political power."

He was on his legs once again, and once only, during his first
Session; doing more for future success in Parliament by his
silence than he could have effected by half a dozen brilliant
perorations. A crisis was rapidly approaching when a man gifted
with eloquence, who by previous self-restraint had convinced the
House that he did not speak for speaking's sake, might rise
almost in a day to the very summit of influence and reputation.
The country was under the personal rule of the Duke of
Wellington, who had gradually squeezed out of his Cabinet every
vestige of Liberalism, and even of independence, and who at last
stood so completely alone that he was generally supposed to be in
more intimate communication with Prince Polignac than with any of
his own colleagues. The Duke had his own way in the Lords; and on
the benches of the Commons the Opposition members were unable to
carry, or even visibly to improve their prospect of carrying, the
measures on which their hearts were set. The Reformers were not
doing better in the division lobby than in 1821; and their
question showed no signs of having advanced since the day when it
had been thrown over by Pitt on the eve of the French Revolution.

But the outward aspect of the situation was very far from
answering to the reality. While the leaders of the popular party
had been spending themselves in efforts that seemed each more
abortive than the last,--dividing only to be enormously outvoted,
and vindicating with calmness and moderation the first principles
of constitutional government only to be stigmatised as the
apostles of anarchy,--a mighty change was surely but
imperceptibly effecting itself in the collective mind of their
fellow-countrymen.

 "For, while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
  Seem here no painful inch to gain,
  Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
  Comes silent, flooding in, the main."

Events were at hand, which unmistakably showed how different was
the England of 1830 from the England of 1790. The King died;
Parliament was dissolved on the 24th of July; and in the first
excitement and bustle of the elections, while the candidates were
still on the roads and the writs in the mailbags, came the news
that Paris was in arms. The troops fought as well as Frenchmen
ever can be got to fight against the tricolour; but by the
evening of the 29th it was all over with the Bourbons. The
Minister, whose friendship had reflected such unpopularity on our
own Premier, succumbed to the detestation of the victorious
people, and his sacrifice did not save the dynasty. What was
passing among our neighbours for once created sympathy, and not
repulsion, on this side the Channel. One French Revolution had
condemned English Liberalism to forty years of subjection, and
another was to be the signal which launched it on as long a
career of supremacy. Most men said, and all felt, that Wellington
must follow Polignac; and the public temper was such as made it
well for the stability of our throne that it was filled by a
monarch who had attracted to himself the hopes and affection of
the nation, and who shared its preferences and antipathies with
regard to the leading statesmen of the day.

One result of political disturbance in any quarter of the globe
is to fill the scene of action with young members of Parliament,
who follow Revolutions about Europe as assiduously as Jew brokers
attend upon the movements of an invading army. Macaulay, whose
re-election for Calne had been a thing of course, posted off to
Paris at the end of August, journeying by Dieppe and Rouen, and
eagerly enjoying a first taste of continental travel. His letters
during the tour were such as, previously to the age of railroads,
brothers who had not been abroad before used to write for the
edification of sisters who expected never to go abroad at all. He
describes in minute detail manners and institutions that to us
are no longer novelties, and monuments which an educated
Englishman of our time knows as well as Westminster Abbey, and a
great deal better than the Tower. Everything that he saw, heard,
ate, drank, paid, and suffered, was noted down in his exuberant
diction to be read aloud and commented on over the breakfast
table in Great Ormond Street.

"At Rouen," he says, "I was struck by the union of venerable
antiquity with extreme liveliness and gaiety. We have nothing of
the sort in England. Till the time of James the First, I imagine,
our houses were almost all of wood, and have in consequence
disappeared. In York there are some very old streets; but they
are abandoned to the lowest people, and the gay shops are in the
newly-built quarter of the town. In London, what with the fire of
1666, and what with the natural progress of demolition and
rebuilding, I doubt whether there are fifty houses that date from
the Reformation. But in Rouen you have street after street of
lofty stern-looking masses of stone, with Gothic carvings. The
buildings are so high, and the ways so narrow, that the sun can
scarcely reach the pavements. Yet in these streets, monastic in
their aspect, you have all the glitter of Regent Street or the
Burlington Arcade. Rugged and dark, above, below they are a blaze
of ribands, gowns, watches, trinkets, artificial flowers; grapes,
melons, and peaches such as Covent Garden does not furnish,
filling the windows of the fruiterers; showy women swimming
smoothly over the uneasy stones, and stared at by national guards
swaggering by in full uniform. It is the Soho Bazaar transplanted
into the gloomy cloisters of Oxford."

He writes to a friend just before he started on his tour: "There
is much that I am impatient to see, but two things specially,--
the Palais Royal, and the man who called me the Aristarchus of
Edinburgh." Who this person might be, and whether Macaulay
succeeded in meeting him, are questions which his letters leave
unsolved; but he must have been a constant visitor at the Palais
Royal if the hours that he spent in it bore any relation to the
number of pages which it occupies in his correspondence. The
place was indeed well worth a careful study; for in 1830 it was
not the orderly and decent bazaar of the Second Empire, but was
still that compound of Parnassus and Bohemia which is painted in
vivid colours in the "Grand Homme de Province" of Balzac,--still
the paradise of such ineffable rascals as Diderot has drawn with
terrible fidelity in his "Neveu de Rameau."

"If I were to select the spot in all the earth in which the good
and evil of civilisation are most strikingly exhibited, in which
the arts of life are carried to the highest perfection, and in
which all pleasures, high and low, intellectual and sensual, are
collected in the smallest space, I should certainly choose the
Palais Royal. It is the Covent Garden Piazza, the Paternoster
Row, the Vauxhall, the Albion Tavern, the Burlington Arcade, the
Crockford's the Finish, the Athenaeum of Paris all in one. Even
now, when the first dazzling effect has passed off, I never
traverse it without feeling bewildered by its magnificent
variety. As a great capital is a country in miniature, so the
Palais Royal is a capital in miniature,--an abstract and epitome
of a vast community, exhibiting at a glance the politeness which
adorns its higher ranks, the coarseness of its populace, and the
vices and the misery which lie underneath its brilliant exterior.
Everything is there, and everybody. Statesmen, wits,
philosophers, beauties, dandies, blacklegs, adventurers, artists,
idlers, the king and his court, beggars with matches crying for
charity, wretched creatures dying of disease and want in garrets.
There is no condition of life which is not to be found in this
gorgeous and fantastic Fairyland."

Macaulay had excellent opportunities for seeing behind the scenes
during the closing acts of the great drama that was being played
out through those summer months. The Duc de Broglie, then Prime
Minister, treated him with marked attention, both as an
Englishman of distinction, and as his father's son. He was much
in the Chamber of Deputies, and witnessed that strange and
pathetic historical revival when, after an interval of forty such
years as mankind had never known before, the aged La Fayette
again stood forth, in the character of a disinterested dictator,
between the hostile classes of his fellow-countrymen.

"De La Fayette is so overwhelmed with work that I scarcely knew
how to deliver even Brougham's letter, which was a letter of
business, and should have thought it absurd to send him
Mackintosh's, which was a mere letter of introduction, I fell in
with an English acquaintance who told me that he had an
appointment with La Fayette, and who undertook to deliver them
both. I accepted his offer, for, if I had left them with the
porter, ten to one they would never have been opened. I hear that
hundreds of letters are lying in the lodge of the hotel. Every
Wednesday morning, from nine to eleven, La Fayette gives audience
to anybody who wishes to speak with him; but about ten thousand
people attend on these occasions, and fill, not only the house,
but all the courtyard and half the street. La Fayette is
Commander in Chief of the National Guard of France. The number of
these troops in Paris alone is upwards of forty thousand. The
Government find a musket and bayonet; but the uniform, which
costs about ten napoleons, the soldiers provide themselves. All
the shopkeepers are enrolled, and I cannot sufficiently admire
their patriotism. My landlord, Meurice, a man who, I suppose, has
realised a million francs or more, is up one night in four with
his firelock doing the duty of a common watchman.

"There is, however, something to be said as an explanation of the
zeal with which the bourgeoisie give their time and money to the
public. The army received so painful a humiliation in the battles
of July that it is by no means inclined to serve the new system
faithfully. The rabble behaved nobly during the conflict, and
have since shown rare humanity and moderation. Yet those who
remember the former Revolution feel an extreme dread of the
ascendency of mere multitude and there have been signs, trifling
in themselves, but such as may naturally alarm people of
property. Workmen have struck. Machinery has been attacked.
Inflammatory handbills have appeared upon the walls. At present
all is quiet; but the thing may happen, particularly if Polignac
and Peyronnet should not be put to death. The Peers wish to save
them. The lower orders, who have had five or six thousand of
their friends and kinsmen butchered by the frantic wickedness of
these men, will hardly submit. 'Eh! eh!' said a fierce old
soldier of Napoleon to me the other day. 'L'on dit qu'ils seront
deportes: mais ne m'en parle pas. Non! non! Coupez-leur le cou.
Sacre! Ca ne passera pas comme ca.'"

"This long political digression will explain to you why Monsieur
De La Fayette is so busy. He has more to do than all the
Ministers together. However, my letters were presented, and he
said to my friend that he had a soiree every Tuesday, and should
be most happy to see me there. I drove to his house yesterday
night. Of the interest which the common Parisians take in
politics you may judge by this. I told my driver to wait for me,
and asked his number. 'Ah! monsieur, c'est un beau numero. C'est
un brave numero. C'est 221.' You may remember that the number of
deputies who voted the intrepid address to Charles the Tenth,
which irritated him into his absurd coup d'etat, was 221. I
walked into the hotel through a crowd of uniforms, and found the
reception-rooms as full as they could hold. I was not able to
make my way to La Fayette; but I was glad to see him. He looks
like the brave, honest, simple, good-natured man that he is."

Besides what is quoted above, there is very little of general
interest in these journal letters; and their publication would
serve no purpose except that of informing the present leader of
the Monarchists what his father had for breakfast and dinner
during a week of 1830, and of enabling him to trace changes in
the disposition of the furniture of the De Broglie hotel. "I
believe," writes Macaulay, "that I have given the inventory of
every article in the Duke's salon. You will think that I have
some intention of turning upholsterer."

His thoughts and observations on weightier matters he kept for an
article on the State of Parties in France which he intended to
provide for the October number of the Edinburgh Review. While he
was still at Paris, this arrangement was rescinded by Mr. Napier
in compliance with the wish, or the whim, of Brougham; and
Macaulay's surprise and annoyance vented itself in a burst of
indignant rhetoric strong enough to have upset a Government. [See
on page 142 the letter to Mr. Napier of September 16, 1831.] His
wrath,--or that part of it, at least, which was directed against
the editor,--did not survive an interchange of letters; and he at
once set to work upon turning his material into the shape of a
volume for the series of Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia, under the
title of "The History of France, from the Restoration of the
Bourbons to the Accession of Louis Philippe." Ten years ago
proofs of the first eighty-eight pages were found in Messrs.
Spottiswoode's printing office, with a note on the margin to the
effect that most of the type was broken up before the sheets had
been pulled. The task, as far as it went, was faithfully
performed; but the author soon arrived at the conclusion that he
might find a more profitable investment for his labour. With his
head full of Reform, Macaulay was loth to spend in epitomising
history the time and energy that would be better employed in
helping to make it.

When the new Parliament met on the 26th of October it was already
evident that the Government was doomed. Where the elections were
open, Reform had carried the day. Brougham was returned for
Yorkshire, a constituency of tried independence, which before
1832 seldom failed to secure the triumph of a cause into whose
scale it had thrown its enormous weight. The counties had
declared for the Whigs by a majority of eight to five, and the
great cities by a majority of eight to one. Of the close boroughs
in Tory hands many were held by men who had not forgotten
Catholic Emancipation, and who did not mean to pardon their
leaders until they had ceased to be Ministers.

In the debate on the Address the Duke of Wellington uttered his
famous declaration that the Legislature possessed, and deserved
to possess, the full and entire confidence of the country; that
its existing constitution was not only practically efficient but
theoretically admirable; and that, if he himself had to frame a
system of representation, he should do his best to imitate so
excellent a model, though he admitted that the nature of man was
incapable at a single effort of attaining to such mature
perfection. His bewildered colleagues could only assert in excuse
that their chief was deaf, and wish that everybody else had been
deaf too. The second ministerial feat was of a piece with the
first. Their Majesties had accepted an invitation to dine at
Guildhall on the 9th of November. The Lord Mayor elect informed
the Home Office that there was danger of riot, and the Premier,
(who could not be got to see that London was not Paris because
his own political creed happened to be much the same as Prince
Polignac's,) advised the King to postpone his visit to the City,
and actually talked of putting Lombard Street and Cheapside in
military occupation. Such a step taken at such a time by such a
man had its inevitable result. Consols, which the Duke's speech
on the Address had brought from 84 to 80, fell to 77 in an hour
and a half; jewellers and silversmiths sent their goods to the
banks; merchants armed their clerks and barricaded their
warehouses; and, when the panic subsided, fear only gave place to
the shame and annoyance which a loyal people, whose loyalty was
at that moment more active than ever, experienced from the
reflection that all Europe was discussing the reasons why our
King could not venture to dine in public with the Chief
Magistrate of his own capital. A strong Minister, who sends the
funds down seven per cent. in as many days, is an anomaly that no
nation will consent to tolerate; the members of the Cabinet
looked forward with consternation to a scheme of Reform which,
with the approbation of his party, Brougham had undertaken to
introduce on the 15th of November; and when, within twenty-four
hours of the dreaded debate, they were defeated on a motion for a
committee on the Civil List, their relief at having obtained an
excuse for retiring at least equalled that which the country felt
at getting rid of them.

Earl Grey came in, saying, (and meaning what he said,) that the
principles on which he stood were "amelioration of abuses,
promotion of economy, and the endeavour to preserve peace
consistently with the honour of the country." Brougham, who was
very sore at having been forced to postpone his notice on Reform
on account of the ministerial crisis, had gratuitously informed
the House of Commons on two successive days that he had no
intention of taking office. A week later on he accepted the
Chancellorship with an inconsistency which his friends readily
forgave, for they knew that, when he resolved to join the
Cabinet, he was thinking more of his party than of himself; a
consideration that naturally enough only sharpened the relish
with which his adversaries pounced upon this first of his
innumerable scrapes. When the new writ for Yorkshire was moved,
Croker commented sharply on the position in which the Chancellor
was placed, and remarked that he had often heard Brougham declare
that "the characters of public men formed part of the wealth of
England;"--a reminiscence which was delivered with as much
gravity and unction as if it had been Mackintosh discoursing on
Romilly. Unfortunately for himself, Croker ruined his case by
referring to a private conversation, an error which the House of
Commons always takes at least an evening to forgive; and Macaulay
had his audience with him as he vindicated the absent orator with
a generous warmth, which at length carried him so far that he was
interrupted by a call to order from the Chair. "The noble Lord
had but a few days for deliberation, and that at a time when
great agitation prevailed, and when the country required a strong
and efficient Ministry to conduct the government of the State. At
such a period a few days are as momentous as months would be at
another period. It is not by the clock that we should measure the
importance of the changes that might take place during such an
interval. I owe no allegiance to the noble Lord who has been
transferred to another place; but as a member of this House I
cannot banish from my memory the extraordinary eloquence of that
noble person within these walls,--an eloquence which has left
nothing equal to it behind; and when I behold the departure of
the great man from amongst us, and when I see the place in which
he sat, and from which he has so often astonished us by the
mighty powers of his mind, occupied this evening by the
honourable member who has commenced this debate, I cannot express
the feelings and emotions to which such circumstances give rise."

Parliament adjourned over Christmas; and on the 1st of March 1831
Lord John Russell introduced the Reform Bill amidst breathless
silence, which was at length broken by peals of contemptuous
laughter from the Opposition benches, as he read the list of the
hundred and ten boroughs which were condemned to partial or
entire disfranchisement. Sir Robert Inglis led the attack upon a
measure that he characterised as Revolution in the guise of a
statute. Next morning as Sir Robert was walking into town over
Westminster Bridge, he told his companion that up to the previous
night he had been very anxious, but that his fears were now at an
end, inasmuch as the shock caused by the extravagance of the
ministerial proposals would infallibly bring the country to its
senses. On the evening of that day Macaulay made the first of his
Reform speeches. When he sat down the Speaker sent for him, and
told him that in all his prolonged experience he had never seen
the House in such a state of excitement. Even at this distance of
time it is impossible to read aloud the last thirty sentences
without an emotion which suggests to the mind what must have been
their effect when declaimed by one who felt every word that he
spoke, in the midst of an assembly agitated by hopes and
apprehensions such as living men have never known, or have long
forgotten. ["The question of Parliamentary Reform is still
behind. But signs, of which it is impossible to misconceive the
import, do most clearly indicate that, unless that question also
be speedily settled, property, and order, and all the
institutions of this great monarchy, will he exposed to fearful
peril. Is it possible that gentlemen long versed in high
political affairs cannot read these signs? Is it possible that
they can really believe that the Representative system of
England, such as it now is, will last to the year 1860? If not,
for what would they have us wait? Would they have us wait, merely
that we may show to all the world how little we have profited by
our own recent experience? Would they have us wait, that we may
once again hit the exact point where we can neither refuse with
authority, nor concede with grace? Would they have us wait, that
the numbers of the discontented party may become larger, its
demands higher, its feelings more acrimonious, its organisation
more complete? Would they have us wait till the whole tragicomedy
of 1827 has been acted over again? till they have been brought
into office by a cry of 'No Reform,' to be reformers, as they
were once before brought into office by a cry of 'No Popery', to
be emancipators? Have they obliterated from their minds--gladly,
perhaps, would some among them obliterate from their minds--the
transactions of that year? And have they forgotten all the
transactions of the succeeding year? Have they forgotten how the
spirit of liberty in Ireland, debarred from its natural outlet,
found a vent by forbidden passages? Have they forgotten how we
were forced to indulge the Catholics in all the license of
rebels, merely because we chose to withhold from them the
liberties of subjects? Do they wait for associations more
formidable than that of the Corn Exchange, for contributions
larger than the Rent, for agitators more violent than those who,
three years ago, divided with the King and the Parliament the
sovereignty of Ireland? Do they wait for that last and most
dreadful paroxysm of popular rage, for that last and most cruel
test of military fidelity? Let them wait, if their past
experience shall induce them to think that any high honour or any
exquisite pleasure is to be obtained by a policy like this. Let
them wait, if this strange and fearful infatuation be indeed upon
them, that they should not see with their eyes, or hear with
their ears, or understand with their heart. But let us know our
interest and our duty better. Turn where we may, within, around,
the voice of great events is proclaiming to us, Reform, that you
may preserve. Now, therefore, while everything at home and abroad
forebodes ruin to those who persist in a hopeless struggle
against the spirit of the age, now, while the crash of the
proudest throne of the Continent is still resounding in our ears,
now, while the roof of a British palace affords an ignominious
shelter to the exiled heir of forty kings, now, while we see on
every side ancient institutions subverted, and great societies
dissolved, now, while the heart of England is still sound, now,
while old feelings and old associations retain a power and a
charm which may too soon pass away, now, in this your accepted
time, now, in this your day of salvation, take counsel, not of
prejudice, not of party spirit, not of the ignominious pride of a
fatal consistency, but of history, of reason, of the ages which
are past, of the signs of this most portentous time. Pronounce in
a manner worthy of the expectation with which this great debate
has been anticipated, and of the long remembrance which it will
leave behind. Renew the youth of the State. Save property,
divided against itself. Save the multitude, endangered by its own
ungovernable passions. Save the aristocracy, endangered by its
own unpopular power. Save the greatest, the fairest, and most
highly civilised community that ever existed, from calamities
which may in a few days sweep away all the rich heritage of so
many ages of wisdom and glory. The danger is terrible. The time
is short. If this bill should he rejected, I pray to God that
none of those who concur in rejecting it may ever remember their
votes with unavailing remorse, amidst the wreck of laws, the
confusion of ranks, the spoliation of property, and the
dissolution of social order."] Sir Thomas Denman, who rose later
on in the discussion, said, with universal acceptance, that the
orator's words remained tingling in the ears of all who heard
them, and would last in their memories as long as they had
memories to employ. That sense of proprietorship in an effort of
genius, which the House of Commons is ever ready to entertain,
effaced for a while all distinctions of party. "Portions of the
speech," said Sir Robert Peel, "were as beautiful as anything I
have ever heard or read. It reminded one of the old times." The
names of Fox, Burke, and Canning were during that evening in
everybody's mouth; and Macaulay overheard with delight a knot of
old members illustrating their criticisms by recollections of
Lord Plunket. He had reason to be pleased; for he had been
thought worthy of the compliment which the judgment of Parliament
reserves for a supreme occasion. In 1866, on the second reading
of the Franchise Bill, when the crowning oration of that
memorable debate had come to its close amidst a tempest of
applause, one or two veterans of the lobby, forgetting Macaulay
on Reform,--forgetting, it may be, Mr. Gladstone himself on the
Conservative Budget of 1852,--pronounced, amidst the willing
assent of a younger generation, that there had been nothing like
it since Plunket.

The unequivocal success of the first speech into which he had
thrown his full power decided for some time to come the tenor of
Macaulay's career. During the next three years he devoted himself
to Parliament, rivalling Stanley in debate, and Hume in the
regularity of his attendance. He entered with zest into the
animated and manysided life of the House of Commons, of which so
few traces can ordinarily be detected in what goes by the name of
political literature. The biographers of a distinguished
statesman too often seem to have forgotten that the subject of
their labours passed the best part of his waking hours, during
the half of every year, in a society of a special and deeply
marked character, the leading traits of which are at least as
well worth recording as the fashionable or diplomatic gossip that
fills so many volumes of memoirs and correspondence. Macaulay's
letters sufficiently indicate how thoroughly he enjoyed the ease,
the freedom, the hearty good-fellowship, that reign within the
precincts of our national senate; and how entirely he recognised
that spirit of noble equality, so prevalent among its members,
which takes little or no account of wealth, or title, or indeed
of reputation won in other fields, but which ranks a man
according as the value of his words, and the weight of his
influence, bear the test of a standard which is essentially its
own.

In February 1831 he writes to Whewell: "I am impatient for
Praed's debut. The House of Commons is a place in which I would
not promise success to any man. I have great doubts even about
Jeffrey. It is the most peculiar audience in the world. I should
say that a man's being a good writer, a good orator at the bar, a
good mob-orator, or a good orator in debating clubs, was rather a
reason for expecting him to fail than for expecting him to
succeed in the House of Commons. A place where Walpole succeeded
and Addison failed; where Dundas succeeded and Burke failed;
where Peel now succeeds and where Mackintosh fails; where Erskine
and Scarlett were dinner-bells; where Lawrence and Jekyll, the
two wittiest men, or nearly so, of their time, were thought
bores, is surely a very strange place. And yet I feel the whole
character of the place growing upon me. I begin to like what
others about me like, and to disapprove what they disapprove.
Canning used to say that the House, as a body, had better taste
than the man of best taste in it, and I am very much inclined to
think that Canning was right."

The readers of Macaulay's letters will, from time to time, find
reason to wish that the young Whig of 1830 had more frequently
practised that studied respect for political opponents, which now
does so much to correct the intolerance of party among men who
can be adversaries without ceasing to regard each other as
colleagues. But this honourable sentiment was the growth of later
days; and, at an epoch when the system of the past and the system
of the future were night after night in deadly wrestle on the
floor of St. Stephen's, the combatants were apt to keep their
kindliness, and even their courtesies, for those with whom they
stood shoulder to shoulder in the fray. Politicians, Conservative
and Liberal alike, who were themselves young during the Sessions
of 1866 and 1867, and who can recall the sensations evoked by a
contest of which the issues were far less grave and the passions
less strong than of yore, will make allowances for one who, with
the imagination of a poet and the temperament of an orator, at
thirty years old was sent straight into the thickest of the
tumult which then raged round the standard of Reform, and will
excuse him for having borne himself in that battle of giants as a
determined and a fiery partisan.

If to live intensely be to live happily, Macaulay had an enviable
lot during those stirring years; and, if the old songwriters had
reason on their side when they celebrated the charms of a light
purse, he certainly possessed that element of felicity. Among the
earliest economical reforms undertaken by the new Government was
a searching revision of our Bankruptcy jurisdiction, in the
course of which his Commissionership was swept away, without
leaving him a penny of compensation. "I voted for the Bankruptcy
Court Bill," he said in answer to an inquisitive constituent.
"There were points in that Bill of which I did not approve, and I
only refrained from stating those points because an office of my
own was at stake." When this source fell dry he was for a while a
poor man; for a member of Parliament, who has others to think of
besides himself, is anything but rich on sixty or seventy pounds
a quarter as the produce of his pen, and a college income which
has only a few more months to run. At a time when his
Parliamentary fame stood at its highest he was reduced to sell
the gold medals which he had gained at Cambridge; but he was
never for a moment in debt; nor did he publish a line prompted by
any lower motive than the inspiration of his political faith, or
the instinct of his literary genius. He had none but pleasant
recollections connected with the period when his fortunes were at
their lowest. From the secure prosperity of after life he
delighted in recalling the time when, after cheering on the
fierce debate for twelve or fifteen hours together, he would walk
home by daylight to his chambers, and make his supper on a cheese
which was a present from one of his Wiltshire constituents, and a
glass of the audit ale which reminded him that he was still a
fellow of Trinity.

With political distinction came social success, more rapid and
more substantial, perhaps, than has ever been achieved by one who
took so little trouble to win or to retain it. The circumstances
of the time were all in his favour. Never did our higher circles
present so much that would attract a new-comer, and never was
there more readiness to admit within them all who brought the
honourable credentials of talent and celebrity. In 1831 the
exclusiveness of birth was passing away, and the exclusiveness of
fashion had not set in. The Whig party, during its long period of
depression, had been drawn together by the bonds of common hopes,
and endeavours, and disappointments; and personal reputation,
whether literary, political, or forensic, held its own as against
the advantages of rank and money to an extent that was never
known before, and never since. Macaulay had been well received in
the character of an Edinburgh Reviewer, and his first great
speech in the House of Commons at once opened to him all the
doors in London that were best worth entering. Brought up, as he
had been, in a household which was perhaps the strictest and the
homeliest among a set of families whose creed it was to live
outside the world, it put his strength of mind to the test when
he found himself courted and observed by the most distinguished
and the most formidable personages of the day. Lady Holland
listened to him with unwonted deference, and scolded him with a
circumspection that was in itself a compliment. Rogers spoke of
him with friendliness, and to him with positive affection, and
gave him the last proof of his esteem and admiration by asking
him to name the morning for a breakfast-party. He was treated
with almost fatherly kindness by the able and worthy man who is
still remembered by the name of Conversation Sharp. Indeed, his
deference for the feelings of all whom he liked and respected,
which an experienced observer could detect beneath the eagerness
of his manner and the volubility of his talk, made him a
favourite among those of a generation above his own. He bore his
honours quietly, and enjoyed them with the natural and hearty
pleasure of a man who has a taste for society, but whose
ambitions lie elsewhere. For the space of three seasons he dined
out almost nightly, and spent many of his Sundays in those
suburban residences which, as regards the company and the way of
living, are little else than sections of London removed into a
purer air.

Before very long his habits and tastes began to incline in the
direction of domesticity, and even of seclusion; and, indeed, at
every period of his life he would gladly desert the haunts of
those whom Pope and his contemporaries used to term "the great,"
to seek the cheerful and cultured simplicity of his home, or the
conversation of that one friend who had a share in the familiar
confidence which Macaulay otherwise reserved for his nearest
relatives. This was Mr. Thomas Flower Ellis, whose reports of the
proceedings in King's Bench, extending over a whole generation,
have established and perpetuated his name as that of an acute and
industrious lawyer. He was older than Macaulay by four years.
Though both Fellows of the same college, they missed each other
at the university, and it was not until 1827, on the Northern
circuit, that their acquaintance began. "Macaulay has joined,"
writes Mr. Ellis; "an amusing person; somewhat boyish in his
manner, but very original." The young barristers had in common an
insatiable love of the classics; and similarity of character, not
very perceptible on the surface, soon brought about an intimacy
which ripened into an attachment as important to the happiness of
both concerned as ever united two men through every stage of life
and vicissitude of fortune. Mr. Ellis had married early; but in
1839 he lost his wife, and Macaulay's helpful and heartfelt
participation in his great sorrow riveted the links of a chain
that was already indissoluble.

The letters contained in this volume will tell, better than the
words of any third person, what were the points of sympathy
between the two companions, and in what manner they lived
together till the end came. Mr. Ellis survived his friend little
more than a year; not complaining or lamenting but going about
his work like a man from whose day the light has departed.

Brief and rare were the vacations of the most hard-worked
Parliament that had sat since the times of Pym and Hampden. In
the late autumn of 1831, the defeat of the Reform Bill in the
House of Lords delivered over the country to agitation,
resentment, and alarm; and gave a short holiday to public men who
were not Ministers, magistrates, or officers in the yeomanry.
Hannah and Margaret Macaulay accompanied their brother on a
visit to Cambridge, where they met with the welcome which young
Masters of Arts delight in providing for the sisters of a comrade
of whom they are fond and proud.

"On the evening that we arrived," says Lady Trevelyan, "we met at
dinner Whewell, Sedgwick, Airy, and Thirlwail and how pleasant
they were, and how much they made of us two happy girls, who
were never tired of seeing, and hearing and admiring! We
breakfasted, lunched, and dined with one or the other of the set
during our stay, and walked about the colleges all day with the
whole train. [A reminiscence from that week of refined and genial
hospitality survives in the Essay on Madame d'Arblay. The
reception which Miss Burney would have enjoyed at Oxford, if she
had visited it otherwise than as an attendant on Royalty, is
sketched off with all the writer's wonted spirit, and more than
his wonted grace.] Whewell was then tutor; rougher, but less
pompous, and much more agreeable, than in after years; though I
do not think that he ever cordially liked your uncle. We then
went on to Oxford, which from knowing no one there seemed
terribly dull to us by comparison with Cambridge, and we rejoiced
our brother's heart by sighing after Trinity."

During the first half of his life Macaulay spent some months of
every year at the seat of his uncle, Mr. Babington, who kept open
house for his nephews and nieces throughout the summer and
autumn. Rothley Temple, which lies in a valley beyond the first
ridge that separates the flat unattractive country immediately
round Leicester from the wild and beautiful scenery of Charnwood
Forest, is well worth visiting as a singularly unaltered specimen
of an old English home. The stately trees; the grounds, half park
and half meadow; the cattle grazing up to the very windows; the
hall, with its stone pavement rather below than above the level
of the soil, hung with armour rude and rusty enough to dispel the
suspicion of its having passed through a collector's hands; the
low ceilings; the dark oak wainscot, carved after primitive
designs, that covered every inch of wall in bedroom and corridor;
the general air which the whole interior presented of having been
put to rights at the date of the Armada and left alone ever
since;--all this antiquity contrasted quaintly, but prettily
enough, with the youth and gaiety that lit up every corner of the
ever-crowded though comfortable mansion. In wet weather there was
always a merry group sitting on the staircase, or marching up and
down the gallery; and, wherever the noise and fun were most
abundant, wherever there was to be heard the loudest laughter and
the most vehement expostulation, Macaulay was the centre  of a
circle which was exclaiming at the levity of his remarks about
the Blessed Martyr; disputing with him on the comparative merits
of Pascal, Racine, Corneille, Moliere, and Boileau or checking
him as he attempted to justify his godparents by running off a
list of all the famous Thomases in history. The place is full of
his memories. His favourite walk was a mile of field-road and
lane which leads from the house to a lodge on the highway; and
his favourite point of view in that walk was a slight acclivity,
whence the traveller from Leicester catches his first sight of
Rothley Temple, with its background of hill and greenwood. He is
remembered as sitting at the window in the hall, reading Dante to
himself, or translating it aloud as long as any listener cared to
remain within ear-shot. He occupied, by choice, a very small
chamber on the ground floor, through the window of which he
could escape unobserved while afternoon callers were on their way
between the front door and the drawing-room. On such occasions he
would take refuge in a boat moored under the shade of some fine
oaks which still exist, though the ornamental water on whose bank
they stood has since been converted into dry land.

A journal kept at intervals by Margaret Macaulay, some extracts
from which have here been arranged in the form of a continuous
narrative, affords a pleasant and faithful picture of her
brother's home-life during the years 1831 and 1832. With an
artless candour, from which his reputation will not suffer, she
relates the alternations of hope and disappointment through which
the young people passed when it began to be a question whether or
not he would be asked to join the Administration.

"I think I was about twelve when I first became very fond of my
brother, and from that time my affection for him has gone on
increasing during a period of seven years. I shall never forget
my delight and enchantment when I first found that he seemed to
like talking to me. His manner was very flattering to such a
child, for he always took as much pains to amuse me, and to
inform me on anything I wished to know, as ho could have done to
the greatest person in the land. I have heard him express great
disgust towards those people who, lively and agreeable abroad,
are a dead weight in the family circle. I think the remarkable
clearness of his style proceeds in some measure from the habit of
conversing with very young people, to whom he has a great deal to
explain and impart.

"He reads his works to us in the manuscript, and, when we find
fault, as I very often do with his being too severe upon people,
he takes it with the greatest kindness, and often alters what we
do not like. I hardly ever, indeed, met with a sweeter temper
than his. He is rather hasty, and when he has not time for an
instant's thought, he will sometimes return a quick answer, for
which he will be sorry the moment he has said it. But in a
conversation of any length, though it may be on subjects that
touch him very nearly, and though the person with whom he
converses may be very provoking and extremely out of temper, I
never saw him lose his. He never uses this superiority, as some
do, for the purpose of irritating another still more by coolness;
but speaks in a kind, good-natured manner, as if he wished to
bring the other back to temper without appearing to notice that
he had lost it.

"He at one time took a very punning turn, and we laid a wager in
books, my Mysteries of Udolpho against his German Theatre, that
he could not make two hundred puns in one evening. He did it,
however, in two hours, and, although they were of course most of
them miserably bad, yet it was a proof of great quickness.

"Saturday, February 26, 1831--At dinner we talked of the Grants.
Tom said he had found Mr. Robert Grant walking about in the
lobbies of the House of Commons, and saying that he wanted
somebody to defend his place in the Government, which he heard
was going to be attacked. 'What did you say to him?' we asked.
'Oh, I said nothing; but, if they'll give me the place, I'll
defend it. When I am Judge Advocate, I promise you that I will
not go about asking anyone to defend me.'

"After dinner we played at capping verses, and after that at a
game in which one of the party thinks of something for the others
to guess at. Tom gave the slug that killed Perceval, the lemon
that Wilkes squeezed for Doctor Johnson, the pork-chop which
Thurtell ate after he had murdered Weare, and Sir Charles
Macarthy's jaw which was sent by the Ashantees as a present to
George the Fourth.

"Some one mentioned an acquaintance who had gone to the West
Indies, hoping to make money, but had only ruined the complexions
of his daughters. Tom said:

 Mr. Walker was sent to Berbice
 By the greatest of statesmen and earls.
 He went to bring back yellow boys,
 But he only brought back yellow girls.

"I never saw anything like the fun and humour that kindles in his
eye when a repartee or verse is working in his brain.

"March 3, 1831.--Yesterday morning Hannah and I walked part of
the way to his chambers with Tom, and, as we separated, I
remember wishing him good luck and success that night. He went
through it most triumphantly, and called down upon himself
admiration enough to satisfy even his sister. I like so much the
manner in which he receives compliments. He does not pretend to
be indifferent, but smiles in his kind and animated way, with 'I
am sure it is very kind of you to say so,' or something of that
nature. His voice from cold and over-excitement got quite into a
scream towards the last part. A person told him that he had not
heard such speaking since Fox. 'You have not heard such screaming
since Fox,' he said.

"March 24, 1831.--By Tom's account, there never was such a scene
of agitation as the House of Commons presented at the passing of
the second reading of the Reform Bill the day before yesterday,
or rather yesterday, for they did not divide till three or four
in the morning. When dear Tom came the next day he was still very
much excited, which I found to my cost, for when I went out to
walk with him he walked so very fast that I could scarcely keep
up with him at all. With sparkling eyes he described the whole
scene of the preceding evening in the most graphic manner.

"'I suppose the Ministers are all in high spirits,' said Mamma.
'In spirits, Ma'am? I'm sure I don't know. In bed, I'll answer
for it.' Mamma asked him for franks, that she might send his
speech to a lady [This lady was Mrs. Hannah More.] who, though of
high Tory principles, is very fond of Tom, and has left him in
her will her valuable library. 'Oh, no,' he said, 'don't send it.
If you do, she'll cut me off with a prayer-book.'

"Tom is very much improved in his appearance during the last two
or three years. His figure is not so bad for a man of thirty as
for a man of twenty-two. He dresses better, and his manners, from
seeing a great deal of society, are very much improved. When
silent and occupied in thought, walking up and down the room as
he always does, his hands clenched and muscles working with the
intense exertion of his mind, strangers would think his
countenance stern; but I remember a writing-master of ours, when
Tom had come into the room and left it again, saying, 'Ladies,
your brother looks like a lump of good-humour!'

"March 30, 1831--Tom has just left me, after a very interesting
conversation. He spoke of his extreme idleness. He said: 'I never
knew such an idle man as I am. When I go in to Empson or Ellis
their tables are always covered with books and papers. I cannot
stick at anything for above a day or two. I mustered industry
enough to teach myself Italian. I wish to speak Spanish. I know I
could master the difficulties in a week, and read any book in the
language at the end of a month, but I have not the courage to
attempt it. If there had not been really something in me,
idleness would have ruined me.'

"I said that I was surprised at the great accuracy of his
information, considering how desultory his reading had been. 'My
accuracy as to facts,' he said, 'I owe to a cause which many men
would not confess. It is due to my love of castle-building. The
past is in my mind soon constructed into a romance.' He then went
on to describe the way in which from his childhood his
imagination had been filled by the study of history. 'With a
person of my turn,' he said, 'the minute touches are of as great
interest, and perhaps greater, than the most important events.
Spending so much time as I do in solitude, my mind would have
rusted by gazing vacantly at the shop windows. As it is, I am no
sooner in the streets than I am in Greece, in Rome, in the midst
of the French Revolution. Precision in dates, the day or hour in
which a man was born or died, becomes absolutely necessary. A
slight fact, a sentence, a word, are of importance in my romance.
Pepys's Diary formed almost inexhaustible food for my fancy. I
seem to know every inch of Whitehall. I go in at Hans Holbein's
gate, and come out through the matted gallery. The conversations
which I compose between great people of the time are long, and
sufficiently animated; in the style, if not with the merits, of
Sir Walter Scott's. The old parts of London, which you are
sometimes surprised at my knowing so well, those old gates and
houses down by the river, have all played their part in my
stories.' He spoke, too, of the manner in which he used to wander
about Paris, weaving tales of the Revolution, and he thought that
he owed his command of language greatly to this habit.

"I am very sorry that the want both of ability and memory should
prevent my preserving with greater truth a conversation which
interested me very much.

"May 21, 1831.--Tom was from London at the time my mother's death
occurred, and things fell out in such a manner that the first
information he received of it was from the newspapers. He came
home directly. He was in an agony of distress, and gave way at
first to violent bursts of feeling. During the whole of the week
he was with us all day, and was the greatest comfort to us
imaginable. He talked a great deal of our sorrow, and led the
conversation by degrees to other subjects, bearing the whole
burden of it himself and interesting us without jarring with the
predominant feeling of the time. I never saw him appear to
greater advantage--never loved him more dearly.

"September 1831.--Of late we have walked a good deal. I remember
pacing up and down Brunswick Square and Lansdowne Place for two
hours one day, deep in the mazes of the most subtle metaphysics;-
-up and down Cork Street, engaged over Dryden's poetry and the
great men of that time;--making jokes all the way along Bond
Street, and talking politics everywhere.

"Walking in the streets with Tom and Hannah, and talking about
the hard work the heads of his party had got now, I said:

"'How idle they must think you, when they meet you here in the
busy part of the day!' 'Yes, here I am,' said he, 'walking with
two unidea'd girls. [Boswell relates in his tenth chapter how
Johnson scolded Langton for leaving "his social friends, to go
and sit with a set of wretched unidea'd girls."] However, if one
of the Ministry says to me, "Why walk you here all the day idle?"
I shall say, "Because no man has hired me."'

"We talked of eloquence, which he has often compared to fresco-
painting: the result of long study and meditation, but at the
moment of execution thrown off with the greatest rapidity; what
has apparently been the work of a few hours being destined to
last for ages.

"Mr. Tierney said he was sure Sir Philip Francis had written
Junius, for he was the proudest man he ever knew, and no one ever
heard of anything he had done to be proud of.

"November 14, 1831, half-past-ten.--On Friday last Lord Grey sent
for Tom. His note was received too late to be acted on that day.
On Saturday came another, asking him to East Sheen on that day,
or Sunday. Yesterday, accordingly, he went, and stayed the night,
promising to be here as early as possible to-day. So much depends
upon the result of this visit! That he will be offered a place I
have not the least doubt. He will refuse a Lordship of the
Treasury, a Lordship of the Admiralty, or the Mastership of the
Ordnance. He will accept the Secretaryship of the Board of
Control, but will not thank them for it; and would not accept
that, but that he thinks it will be a place of importance during
the approaching discussions on the East Indian monopoly.

"If he gets a sufficient salary, Hannah and I shall most likely
live with him. Can I possibly look forward to anything happier? I
cannot imagine a course of life that would suit him better than
thus to enjoy the pleasures of domestic life without its
restraints; with sufficient business, but not, I hope, too much.

"At one o'clock he came. I went out to meet him. 'I have nothing
to tell you. Nothing. Lord Grey sent for me to speak about a
matter of importance, which must be strictly private.'

"November 27.--I am just returned from a long walk, during which
the conversation turned entirely on one subject. After a little
previous talk about a certain great personage, [The personage was
Lord Brougham, who at this time was too formidable for the poor
girl to venture to write his name at length even in a private
journal.] I asked Tom when the present coolness between them
began. He said: 'Nothing could exceed my respect and admiration
for him in early days. I saw at that time private letters in
which he spoke highly of my articles, and of me as the most
rising man of the time. After a while, however, I began to remark
that he became extremely cold to me, hardly ever spoke to me on
circuit, and treated me with marked slight. If I were talking to
a man, if he wished to speak to him on politics or anything else
that was not in any sense a private matter, he always drew him
away from me instead of addressing us both. When my article on
Hallam came out, he complained to Jeffrey that I took up too much
of the Review; and, when my first article on Mill appeared, he
foamed with rage, and was very angry with Jeffrey for having
printed it.'

"'But,' said I,' the Mills are friends of his, and he naturally
did not like them to be attacked.'

"'On the contrary,' said Tom, 'he had attacked them fiercely
himself; but he thought I had made a hit, and was angry
accordingly. When a friend of mine defended my articles to him,
he said: "I know nothing of the articles. I have not read
Macaulay's articles." What can be imagined more absurd than his
keeping up an angry correspondence with Jeffrey about articles he
has never read? Well, the next thing was that Jeffrey, who was
about to give up the editorship, asked me if I would take it. I
said that I would gladly do so, if they would remove the
headquarters of the Review to London. Jeffrey wrote to him about
it. He disapproved of it so strongly that the plan was given up.
The truth was that he felt that his power over the Review
diminished as mine increased, and he saw that he would have
little indeed if I were editor.

"'I then came into Parliament. I do not complain that he should
have preferred Denman's claims to mine, and that he should have
blamed Lord Lansdowne for not considering him. I went to take my
seat. As I turned from the table at which I had been taking the
oaths, he stood as near to me as you do now, and he cut me dead.
We never spoke in the House, excepting once, that I can remember,
when a few words passed between us in the lobby. I have sat close
to him when many men of whom I knew nothing have introduced
themselves to me to shake hands, and congratulate me after making
a speech, and he has never said a single word. I know that it is
jealousy, because I am not the first man whom he has used in this
way. During the debate on the Catholic claims he was so enraged
because Lord Plunket had made a very splendid display, and
because the Catholics had chosen Sir Francis Burdett instead of
him to bring the Bill forward, that he threw every difficulty in
its way. Sir Francis once said to him: "Really, Mr.-- you are so
jealous that it is impossible to act with you." I never will
serve in an Administration of which he is the head. On that I
have most firmly made up my mind. I do not believe that it is in
his nature to be a month in office without caballing against his
colleagues. ["There never was a direct personal rival, or one who
was in a position which, however reluctantly, implied rivalry, to
whom he has been just; and on the fact of this ungenerous
jealousy I do not understand that there is any difference of
opinion."--Lord Cockburn's Journal.]

"'He is, next to the King, the most popular man in England. There
is no other man whose entrance into any town in the kingdom would
be so certain to be with huzzaing and taking off of horses. At
the same time he is in a very ticklish situation, for he has no
real friends. Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, Mackintosh, all speak of him
as I now speak to you. I was talking to Sydney Smith of him the
other day, and said that, great as I felt his faults to be, I
must allow him a real desire to raise the lower orders, and do
good by education, and those methods upon which his heart has
been always set. Sydney would not allow this, or any other,
merit. Now, if those who are called his friends feel towards him,
as they all do, angry and sore at his overbearing, arrogant, and
neglectful conduct, when those reactions in public feeling, which
must come, arrive, he will have nothing to return upon, no place
of refuge, no hand of such tried friends as Fox and Canning had
to support him. You will see that he will soon place himself in a
false position before the public. His popularity will go down,
and he will find himself alone. Mr. Pitt, it is true, did not
study to strengthen himself by friendships but this was not from
jealousy. I do not love the man, but I believe he was quite
superior to that. It was from a solitary pride he had. I heard at
Holland House the other day that Sir Philip Francis said that,
though he hated Pitt, he must confess there was something fine in
seeing how he maintained his post by himself. "The lion walks
alone," he said. "The jackals herd together."'"

This conversation, to those who have heard Macaulay talk, bears
unmistakable signs of having been committed to paper while the
words,--or, at any rate, the outlines,--of some of the most
important sentences were fresh in his sister's mind. Nature had
predestined the two men to mutual antipathy. Macaulay, who knew
his own range and kept within it, and who gave the world nothing
except his best and most finished work, was fretted by the
slovenly omniscience of Brougham, who affected to be a walking
encyclopaedia, "a kind of semi-Solomon, half knowing everything
from the cedar to the hyssop." [These words are extracted from a
letter written by Macaulay.] The student, who, in his later
years, never left his library for the House of Commons without
regret, had little in common with one who, like Napoleon, held
that a great reputation was a great noise; who could not change
horses without making a speech, see the Tories come in without
offering to take a judgeship, or allow the French to make a
Revolution without proposing to naturalise himself as a citizen
of the new Republic. The statesman who never deserted an ally, or
distrusted a friend, could have no fellowship with a free-lance,
ignorant of the very meaning of loyalty; who, if the surfeited
pen of the reporter had not declined its task, would have
enriched our collections of British oratory by at least one
Philippic against every colleague with whom he had ever acted.
The many who read this conversation by the light of the public
history of Lord Melbourne's Administration, and still more the
few who have access to the secret history of Lord Grey's Cabinet,
will acknowledge that seldom was a prediction so entirely
fulfilled, or a character so accurately read. And that it was not
a prophecy composed after the event is proved by the circumstance
that it stands recorded in the handwriting of one who died before
it was accomplished.

"January 3, 1832.--Yesterday Tom dined at Holland House, and
heard Lord Holland tell this story. Some paper was to be
published by Mr. Fox, in which mention was made of Mr. Pitt
having been employed at a club in a manner that would have
created scandal. Mr. Wilberforce went to Mr. Fox, and asked him
to omit the passage. 'Oh, to be sure,' said Mr. Fox; 'if there
are any good people who would be scandalised, I will certainly
put it out!' Mr. Wilberforce then preparing to take his leave, he
said: 'Now, Mr. Wilberforce, if, instead of being about Mr. Pitt,
this had been an account of my being seen gaming at White's on a
Sunday, would you have taken so much pains to prevent it being
known?' 'I asked this,' said Mr. Fox, 'because I wanted to see
what he would say, for I knew he would not tell a lie about it.
He threw himself back, as his way was, and only answered: "Oh,
Mr. Fox, you are always so pleasant!"'

"January 8, 1832.--Yesterday Tom dined with us, and stayed late.
He talked almost uninterruptedly for six hours. In the evening he
made a great many impromptu charades in verse. I remember he
mentioned a piece of impertinence of Sir Philip Francis. Sir
Philip was writing a history of his own time, with characters of
its eminent men, and one day asked Mr. Tierney if he should like
to hear his own character. Of course he said 'Yes,' and it was
read to him. It was very flattering, and he expressed his
gratification for so favourable a description of himself.
'Subject to revision, you must remember, Mr. Tierney,' said Sir
Philip, as he laid the manuscript by; 'subject to revision
according to what may happen in the future.'

"I am glad Tom has reviewed old John Bunyan. Many are reading it
who never read it before. Yesterday, as he was sitting in the
Athenaeum, a gentleman called out: 'Waiter, is there a copy of
the Pilgrim's Progress in the library?' As might be expected,
there was not.

"February 12, 1832.--This evening Tom came in, Hannah and I being
alone. He was in high boyish spirits. He had seen Lord Lansdowne
in the morning, who had requested to speak with him. His Lordship
said that he wished to have a talk about his taking office, not
with any particular thing in view, as there was no vacancy at
present, and none expected, but that he should be glad to know
his wishes in order that he might be more able to serve him in
them.

"Tom, in answer, took rather a high tone. He said he was a poor
man, but that he had as much as he wanted, and, as far as he was
personally concerned, had no desire for office. At the same time
he thought that, after the Reform Bill had passed, it would be
absolutely necessary that the Government should be strengthened;
that he was of opinion that he could do it good service; that he
approved of its general principles, and should not be unwilling
to join it. Lord Lansdowne said that they all,--and he
particularly mentioned Lord Grey,--felt of what importance to
them his help was, and that he now perfectly understood his
views.

"February 13, 1832.--It has been much reported, and has even
appeared in the newspapers, that the Ministers were doing what
they could to get Mr. Robert Grant out of the way to make room
for Tom. Last Sunday week it was stated in the John Bull that
Madras had been offered to the Judge Advocate for this purpose,
but that he had refused it. Two or three nights since, Tom, in
endeavouring to get to a high bench in the House, stumbled over
Mr. Robert Grant's legs, as he was stretched out half asleep.
Being roused he apologised in the usual manner, and then added,
oddly enough: 'I am very sorry, indeed, to stand in the way of
your mounting.'

"March 15, 1832.--Yesterday Hannah and I spent a very agreeable
afternoon with Tom.

"He began to talk of his idleness. He really came and dawdled
with us all day long; he had not written a line of his review of
Burleigh's Life, and he shrank from beginning on such a great
work. I asked him to put it by for the present, and write a
light article on novels. This he seemed to think he should like,
and said he could get up an article on Richardson in a very short
time, but he knew of no book that he could hang it on. Hannah
advised that he should place at the head of this article a
fictitious title in Italian of a critique on Clarissa Harlowe,
published at Venice. He seemed taken with this idea, but said
that, if he did such a thing, he must never let his dearest
friend know.

"I was amused with a parody of Tom's on the nursery song 'Twenty
pounds shall marry me,' as applied to the creation of Peers.

 What though now opposed I be?
 Twenty Peers shall carry me.
 If twenty won't, thirty will,
 For I'm his Majesty's bouncing Bill.

Sir Robert Peel has been extremely complimentary to him. One
sentence he repeated to us: 'My only feeling towards that
gentleman is a not ungenerous envy, as I listened to that
wonderful flow of natural and beautiful language, and to that
utterance which, rapid as it is, seems scarcely able to convey
its rich freight of thought and fancy!' People say that these
words were evidently carefully prepared.

"I have just been looking round our little drawing-room, as if
trying to impress every inch of it on my memory, and thinking how
in future years it will rise before my mind as the scene of many
hours of light-hearted mirth; how I shall again see him, lolling
indolently on the old blue sofa, or strolling round the narrow
confines of our room. With such a scene will come the remembrance
of his beaming countenance, happy affectionate smile, and joyous
laugh; while, with everyone at ease around him, he poured out the
stores of his full mind in his own peculiarly beautiful and
expressive language, more delightful here than anywhere else,
because more perfectly unconstrained. The name which passes
through this little room in the quiet, gentle tones of sisterly
affection is a name which will be repeated through distant
generations, and go down to posterity linked with eventful times
and great deeds."

The last words here quoted will be very generally regarded as the
tribute of a sister's fondness. Many, who readily admit that
Macaulay's name will go down to posterity linked with eventful
times and great deeds, make that admission with reference to
times not his own, and deeds in which he had no part except to
commemorate them with his pen. To him, as to others, a great
reputation of a special order brought with it the consequence
that the credit, which he deserved for what he had done well, was
overshadowed by the renown of what he did best. The world, which
has forgotten that Newton excelled as an administrator, and
Voltaire as a man of business, remembers somewhat faintly that
Macaulay was an eminent orator and, for a time at least, a
strenuous politician. The universal voice of his contemporaries,
during the first three years of his parliamentary career,
testifies to the leading part which he played in the House of
Commons, so long as with all his heart he cared, and with all his
might he tried, to play it. Jeffrey, (for it is well to adduce
none but first-rate evidence,) says in his account of an
evening's discussion on the second reading of the Reform Bill:
"Not a very striking debate. There was but one exception, and it
was a brilliant one. I mean Macaulay, who surpassed his former
appearance in closeness, fire, and vigour, and very much improved
the effect of it by a more steady and graceful delivery. It was
prodigiously cheered, as it deserved, and I think puts him
clearly at the head of the great speakers, if not the debaters,
of the House." And again, on the 17th of December: "Macaulay
made, I think, the best speech he has yet delivered; the most
condensed, at least, and with the greatest weight of matter. It
contained, indeed, the only argument to which any of the speakers
who followed him applied themselves." Lord Cockburn, who sat
under the gallery for twenty-seven hours during the last three
nights of the Bill, pronounced Macaulay's speech to have been "by
far the best;" though, like a good Scotchman, he asserts that he
heard nothing at Westminster which could compare with Dr.
Chalmers in the General Assembly. Sir James Mackintosh writes
from the Library of the House of Commons: "Macaulay and Stanley
have made two of the finest speeches ever spoken in Parliament;"
and a little further on he classes together the two young orators
as "the chiefs of the next, or rather of this, generation."

To gain and keep the position that Mackintosh assigned him
Macaulay possessed the power, and in early days did not lack the
will. He was prominent on the Parliamentary stage, and active
behind the scenes;--the soul of every honourable project which
might promote the triumph of his principles, and the ascendency
of his party. One among many passages in his correspondence may
be quoted without a very serious breach of ancient and time-worn
confidences. On the 17th of September, 1831, he writes to his
sister Hannah: "I have been very busy since I wrote last, moving
heaven and earth to render it certain that, if our ministers are
so foolish as to resign in the event of a defeat in the Lords,
the Commons may be firm and united; and I think that I have
arranged a plan which will secure a bold and instant declaration
on our part, if necessary. Lord Ebrington is the man whom I have
in my eye as our leader. I have had much conversation with him,
and with several of our leading county members. They are all
staunch; and I will answer for this,--that, if the ministers
should throw us over, we will be ready to defend ourselves."

The combination of public spirit, political instinct, and
legitimate self-assertion, which was conspicuous in Macaulay's
character, pointed him out to some whose judgment had been
trained by long experience of affairs as a more than possible
leader in no remote future; and it is not for his biographer to
deny that they had grounds for their conclusion. The prudence,
the energy, the self-reliance, which he displayed in another
field, might have been successfully directed to the conduct of an
executive policy, and the management of a popular assembly.
Macaulay never showed himself deficient in the qualities which
enable a man to trust his own sense; to feel responsibility, but
not to fear it; to venture where others shrink; to decide while
others waver; with all else that belongs to the vocation of a
ruler in a free country. But it was not his fate; it was not his
work; and the rank which he might have claimed among the
statesmen of Britain was not ill exchanged for the place which he
occupies in the literature of the world.

To Macvey Napier, Esq.

York: March 22, 1830.

My dear Sir,--I was in some doubt as to what I should be able to
do for Number 101, and I deferred writing till I could make up my
mind. If my friend Ellis's article on Greek History, of which I
have formed high expectations, could have been ready, I should
have taken a holiday. But, as there is no chance of that for the
next number, I ought, I think, to consider myself as his bail,
and to surrender myself to your disposal in his stead.

I have been thinking of a subject, light and trifling enough, but
perhaps not the worse for our purpose on that account. We seldom
want a sufficient quantity of heavy matter. There is a wretched
poetaster of the name of Robert Montgomery who has written some
volumes of detestable verses on religious subjects, which by mere
puffing in magazines and newspapers have had an immense sale, and
some of which are now in their tenth or twelfth editions. I have
for some time past thought that the trick of puffing, as it is
now practised both by authors and publishers, is likely to
degrade the literary character, and to deprave the public taste,
in a frightful degree. I really think that we ought to try what
effect satire will have upon this nuisance, and I doubt whether
we can ever find a better opportunity.

Yours very faithfully

T. B. MACAULAY.


To Macvey Napier, Esq.

London: August 19, 1830.

My dear Sir,--The new number appeared this morning in the shop
windows. The article on Niebuhr contains much that is very
sensible; but it is not such an article as so noble a subject
required. I am not like Ellis, Niebuhr-mad; and I agree with many
of the remarks which the reviewer has made both on this work, and
on the school of German critics and historians. But surely the
reviewer ought to have given an account of the system of
exposition which Niebuhr has adopted, and of the theory which he
advances respecting the Institutions of Rome. The appearance of
the book is really an era in the intellectual history of Europe,
and I think that the Edinburgh Review ought at least to have
given a luminous abstract of it. The very circumstance that
Niebuhr's own arrangement and style are obscure, and that his
translators have need of translators to make them intelligible to
the multitude, rendered it more desirable that a clear and neat
statement of the points in controversy should be laid before the
public. But it is useless to talk of what cannot be mended. The
best editors cannot always have good writers, and the best
writers cannot always write their best.

I have no notion on what ground Brougham imagines that I am going
to review his speech. He never said a word to me on the subject.
Nor did I ever say either to him, or to anyone else, a single
syllable to that effect. At all events I shall not make
Brougham's speech my text. We have had quite enough of puffing
and flattering each other in the Review. It is a vile taste for
men united in one literary undertaking to exchange their favours.

I have a plan of which I wish to know your opinion. In ten days,
or thereabouts, I set off for France, where I hope to pass six
weeks. I shall be in the best society, that of the Duc de
Broglie, Guizot, and so on. I think of writing an article on the
Politics of France since the Restoration, with characters of the
principal public men, and a parallel between the present state of
France and that of England. I think that this might be made an
article of extraordinary interest. I do not say that I could make
it so. It must, you will perceive, be a long paper, however
concise I may try to be; but as the subject is important, and I
am not generally diffuse, you must not stint me. If you like this
scheme, let me know as soon as possible.

Ever yours truly

T. B. MACAULAY.

It cannot be denied that there was some ground for the imputation
of systematic puffing which Macaulay urges with a freedom that a
modern editor would hardly permit to the most valued contributor.
Brougham had made a speech on Slavery in the House of Commons;
but time was wanting to get the Corrected Report published soon
enough for him to obtain his tribute of praise in the body of the
Review. The unhappy Mr. Napier was actually reduced to append a
notice to the July number regretting that "this powerful speech,
which, as we are well informed, produced an impression on those
who heard it not likely to be forgotten, or to remain barren of
effects, should have reached us at a moment when it was no longer
possible for us to notice its contents at any length. . . . On
the eve of a general election to the first Parliament of a new
reign, we could have wished to be able to contribute our aid
towards the diffusion of the facts and arguments here so
strikingly and commandingly stated and enforced, among those who
are about to exercise the elective franchise. . . . We trust that
means will be taken to give the widest possible circulation to
the Corrected Report. Unfortunately, we can, at present, do
nothing more than lay before our readers its glowing peroration--
so worthy of this great orator, this unwearied friend of liberty
and humanity."

To Macvey Napier, Esq.

Paris: September 16, 1830.

My dear Sir,--I have just received your letter, and I cannot deny
that I am much vexed at what has happened. It is not very
agreeable to find that I have thrown away the labour, the not
unsuccessful labour as I thought, of a month; particularly as I
have not many months of perfect leisure. This would not have
happened if Brougham had notified his intentions to you earlier,
as he ought in courtesy to you, and to everybody connected with
the Review, to have done. He must have known that this French
question was one on which many people would be desirous to write.

I ought to tell you that I had scarcely reached Paris when I
received a letter containing a very urgent application from a
very respectable quarter. I was desired to write a sketch, in one
volume, of the late Revolution here. Now, I really hesitated
whether I should not make my excuses to you, and accept this
proposal,--not on account of the pecuniary terms, for about these
I have never much troubled myself--but because I should have had
ampler space for this noble subject than the Review would have
afforded. I thought, however, that this would not be a fair or
friendly course towards you. I accordingly told the applicants
that I had promised you an article, and that I could not well
write twice in one month on the same subject without repeating
myself. I therefore declined; and recommended a person whom I
thought quite capable of producing an attractive book on these
events. To that person my correspondent has probably applied. At
all events I cannot revive the negotiation. I cannot hawk my
rejected articles up and down Paternoster Row.

I am, therefore, a good deal vexed at this affair; but I am not
at all surprised at it. I see all the difficulties of your
situation. Indeed, I have long foreseen them. I always knew that
in every association, literary or political, Brougham would wish
to domineer. I knew also that no Editor of the Edinburgh Review
could, without risking the ruin of the publication, resolutely
oppose the demands of a man so able and powerful. It was because
I was certain that he would exact submissions which I am not
disposed to make that I wished last year to give up writing for
the Review. I had long been meditating a retreat. I thought
Jeffrey's abdication a favourable time for effecting it; not, as
I hope you are well assured, from any unkind feeling towards you;
but because I knew that, under any Editor, mishaps such as that
which has now occurred would be constantly taking place. I
remember that I predicted to Jeffrey what has now come to pass
almost to the letter.

My expectations have been exactly realised. The present
constitution of the Edinburgh Review is this, that, at whatever
time Brougham may be pleased to notify his intention of writing
on any subject, all previous engagements are to be considered as
annulled by that notification. His language translated into plain
English is this: "I must write about this French Revolution, and
I will write about it. If you have told Macaulay to do it, you
may tell him to let it alone. If he has written an article, he
may throw it behind the grate. He would not himself have the
assurance to compare his own claims with mine. I am a man who act
a prominent part in the world; he is nobody. If he must be
reviewing, there is my speech about the West Indies. Set him to
write a puff on that. What have people like him to do, except to
eulogise people like me?" No man likes to be reminded of his
inferiority in such a way, and there are some particular
circumstances in this case which render the admonition more
unpleasant than it would otherwise be. I know that Brougham
dislikes me; and I have not the slightest doubt that he feels
great pleasure in taking this subject out of my hands, and at
having made me understand, as I do most clearly understand, how
far my services are rated below his. I do not blame you in the
least. I do not see how you could have acted otherwise. But, on
the other hand, I do not see why I should make any efforts or
sacrifices for a Review which lies under an intolerable
dictation. Whatever my writings may be worth, it is not for want
of strong solicitations, and tempting offers, from other quarters
that I have continued to send them to the Edinburgh Review. I
adhered to the connection solely because I took pride and
pleasure in it. It has now become a source of humiliation and
mortification.

I again repeat, my dear Sir, that I do not blame you in the
least. This, however, only makes matters worse. If you had used
me ill, I might complain, and might hope to be better treated
another time. Unhappily you are in a situation in which it is
proper for you to do what it would be improper in me to endure.
What has happened now may happen next quarter, and must happen
before long, unless I altogether refrain from writing for the
Review. I hope you will forgive me if I say that I feel what has
passed too strongly to be inclined to expose myself to a
recurrence of the same vexations.

Yours most truly

T. B. MACAULAY.

A few soft words induced Macaulay to reconsider his threat of
withdrawing from the Review; but, even before Mr. Napier's answer
reached him, the feeling of personal annoyance had already been
effaced by a greater sorrow. A letter arrived, announcing that
his sister Jane had died suddenly and most unexpectedly. She was
found in the morning lying as though still asleep, having passed
away so peacefully as not to disturb a sister who had spent the
night in the next room, with a door open between them. Mrs.
Macaulay never recovered from this shock. Her health gave way,
and she lived into the coming year only so long as to enable her
to rejoice in the first of her son's Parliamentary successes.

Paris: September 26.

My dear Father,--This news has broken my heart. I am fit neither
to go nor to stay. I can do nothing but sit down in my room, and
think of poor dear Jane's kindness and affection. When I am
calmer, I will let you know my intentions. There will be neither
use nor pleasure in remaining here. My present purpose, as far as
I can form one, is to set off in two or three days for England;
and in the meantime to see nobody, if I can help it, but Dumont,
who has been very kind to me. Love to all,--to all who are left
me to love. We must love each other better.

T. B. M.

London: March 30, 1831

Dear Ellis,--I have little news for you, except what you will
learn from the papers as well as from me. It is clear that the
Reform Bill must pass, either in this or in another Parliament.
The majority of one does not appear to me, as it does to you, by
any means inauspicious. We should perhaps have had a better plea
for a dissolution if the majority had been the other way. But
surely a dissolution under such circumstances would have been a
most alarming thing. If there should be a dissolution now, there
will not be that ferocity in the public mind which there would
have been if the House of Commons had refused to entertain the
Bill at all. I confess that, till we had a majority, I was half
inclined to tremble at the storm which we had raised. At present
I think that we are absolutely certain of victory, and of victory
without commotion.

Such a scene as the division of last Tuesday I never saw, and
never expect to see again. If I should live fifty years, the
impression of it will be as fresh and sharp in my mind as if it
had just taken place. It was like seeing Caesar stabbed in the
Senate House, or seeing Oliver taking the mace from the table; a
sight to be seen only once, and never to be forgotten. The crowd
overflowed the House in every part. When the strangers were
cleared out, and the doors locked, we had six hundred and eight
members present,--more by fifty-five than ever were in a division
before. The Ayes and Noes were like two volleys of cannon from
opposite sides of a field of battle. When the opposition went out
into the lobby, an operation which took up twenty minutes or
more, we spread ourselves over the benches on both sides of the
House; for there were many of us who had not been able to find a
seat during the evening. ["The practice in the Commons, until
1836, was to send one party forth into the lobby, the other
remaining in the House."--Sir T. Erskine May's "Parliamentary
Practice."] When the doors were shut we began to speculate on our
numbers. Everybody was desponding. "We have lost it. We are only
two hundred and eighty at most. I do not think we are two hundred
and fifty. They are three hundred. Alderman Thompson has counted
them. He says they are two hundred and ninety-nine." This was the
talk on our benches. I wonder that men who have been long in
Parliament do not acquire a better coup d'oeil for numbers. The
House, when only the Ayes were in it, looked to me a very fair
House,--much fuller than it generally is even on debates of
considerable interest. I had no hope, however, of three hundred.
As the tellers passed along our lowest row on the left hand side
the interest was insupportable,--two hundred and ninety-one,--two
hundred and ninety-two ,--we were all standing up and stretching
forward, telling with the tellers. At three hundred there was a
short cry of joy,--at three hundred and two another,--suppressed
however in a moment; for we did not yet know what the hostile
force might be. We knew, however, that we could not be severely
beaten. The doors were thrown open, and in they came. Each of
them, as he entered, brought some different report of their
numbers. It must have been impossible, as you may conceive, in
the lobby, crowded as they were, to form any exact estimate.
First we heard that they were three hundred and three; then that
number rose to three hundred and ten; then went down to three
hundred and seven. Alexander Barry told me that he had counted,
and that they were three hundred and four. We were all breathless
with anxiety, when Charles Wood, who stood near the door, jumped
up on a bench and cried out, "They are only three hundred and
one." We set up a shout that you might have heard to Charing
Cross, waving our hats, stamping against the floor, and clapping
our hands. The tellers scarcely got through the crowd; for the
House was thronged up to the table, and all the floor was
fluctuating with heads like the pit of a theatre. But you might
have heard a pin drop as Duncannon read the numbers. Then again
the shouts broke out, and many of us shed tears. I could scarcely
refrain. And the jaw of Peel fell; and the face of Twiss was as
the face of a damned soul; and Herries looked like Judas taking
his necktie off for the last operation. We shook hands, and
clapped each other on the back, and went out laughing, crying,
and huzzaing into the lobby. And no sooner were the outer doors
opened than another shout answered that within the House. All the
passages, and the stairs into the waiting-rooms, were thronged by
people who had waited till four in the morning to know the
issue. We passed through a narrow lane between two thick masses
of them; and all the way down they were shouting and waving their
hats, till we got into the open air. I called a cabriolet, and
the first thing the driver asked was, "Is the Bill carried?"
"Yes, by one." "Thank God for it, Sir." And away I rode to Gray's
Inn,--and so ended a scene which will probably never be equalled
till the reformed Parliament wants reforming; and that I hope
will not be till the days of our grandchildren, till that truly
orthodox and apostolical person Dr. Francis Ellis is an
archbishop of eighty.

As for me, I am for the present a sort of lion. My speech has set
me in the front rank, if I can keep there; and it has not been my
luck hitherto to lose ground when I have once got it. Sheil and I
are on very civil terms. He talks largely concerning Demosthenes
and Burke. He made, I must say, an excellent speech; too florid
and queer, but decidedly successful.

Why did not Price speak? If he was afraid, it was not without
reason; for a more terrible audience there is not in the world. I
wish that Praed had known to whom he was speaking. But, with all
his talent, he has no tact, and he has fared accordingly. Tierney
used to say that he never rose in the House without feeling his
knees tremble under him; and I am sure that no man who has not
some of that feeling will ever succeed there.

Ever yours

T. B. MACAULAY.

London: May 27, 1835.

My dear Hannah,--Let me see if I can write a letter a la
Richardson:--a little less prolix it must be, or it will exceed
my ounce. By the bye, I wonder that Uncle Selby never grudged the
postage of Miss Byron's letters. According to the nearest
calculation that I can make, her correspondence must have
enriched the post office of Ashby Canons by something more than
the whole annual interest of her fifteen thousand pounds.

I reached Lansdowne House by a quarter to eleven, and passed
through the large suite of rooms to the great Sculpture Gallery.
There were seated and standing perhaps three hundred people,
listening to the performers, or talking to each other. The room
is the handsomest and largest, I am told, in any private house in
London. I enclose our musical bill of fare. Fanny, I suppose,
will be able to expound it better than I. The singers were more
showily dressed than the auditors, and seemed quite at home. As
to the company, there was just everybody in London (except that
little million and a half that you wot of,)--the Chancellor, and
the First Lord of the Admiralty, and Sydney Smith, and Lord
Mansfield, and all the Barings and the Fitzclarences, and a
hideous Russian spy, whose face I see everywhere, with a star on
his coat. During the interval between the delights of "I tuoi
frequenti," and the ecstasies of "Se tu m'ami," I contrived to
squeeze up to Lord Lansdowne. I was shaking hands with Sir James
Macdonald, when I heard a command behind us: "Sir James,
introduce me to Mr. Macaulay;" and we turned, and there sate a
large bold-looking woman, with the remains of a fine person, and
the air of Queen Elizabeth. "Macaulay," said Sir James, "let me
present you to Lady Holland." Then was her ladyship gracious
beyond description, and asked me to dine and take a bed at
Holland House next Tuesday. I accepted the dinner, but declined
the bed, and I have since repented that I so declined it. But I
probably shall have an opportunity of retracting on Tuesday.

To-night I go to another musical party at Marshall's, the late
M.P. for Yorkshire. Everybody is talking of Paganini and his
violin. The man seems to be a miracle. The newspapers say that
long streamy flakes of music fall from his string, interspersed
with luminous points of sound which ascend the air and appear
like stars. This eloquence is quite beyond me.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

London: May 28, 1831.

My dear Hannah,--More gaieties and music-parties; not so fertile
of adventures as that memorable masquerade whence Harriet Byron
was carried away; but still I hope that the narrative of what
passed there will gratify "the venerable circle." Yesterday I
dressed, called a cab, and was whisked away to Hill Street. I
found old Marshall's house a very fine one. He ought indeed to
have a fine one; for he has, I believe, at least thirty thousand
a year. The carpet was taken up, and chairs were set out in rows,
as if we had been at a religious meeting. Then we had flute-
playing by the first flute-player in England, and pianoforte-
strumming by the first pianoforte-strummer in England, and
singing by all the first singers in England, and Signor Rubini's
incomparable tenor, and Signor Curioni's incomparable counter-
tenor, and Pasta's incomparable expression. You who know how airs
much inferior to these take my soul, and lap it in Elysium, will
form some faint conception of my transport. Sharp beckoned me to
sit by him in the back row. These old fellows are so selfish.
"Always," said he, "establish yourself in the middle of the row
against the wall; for, if you sit in the front or next the edges,
you will be forced to give up your seat to the ladies who are
standing." I had the gallantry to surrender mine to a damsel who
had stood for a quarter of an hour; and I lounged into the ante-
rooms, where I found Samuel Rogers. Rogers and I sate together on
a bench in one of the passages, and had a good deal of very
pleasant conversation. He was,--as indeed he has always been to
me,--extremely kind, and told me that, if it were in his power,
he would contrive to be at Holland House with me, to give me an
insight into its ways. He is the great oracle of that circle.

He has seen the King's letter to Lord Grey, respecting the
Garter; or at least has authentic information about it. It is a
happy stroke of policy, and will, they say, decide many wavering
votes in the House of Lords. The King, it seems, requests Lord
Grey to take the order, as a mark of royal confidence in him "at
so critical a time;"--significant words, I think.

Ever yours

T. B. MACAULAY.

To Hannah More Macaulay.

London: May 30, 1831.

Well, my dear, I have been to Holland House. I took a glass
coach, and arrived, through a fine avenue of elms, at the great
entrance towards seven o'clock. The house is delightful;--the
very perfection of the old Elizabethan style;--a considerable
number of very large and very comfortable rooms, rich with
antique carving and gilding, but carpeted and furnished with all
the skill of the best modern upholsterers. The library is a very
long room,--as long, I should think, as the gallery at Rothley
Temple,--with little cabinets for study branching out of it.
warmly and snugly fitted up, and looking out on very beautiful
grounds. The collection of books is not, like Lord Spencer's,
curious; but it contains almost everything that one ever wished
to read. I found nobody there when I arrived but Lord Russell,
the son of the Marquess of Tavistock. We are old House of Commons
friends; so we had some very pleasant talk, and in a little while
in came Allen, who is warden of Dulwich College, and who lives
almost entirely at Holland House. He is certainly a man of vast
information and great conversational powers. Some other gentlemen
dropped in, and we chatted till Lady Holland made her appearance.
Lord Holland dined by himself on account of his gout. We sat down
to dinner in a fine long room, the wainscot of which is rich with
gilded coronets, roses, and portcullises. There were Lord
Albemarle, Lord Alvanley, Lord Russell, Lord Mahon,--a violent
Tory, but a very agreeable companion, and a very good scholar.
There was Cradock, a fine fellow who was the Duke of Wellington's
aide-de-camp in 1815, and some other people whose names I did not
catch. What however is more to the purpose, there was a most
excellent dinner. I have always heard that Holland House is
famous for its good cheer, and certainly the reputation is not
unmerited. After dinner Lord Holland was wheeled in, and placed
very near me. He was extremely amusing and good-natured.

In the drawing-room I had a long talk with Lady Holland about the
antiquities of the house, and about the purity of the English
language, wherein she thinks herself a critic. I happened, in
speaking about the Reform Bill, to say that I wished that it had
been possible to form a few commercial constituencies, if the
word constituency were admissible. "I am glad you put that in,"
said her ladyship. "I was just going to give it you. It is an
odious word. Then there is _talented_ and _influential_, and
_gentlemanly_. I never could break Sheridan of _gentlemanly_,
though he allowed it to be wrong." We talked about the word
_talents_ and its history. I said that it had first appeared in
theological writing, that it was a metaphor taken from the
parable in the New Testament, and that it had gradually passed
from the vocabulary of divinity into common use. I challenged her
to find it in any classical writer on general subjects before the
Restoration, or even before the year 1700. I believe that I might
safely have gone down later. She seemed surprised by this theory,
never having, so far as I could judge, heard of the parable of
the talents. I did not tell her, though I might have done so,
that a person who professes to be a critic in the delicacies of
the English language ought to have the Bible at his fingers'
ends.

She is certainly a woman of considerable talents and great
literary acquirements. To me she was excessively gracious; yet
there is a haughtiness in her courtesy which, even after all that
I had heard of her, surprised me. The centurion did not keep his
soldiers in better order than she keeps her guests. It is to one
"Go," and he goeth; and to another "Do this," and it is done.
"Ring the bell, Mr. Macaulay." "Lay down that screen, Lord
Russell; you will spoil it." "Mr. Allen, take a candle and show
Mr. Cradock the picture of Buonaparte." Lord Holland is, on the
other hand, all kindness, simplicity, and vivacity. He talked
very well both on politics and on literature. He asked me in a
very friendly manner about my father's health, and begged to be
remembered to him.

When my coach came, Lady Holland made me promise that I would on
the first fine morning walk out to breakfast with them, and see
the grounds;--and, after drinking a glass of very good iced
lemonade, I took my leave, much amused and pleased. The house
certainly deserves its reputation for pleasantness, and her
ladyship used me, I believe, as well as it is her way to use
anybody.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

Court of Commissioners,
Basinghall Street: May 31, 1831.

My dear Sister,--How delighted I am that you like my letters, and
how obliged by yours! But I have little more than my thanks to
give for your last. I have nothing to tell about great people to-
day. I heard no fine music yesterday, saw nobody above the rank
of a baronet, and was shut up in my own room reading and writing
all the morning. This day seems likely to pass in much the
same way, except that I have some bankruptcy business to do,
and a couple of sovereigns to receive. So here I am, with
three of the ugliest attorneys that ever deserved to be
transported sitting opposite to me; a disconsolate-looking
bankrupt, his hands in his empty pockets, standing behind;
a lady scolding for her money, and refusing to be comforted
because it is not; and a surly butcher-like looking creditor,
growling like a house-dog, and saying, as plain as looks
can say "If I sign your certificate, blow me, that's all."
Among these fair and interesting forms, on a piece of official
paper, with a pen and with ink found at the expense of the
public, am I writing to Nancy.

These dirty courts, filled with Jew money-lenders, sheriffs'
officers, attorneys' runners, and a crowd of people who live by
giving sham bail and taking false oaths, are not by any means
such good subjects for a lady's correspondent as the Sculpture
Gallery at Lansdowne House, or the conservatory at Holland House,
or the notes of Pasta, or the talk of Rogers. But we cannot be
always fine. When my Richardsonian epistles are published, there
must be dull as well as amusing letters among them; and this
letter is, I think, as good as those sermons of Sir Charles to
Geronymo which Miss Byron hypocritically asked for, or as the
greater part of that stupid last volume.

We shall soon have more attractive matter. I shall walk out to
breakfast at Holland House; and I am to dine with Sir George
Philips, and with his son the member for Steyning, who have the
best of company; and I am going to the fancy ball of the Jew. He
met me in the street, and implored me to come. "You need not
dress more than for an evening party. You had better come. You
will be delighted. It will be so very pretty." I thought of Dr.
Johnson and the herdsman with his "See, such pretty goats." [See
Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides, Sept. 1 1773. "The Doctor was
prevailed with to mount one of Vass's grays. As he rode upon it
downhill, it did not go well, and he grumbled. I walked on a
little before, but was excessively entertained with the method
taken to keep him in good humour. Hay led the horse's head,
talking to Dr. Johnson as much as he could and, (having heard
him, in the forenoon, express a pastoral pleasure on seeing the
goats browsing,) just when the Doctor was uttering his
displeasure, the fellow cried, with a very Highland accent, 'See,
such pretty goats!' Then he whistled whu! and made them jump."]
However, I told my honest Hebrew that I would come. I may
perhaps, like the Benjamites, steal away some Israelite damsel in
the middle of her dancing.

But the noise all round me is becoming louder, and a baker in a
white coat is bellowing for the book to prove a debt of nine
pounds fourteen shillings and fourpence. So I must finish my
letter and fall to business.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London June 1, 1831.

My dear Sister,--My last letter was a dull one. I mean this to be
very amusing. My last was about Basinghall Street, attorneys, and
bankrupts. But for this,--take it dramatically in the German
style.

Fine morning. Scene, the great entrance of Holland House.

Enter MACAULAY and Two FOOTMEN in livery.

 First Footman.--Sir, may I venture to demand your name?

 Macaulay.--Macaulay, and thereto I add M.P.
 And that addition, even in these proud halls,
 May well ensure the bearer some respect.

 Second Footman.--And art thou come to breakfast with our Lord?

 Macaulay.--I am for so his hospitable will,
 And hers--the peerless dame ye serve--hath bade.

 First Footman.--Ascend the stair, and thou above shalt find,
 On snow-white linen spread, the luscious meal.

(Exit MACAULAY up stairs.)

In plain English prose, I went this morning to breakfast at
Holland House. The day was fine, and I arrived at twenty minutes
after ten. After I had lounged a short time in the dining-room, I
heard a gruff good-natured voice asking, "Where is Mr. Macaulay?
Where have you put him?" and in his arm-chair Lord Holland was
wheeled in. He took me round the apartments, he riding and I
walking. He gave me the history of the most remarkable portraits
in the library, where there is, by the bye, one of the few bad
pieces of Lawrence that I have seen--a head of Charles James Fox,
an ignominious failure. Lord Holland said that it was the worst
ever painted of so eminent a man by so eminent an artist. There
is a very fine head of Machiavelli, and another of Earl Grey, a
very different sort of man. I observed a portrait of Lady Holland
painted some thirty years ago. I could have cried to see the
change. She must have been a most beautiful woman. She still
looks, however, as if she had been handsome, and shows in one
respect great taste and sense. She does not rouge at all; and her
costume is not youthful, so that she looks as well in the morning
as in the evening. We came back to the dining-room. Our breakfast
party consisted of my Lord and Lady, myself, Lord Russell, and
Luttrell. You must have heard of Luttrell. I met him once at
Rogers's; and I have seen him, I think, in other places. He is a
famous wit,--the most popular, I think, of all the professed
wits,--a man who has lived in the highest circles, a scholar, and
no contemptible poet. He wrote a little volume of verse entitled
"Advice to Julia,"--not first rate, but neat, lively, piquant,
and showing the most consummate knowledge of fashionable life.

We breakfasted on very good coffee, and very good tea, and very
good eggs, butter kept in the midst of ice, and hot rolls. Lady
Holland told us her dreams; how she had dreamed that a mad dog
bit her foot, and how she set off to Brodie, and lost her way in
St. Martin's Lane, and could not find him. She hoped, she said,
the dream would not come true. I said that I had had a dream
which admitted of no such hope; for I had dreamed that I heard
Pollock speak in the House of Commons, that the speech was very
long, and that he was coughed down. This dream of mine diverted
them much.

After breakfast Lady Holland offered to conduct me to her own
drawing-room, or, rather, commanded my attendance. A very
beautiful room it is, opening on a terrace, and wainscoted with
miniature paintings interesting from their merit, and interesting
from their history. Among them I remarked a great many,--thirty,
I should think,--which even I, who am no great connoisseur, saw
at once could come from no hand but Stothard's. They were all on
subjects from Lord Byron's poems. "Yes," said she; "poor Lord
Byron sent them to me a short time before the separation. I sent
them back, and told him that, if he gave them away, he ought to
give them to Lady Byron. But he said that he would not, and that
if I did not take them, the bailiffs would, and that they would
be lost in the wreck." Her ladyship then honoured me so far as to
conduct me through her dressing-room into the great family
bedchamber to show me a very fine picture by Reynolds of Fox,
when a boy, birds-nesting. She then consigned me to Luttrell,
asking him to show me the grounds.

Through the grounds we went, and very pretty I thought them. In
the Dutch garden is a fine bronze bust of Napoleon, which Lord
Holland put up in 1817, while Napoleon was a prisoner at St.
Helena. The inscription was selected by his lordship, and is
remarkably happy. It is from Homer's Odyssey. I will translate
it, as well as I can extempore, into a measure which gives a
better idea of Homer's manner than Pope's singsong couplet.

 For not, be sure, within the grave
 Is hid that prince, the wise, the brave;
 But in an islet's narrow bound,
 With the great Ocean roaring round,
 The captive of a foeman base
 He pines to view his native place.

There is a seat near the spot which is called Rogers's seat. The
poet loves, it seems, to sit there. A very elegant inscription by
Lord Holland is placed over it.

 "Here Rogers sate; and here for ever dwell
  With me those pleasures which he sang so well."

Very neat and condensed, I think. Another inscription by Luttrell
hangs there. Luttrell adjured me with mock pathos to spare his
blushes; but I am author enough to know what the blushes of
authors mean. So I read the lines, and very pretty and polished
they were, but too many to be remembered from one reading.

Having gone round the grounds I took my leave, very much pleased
with the place. Lord Holland is extremely kind. But that is of
course; for he is kindness itself. Her ladyship too, which is by
no means of course, is all graciousness and civility. But, for
all this, I would much rather be quietly walking with you; and
the great use of going to these fine places is to learn how happy
it is possible to be without them. Indeed, I care so little for
them that I certainly should not have gone to-day, but that I
thought that I should be able to find materials for a letter
which you might like.

Farewell.

T. B. MACAULAY.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: June 3, 1831.

My dear Sister,--I cannot tell you how delighted I am to find
that my letters amuse you. But sometimes I must be dull like my
neighbours. I paid no visits yesterday, and have no news to
relate to-day. I am sitting again in Basinghall Street and Basil
Montagu is haranguing about Lord Verulam, and the way of
inoculating one's mind with truth; and all this a propos of a
lying bankrupt's balance-sheet. ["Those who are acquainted with
the Courts in which Mr. Montagu practises with so much ability
and success, will know how often he enlivens the discussion of a
point of law by citing some weighty aphorism, or some brilliant
illustration, from the De Augmentis or the Novum Organum."--
Macaulay's Review of Basil Montagu's Edition of Bacon.]

Send me some gossip, my love. Tell me how you go on with German.
What novel have you commenced? Or, rather, how many dozen have
you finished? Recommend me one. What say you to "Destiny"? Is the
"Young Duke" worth reading? and what do you think of "Laurie
Todd"?

I am writing about Lord Byron so pathetically that I make
Margaret cry, but so slowly that I am afraid I shall make Napier
wait. Rogers, like a civil gentleman, told me last week to write
no more reviews, and to publish separate works; adding, what for
him is a very rare thing, a compliment: "You may do anything, Mr.
Macaulay." See how vain and insincere human nature is! I have
been put into so good a temper with Rogers that I have paid him,
what is as rare with me as with him, a very handsome compliment
in my review. ["Well do we remember to have heard a most correct
judge of poetry revile Mr. Rogers for the incorrectness of that
most sweet and graceful passage:--

 'Such grief was ours,--it seems but yesterday,--
  When in thy prime, wishing so much to stay,
  Twas thine, Maria, thine without a sigh
  At midnight in a sister's arms to die,
  Oh! thou wast lovely; lovely was thy frame,
  And pure thy spirit as from heaven it came;
  And, when recalled to join the blest above,
  Thou diedst a victim to exceeding love
  Nursing the young to health. In happier hours,
  When idle Fancy wove luxuriant flowers,
  Once in thy mirth thou badst me write on thee;
  And now I write what thou shalt never see.'

Macaulay's Essay on Byron.] It is not undeserved; but I confess
that I cannot understand the popularity of his poetry. It is
pleasant and flowing enough; less monotonous than most of the
imitations of Pope and Goldsmith; and calls up many agreeable
images and recollections. But that such men as Lord Granville,
Lord Holland, Hobhouse, Lord Byron, and others of high rank in
intellect, should place Rogers, as they do, above Southey, Moore,
and even Scott himself, is what I cannot conceive. But this comes
of being in the highest society of London. What Lady Jane
Granville called the Patronage of Fashion can do as much for a
middling poet as for a plain girl like Miss Arabella Falconer.
[Lady Jane, and Miss Arabella, appear in Miss Edgeworth's
"Patronage."]

But I must stop. This rambling talk has been scrawled in the
middle of haranguing, squabbling, swearing, and crying. Since I
began it I have taxed four bills, taken forty depositions, and
rated several perjured witnesses.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

London: June 7, 1831.

Yesterday I dined at Marshall's, and was almost consoled for not
meeting Ramohun Roy by a very pleasant party. The great sight was
the two wits, Rogers and Sydney Smith. Singly I have often seen
them; but to see them both together was a novelty, and a novelty
not the less curious because their mutual hostility is well
known, and the hard hits which they have given to each other are
in everybody's mouth. They were very civil, however. But I was
struck by the truth of what Matthew Bramble, a person of whom you
probably never heard, says in Smollett's Humphrey Clinker: that
one wit in a company, like a knuckle of ham in soup, gives a
flavour; but two are too many. Rogers and Sydney Smith would not
come into conflict. If one had possession of the company, the
other was silent; and, as you may conceive, the one who had
possession of the company was always Sydney Smith, and the one
who was silent was always Rogers. Sometimes, however, the company
divided, and each of them had a small congregation. I had a good
deal of talk with both of them; for, in whatever they may
disagree, they agree in always treating me with very marked
kindness.

I had a good deal of pleasant conversation with Rogers. He was
telling me of the curiosity and interest which attached to the
persons of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron. When Sir Walter Scott
dined at a gentleman's in London some time ago, all the servant-
maids in the house asked leave to stand in the passage and see
him pass. He was, as you may conceive, greatly flattered. About
Lord Byron, whom he knew well, he told me some curious anecdotes.
When Lord Byron passed through Florence, Rogers was there. They
had a good deal of conversation, and Rogers accompanied him to
his carriage. The inn had fifty windows in front. All the windows
were crowded with women, mostly English women, to catch a glance
at their favourite poet. Among them were some at whose houses he
had often been in England, and with whom he had lived on friendly
terms. He would not notice them, or return their salutations.
Rogers was the only person that he spoke to.

The worst thing that I know about Lord Byron is the very
unfavourable impression which he made on men, who certainly were
not inclined to judge him harshly, and who, as far as I know,
were never personally ill-used by him. Sharp and Rogers both
speak of him as an unpleasant, affected, splenetic person. I have
heard hundreds and thousands of people who never saw him rant
about him; but I never heard a single expression of fondness for
him fall from the lips of any of those who knew him well. Yet,
even now, after the lapse of five-and-twenty years, there are
those who cannot talk for a quarter of an hour about Charles Fox
without tears.

Sydney Smith leaves London on the 20th, the day before Parliament
meets for business. I advised him to stay, and see something of
his friends who would be crowding to London. "My flock!" said
this good shepherd. "My dear Sir, remember my flock! The hungry
sheep look up and are not fed."

I could say nothing to such an argument; but I could not help
thinking that, if Mr. Daniel Wilson had said such a thing, it
would infallibly have appeared in his funeral sermon, and in his
Life by Baptist Noel. But in poor Sydney's mouth it sounded like
a joke. He begged me to come and see him at Combe Florey. "There
I am, Sir, the priest of the Flowery Valley, in a delightful
parsonage, about which I care a good deal, and a delightful
country, about which I do not care a straw." I told him that my
meeting him was some compensation for missing Ramohun Roy. Sydney
broke forth:

"Compensation! Do you mean to insult me? A beneficed clergyman,
an orthodox clergyman, a nobleman's chaplain, to be no more than
compensation for a Brahmin; and a heretic Brahmin too, a fellow
who has lost his own religion and can't find another; a vile
heterodox dog, who, as I am credibly informed eats beef-steaks in
private! A man who has lost his caste! who ought to have melted
lead poured down his nostrils, if the good old Vedas were in
force as they ought to be."

These are some Boswelliana of Sydney; not very clerical, you will
say, but indescribably amusing to the hearers, whatever the
readers may think of them. Nothing can present a more striking
contrast to his rapid, loud, laughing utterance, and his rector-
like amplitude and rubicundity, than the low, slow, emphatic
tone, and the corpse-like face of Rogers. There is as great a
difference in what they say as in the voice and look with which
they say it. The conversation of Rogers is remarkably polished
and artificial. What he says seems to have been long meditated,
and might be published with little correction. Sydney talks from
the impulse of the moment, and his fun is quite inexhaustible.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M Macaulay.

London: June 8, 1831.

My dear Sister,--Yesterday night I went to the Jew's. I had
indeed no excuse for forgetting the invitation; for, about a week
after I had received the green varnished billet, and answered it,
came another in the self-same words, and addressed to Mr.
Macaulay, Junior. I thought that my answer had miscarried; so
down I sate, and composed a second epistle to the Hebrews. I
afterwards found that the second invitation was meant for
Charles.

I set off a little after ten, having attired myself simply as for
a dinner-party. The house is a very fine one. The door was
guarded by peace-officers, and besieged by starers. My host met
me in a superb court-dress, with his sword at his side. There was
a most sumptuous-looking Persian, covered with gold lace. Then
there was an Italian bravo with a long beard. Two old gentlemen,
who ought to have been wiser, were fools enough to come in
splendid Turkish costumes at which everybody laughed. The fancy-
dresses were worn almost exclusively by the young people. The
ladies for the most part contented themselves with a few flowers
and ribands oddly disposed. There was, however, a beautiful Mary
Queen of Scots, who looked as well as dressed the character
perfectly; an angel of a Jewess in a Highland plaid; and an old
woman, or rather a woman,--for through her disguise it was
impossible to ascertain her age,--in the absurdest costume of the
last century. These good people soon began their quadrilles and
galopades, and were enlivened by all the noise that twelve
fiddlers could make for their lives.

You must not suppose the company was made up of these mummers.
There was Dr. Lardner, and Long, the Greek Professor in the
London University, and Sheil, and Strutt, and Romilly, and Owen
the philanthropist. Owen laid bold on Sheil, and gave him a
lecture on Co-operation which lasted for half an hour. At last
Sheil made his escape. Then Owen seized Mrs. Sheil,--a good
Catholic, and a very agreeable woman,--and began to prove to her
that there could be no such thing as moral responsibility. I had
fled at the first sound of his discourse, and was talking with
Strutt and Romilly, when behold! I saw Owen leave Mrs. Sheil and
come towards us. So I cried out "Sauve qui peut!" and we ran off.
But before we had got five feet from where we were standing, who
should meet us face to face but Old Basil Montagu? "Nay, then,"
said I, "the game is up. The Prussians are on our rear. If we are
to be bored to death there is no help for it." Basil seized
Romilly; Owen took possession of Strutt; and I was blessing
myself on my escape, when the only human being worthy to make a
third with such a pair, J--, caught me by the arm, and begged to
have a quarter of an hour's conversation with me. While I was
suffering under J--, a smart impudent-looking young dog, dressed
like a sailor in a blue jacket and check shirt, marched up, and
asked a Jewish-looking damsel near me to dance with him. I
thought that I had seen the fellow before; and, after a little
looking, I perceived that it was Charles; and most knowingly, I
assure you, did he perform a quadrille with Miss Hilpah Manasses.

If I were to tell you all that I saw I should exceed my ounce.
There was Martin the painter, and Proctor, alias Barry Cornwall,
the poet or poetaster. I did not see one Peer, or one star,
except a foreign order or two, which I generally consider as an
intimation to look to my pockets. A German knight is a dangerous
neighbour in a crowd. [Macaulay ended by being a German knight
himself.] After seeing a galopade very prettily danced by the
Israelitish women, I went downstairs, reclaimed my hat, and
walked into the dining-room. There, with some difficulty, I
squeezed myself between a Turk and a Bernese peasant, and
obtained an ice, a macaroon, and a glass of wine. Charles was
there, very active in his attendance on his fair Hilpah. I bade
him good night. "What!" said young Hopeful, "are you going yet?"
It was near one o'clock; but this joyous tar seemed to think it
impossible that anybody could dream of leaving such delightful
enjoyments till daybreak. I left him staying Hilpah with flagons,
and walked quietly home. But it was some time before I could get
to sleep. The sound of fiddles was in mine ears; and gaudy
dresses, and black hair, and Jewish noses, were fluctuating up
and down before mine eyes.

There is a fancy ball for you. If Charles writes a history of it,
tell me which of us does it best.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M Macaulay.

London: June 10. 1835.

My dear Sister,--I am at Basinghall Street, and I snatch this
quarter of an hour, the only quarter of an hour which I am likely
to secure during the day, to write to you. I will not omit
writing two days running, because, if my letters give you half
the pleasure which your letters give me, you will, I am sure,
miss them. I have not, however, much to tell. I have been very
busy with my article on Moore's Life of Byron. I never wrote
anything with less heart. I do not like the book; I do not like
the hero; I have said the most I could for him, and yet I shall be
abused for speaking as coldly of him as I have done.

I dined the day before yesterday at Sir George Philips's with
Sotheby, Morier the author of "Hadji Baba," and Sir James
Mackintosh. Morier began to quote Latin before the ladies had
left the room, and quoted it by no means to the purpose. After
their departure he fell to repeating Virgil, choosing passages
which everybody else knows and does not repeat. He, though he
tried to repeat them, did not know them, and could not get on
without my prompting. Sotheby was full of his translation of
Homer's Iliad, some specimens of which he has already published.
It is a complete failure; more literal than that of Pope, but
still tainted with the deep radical vice of Pope's version, a
thoroughly modern and artificial manner. It bears the same kind
of relation to the Iliad that Robertson's narrative bears to the
story of Joseph in the book of Genesis.

There is a pretty allegory in Homer--I think in the last book,
but I forget precisely where--about two vessels, the one filled
with blessings and the other with sorrow, which stand, says the
poet, on the right and left hand of Jupiter's throne, and from
which he dispenses good and evil at his pleasure among men. What
word to use for these vessels has long posed the translators of
Homer. Pope, who loves to be fine, calls them _urns_. Cowper, who
loves to be coarse, calls them _casks_;--a translation more
improper than Pope's; for a cask is, in our general
understanding, a wooden vessel; and the Greek word means an
earthen vessel. There is a curious letter of Cowper's to one of
his female correspondents about this unfortunate word. She begged
that Jupiter might be allowed a more elegant piece of furniture
for his throne than a cask. But Cowper was peremptory. I
mentioned this incidentally when we were talking about
translations. This set Sotheby off. "I," said he, "have
translated it _vase_. I hope that meets your ideas. Don't you
think vase will do? Does it satisfy you?" I told him, sincerely
enough, that it satisfied me; for I must be most unreasonable to
be dissatisfied at anything that he chooses to put in a book
which I never shall read. Mackintosh was very agreeable; and, as
usually happens when I meet him, I learned something from him.
[Macaulay wrote to one of his nieces in September 1859: "I am
glad that Mackintosh's Life interests you. I knew him well; and a
kind friend he was to me when I was a young fellow, fighting my
way uphill."]

The great topic now in London is not, as you perhaps fancy,
Reform, but Cholera. There is a great panic; as great a panic as I
remember, particularly in the City. Rice shakes his head, and
says that this is the most serious thing that has happened in his
time; and assuredly, if the disease were to rage in London as it
has lately raged in Riga, it would be difficult to imagine
anything more horrible. I, however, feel no uneasiness. In the
first place I have a strong leaning towards the doctrines of the
anti-contagionists. In the next place I repose a great confidence
in the excellent food and the cleanliness of the English.

I have this instant received your letter of yesterday with the
enclosed proof-sheets. Your criticism is to a certain extent
just; but you have not considered the whole sentence together.
Depressed is in itself better than weighed down; but "the
oppressive privileges which had depressed industry" would be a
horrible cacophony. I hope that word convinces you. I have often
observed that a fine Greek compound is an excellent substitute
for a reason.

I met Rogers at the Athenaeum. He begged me to breakfast with
him, and name my day, and promised that he would procure me as
agreeable a party as he could find in London. Very kind of the
old man, is it not? and, if you knew how Rogers is thought of,
you would think it as great a compliment as could be paid to a
Duke. Have you seen what the author of the "Young Duke" says
about me: how rabid I am, and how certain I am to rat?

Ever yours

T. B. M.

Macaulay's account of the allusion to himself in the "Young Duke"
is perfectly accurate; and yet, when read as a whole, the passage
in question does not appear to have been ill-naturedly meant. ["I
hear that Mr. Babington Macaulay is to be returned. If he speaks
half as well as he writes, the House will be in fashion again. I
fear that he is one of those who, like the individual whom he has
most studied, will give up to a party what was meant for mankind.
At any rate, he must get rid of his rabidity. He writes now on
all subjects as if he certainly intended to be a renegade, and
was determined to make the contrast complete."--The Young Duke,
book v chap. vi.] It is much what any young literary man outside
the House of Commons might write of another who had only been
inside that House for a few weeks; and it was probably forgotten
by the author within twenty-four hours after the ink was dry. It
is to be hoped that the commentators of the future will not treat
it as an authoritative record of Mr. Disraeli's estimate of Lord
Macaulay's political character.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: June 25, 1831.

My dear Sister,--There was, as you will see, no debate on Lord
John Russell's motion. The Reform Bill is to be brought in, read
once, and printed, without discussion. The contest will be on the
second reading, and will be protracted, I should think, through
the whole of the week after next;--next week it will be, when you
read this letter.

I breakfasted with Rogers yesterday. There was nobody there but
Moore. We were all on the most friendly and familiar terms
possible; and Moore, who is, Rogers tells me, excessively pleased
with my review of his book, showed me very marked attention. I
was forced to go away early on account of bankrupt business; but
Rogers said that we must have the talk out so we are to meet at
his house again to breakfast. What a delightful house it is! It
looks out on the Green Park just at the most pleasant point. The
furniture has been selected with a delicacy of taste quite
unique. Its value does not depend on fashion, but must be the
same while the fine arts are held in any esteem. In the drawing-
room, for example, the chimney-pieces are carved by Flaxman into
the most beautiful Grecian forms. The book-case is painted by
Stothard, in his very best manner, with groups from Chaucer,
Shakespeare, and Boccacio. The pictures are not numerous; but
every one is excellent. In the dining-room there are also some
beautiful paintings. But the three most remarkable objects in
that room are, I think, a cast of Pope taken after death by
Roubiliac; a noble model in terra-cotta by Michael Angelo, from
which he afterwards made one of his finest statues, that of
Lorenzo de Medici; and, lastly, a mahogany table on which stands
an antique vase.

When Chantrey dined with Rogers some time ago he took particular
notice of the vase, and the table on which it stands, and asked
Rogers who made the table. "A common carpenter," said Rogers. "Do
you remember the making of it?" said Chantrey. "Certainly," said
Rogers, in some surprise. "I was in the room while it was
finished with the chisel, and gave the workman directions about
placing it." "Yes," said Chantrey, "I was the carpenter. I
remember the room well, and all the circumstances." A curious
story, I think, and honourable both to the talent which raised
Chantrey, and to the magnanimity which kept him from being
ashamed of what he had been.

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: June 29, 1831.

My dear Sister,--We are not yet in the full tide of Parliamentary
business. Next week the debates will be warm and long. I should
not wonder if we had a discussion of five nights. I shall
probably take a part in it.

I have breakfasted again with Rogers. The party was a remarkable
one,--Lord John Russell, Tom Moore, Tom Campbell, and Luttrell.
We were all very lively. An odd incident took place after
breakfast, while we were standing at the window and looking into
the Green Park. Somebody was talking about diners-out. "Ay," said
Campbell--

"Ye diners-out from whom we guard our spoons."

Tom Moore asked where the line was. "Don't you know?" said
Campbell. "Not I," said Moore. "Surely," said Campbell, "it is
your own." "I never saw it in my life," said Moore. "It is in one
of your best things in the Times," said Campbell. Moore denied
it. Hereupon I put in my claim, and told them that it was mine.
Do you remember it? It is in some lines called the Political
Georgics, which I sent to the Times about three years ago. They
made me repeat the lines, and were vociferous in praise of them.
Tom Moore then said, oddly enough:

"There is another poem in the Times that I should like to know
the author of;--A Parson's Account of his Journey to the
Cambridge Election." I laid claim to that also. "That is
curious," said Moore. "I begged Barnes to tell me who wrote it.
He said that he had received it from Cambridge, and touched it up
himself, and pretended that all the best strokes were his. I
believed that he was lying, because I never knew him to make a
good joke in his life. And now the murder is out." They asked me
whether I had put anything else in the Times. Nothing, I said,
except the Sortes Virgilianae, which Lord John remembered well. I
never mentioned the Cambridge Journey, or the Georgics, to any
but my own family; and I was therefore, as you may conceive, not
a little flattered to hear in one day Moore praising one of them,
and Campbell praising the other.

I find that my article on Byron is very popular; one among a
thousand proofs of the bad taste of the public. I am to review
Croker's edition of Bozzy. It is wretchedly ill done. The notes
are poorly written, and shamefully inaccurate. There is, however,
much curious information in it. The whole of the Tour to the
Hebrides is incorporated with the Life. So are most of Mrs.
Thrale's anecdotes, and much of Sir John Hawkins's lumbering
book. The whole makes five large volumes. There is a most
laughable sketch of Bozzy, taken by Sir T. Lawrence when young. I
never saw a character so thoroughly hit off. I intend the book for
you, when I have finished my criticism on it. You are, next to
myself, the best read Boswellite that I know. The lady whom
Johnson abused for flattering him [See Boswell's Life of Johnson,
April 15, 1778.] was certainly, according to Croker, Hannah More.
Another ill-natured sentence about a Bath lady ["He would not
allow me to praise a lady then at Bath; observing, 'She does not
gain upon me, sir; I think her empty-headed.'"] whom Johnson
called "empty-headed" is also applied to your godmother.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: July 6, 1835.

My dear Sister,--I have been so busy during the last two or three
days that I have found no time to write to you. I have now good
news for you. I spoke yesterday night with a success beyond my
utmost expectations. I am half ashamed to tell you the
compliments which I have received; but you well know that it is
not from vanity, but to give you pleasure, that I tell you what
is said about me. Lord Althorp told me twice that it was the best
speech he had ever heard; Graham, and Stanley, and Lord John
Russell spoke of it in the same way; and O'Connell followed me
out of the house to pay me the most enthusiastic compliments. I
delivered my speech much more slowly than any that I have before
made, and it is in consequence better reported than its
predecessors, though not well. I send you several papers. You
will see some civil things in the leading articles of some of
them. My greatest pleasure, in the midst of all this praise, is
to think of the pleasure which my success will give to my father
and my sisters. It is happy for me that ambition has in my mind
been softened into a kind of domestic feeling, and that affection
has at least as much to do as vanity with my wish to distinguish
myself. This I owe to my dear mother, and to the interest which
she always took in my childish successes. From my earliest years,
the gratification of those whom I love has been associated with
the gratification of my own thirst for fame, until the two have
become inseparably joined in my mind.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M Macaulay

London: July 8, 1831.

My dear Sister,--Do you want to hear all the compliments that are
paid to me? I shall never end, if I stuff my letters with them;
for I meet nobody who does not give me joy. Baring tells me that
I ought never to speak again. Howick sent a note to me yesterday
to say that his father wished very much to be introduced to me,
and asked me to dine with them yesterday, as, by great good luck,
there was nothing to do in the House of Commons. At seven I went
to Downing Street, where Earl Grey's official residence stands.
It is a noble house. There are two splendid drawing-rooms, which
overlook St. James's Park. Into these I was shown. The servant
told me that Lord Grey was still at the House of Lords, and that
her Ladyship had just gone to dress. Howick had not mentioned the
hour in his note. I sate down, and turned over two large
portfolios of political caricatures. Earl Grey's own face was in
every print. I was very much diverted. I had seen some of them
before; but many were new to me, and their merit is
extraordinary. They were the caricatures of that remarkably able
artist who calls himself H. B. In about half an hour Lady
Georgiana Grey, and the Countess, made their appearance. We had
some pleasant talk, and they made many apologies. The Earl, they
said, was unexpectedly delayed by a question which had arisen in
the Lords. Lady Holland arrived soon after, and gave me a most
gracious reception; shook my hand very warmly, and told me, in
her imperial decisive manner, that she had talked with all the
principal men on our side about my speech, that they all agreed
that it was the best that had been made since the death of Fox,
and that it was more like Fox's speaking than anybody's else.
Then she told me that I was too much worked, that I must go out
of town, and absolutely insisted on my going to Holland House to
dine, and take a bed, on the next day on which there is no
Parliamentary business. At eight we went to dinner. Lord Howick
took his father's place, and we feasted very luxuriously. At nine
Lord Grey came from the House with Lord Durham, Lord Holland, and
the Duke of Richmond. They dined on the remains of our dinner
with great expedition, as they had to go to a Cabinet Council at
ten. Of course I had scarcely any talk with Lord Grey. He was,
however, extremely polite to me, and so were his colleagues. I
liked the ways of the family.

I picked up some news from these Cabinet Ministers. There is to
be a Coronation on quite a new plan; no banquet in Westminster
Hall, no feudal services, no champion, no procession from the
Abbey to the Hall, and back again. But there is to be a service
in the Abbey. All the Peers are to come in state and in their
robes, and the King is to take the oaths, and be crowned and
anointed in their presence. The spectacle will be finer than
usual to the multitude out of doors. The few hundreds who could
obtain admittance to the Hall will be the only losers.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: July 8, 1831.

My dear Sister,--Since I wrote to you I have been out to dine and
sleep at Holland House. We had a very agreeable and splendid
party; among others the Duke and Duchess of Richmond, and the
Marchioness of Clanricarde, who, you know, is the daughter of
Canning. She is very beautiful, and very like her father, with
eyes full of fire, and great expression in all her features. She
and I had a great deal of talk. She showed much cleverness and
information, but, I thought, a little more of political animosity
than is quite becoming in a pretty woman. However, she has been
placed in peculiar circumstances. The daughter of a statesman who
was a martyr to the rage of faction may be pardoned for speaking
sharply of the enemies of her parent; and she did speak sharply.
With knitted brows, and flashing eyes, and a look of feminine
vengeance about her beautiful mouth, she gave me such a character
of Peel as he would certainly have had no pleasure in hearing.

In the evening Lord John Russell came; and, soon after, old
Talleyrand. I had seen Talleyrand in very large parties, hut had
never been near enough to hear a word that he said. I now had the
pleasure of listening for an hour and a half to his conversation.
He is certainly the greatest curiosity that I ever fell in with.
His head is sunk down between two high shoulders. One of his feet
is hideously distorted. His face is as pale as that of a corpse,
and wrinkled to a frightful degree. His eyes have an odd glassy
stare quite peculiar to them. His hair, thickly powdered and
pomatumed, hangs down his shoulders on each side as straight as a
pound of tallow candles. His conversation, however, soon makes
you forget his ugliness and infirmities. There is a poignancy
without effort in all that he says, which reminded me a little of
the character which the wits of Johnson's circle give of
Beauclerk. For example, we talked about Metternich and Cardinal
Mazarin. "J'y trouve beaucoup a redire. Le Cardinal trompait;
mais il ne mentait pas. Or, M. de Metternich ment toujours, et ne
trompe jamais." He mentioned M. de St. Aulaire,--now one of the
most distinguished public men of France. I said: "M. de Saint-
Aulaire est beau-pere de M. le duc de Cazes, n'est-ce pas?" "Non,
monsieur," said Talleyrand; "l'on disait, il y a douze ans, que
M. de Saint-Aulaire etoit beau-pere de M. de Cazes; l'on dit
maintenant que M. de Cazes est gendre de M. de Saint-Aulaire."
[This saying remained in Macaulay's mind. He quoted it on the
margin of his Aulus Gellius, as an illustration of the passage in
the nineteenth book in which Julius Caesar is described, absurdly
enough as "perpetuus ille dictator, Cneii Pompeii socer".] It was
not easy to describe the change in the relative positions of two
men more tersely and more sharply; and these remarks were made in
the lowest tone, and without the slightest change of muscle, just
as if he had been remarking that the day was fine. He added: "M.
de Saint-Aulaire a beaucoup d'esprit. Mais il est devot, et, ce
qui pis est, devot honteux. Il va se cacher dans quelque hameau
pour faire ses Paques." This was a curious remark from a Bishop.
He told several stories about the political men of France; not of
any great value in themselves; but his way of telling them was
beyond all praise,--concise, pointed, and delicately satirical.
When he had departed, I could not help breaking out into
admiration of his talent for relating anecdotes. Lady Holland
said that he had been considered for nearly forty years as the
best teller of a story in Europe, and that there was certainly
nobody like him in that respect.

When the Prince was gone, we went to bed. In the morning Lord
John Russell drove me back to London in his cabriolet, much
amused with what I had seen and heard. But I must stop.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

Basinghall Street: July 15 1831.

My dear Sister,--The rage of faction at the present moment
exceeds anything that has been known in our day. Indeed I doubt
whether, at the time of Mr. Pitt's first becoming Premier, at the
time of Sir Robert Walpole's fall, or even during the desperate
struggles between the Whigs and Tories at the close of Anne's
reign, the fury of party was so fearfully violent. Lord Mahon
said to me yesterday that friendships of long standing were
everywhere giving way, and that the schism between the reformers
and the anti-reformers was spreading from the House of Commons
into every private circle. Lord Mahon himself is an exception. He
and I are on excellent terms. But Praed and I become colder every
day.

The scene of Tuesday night beggars description. I left the House
at about three, in consequence of some expressions of Lord
Althorp's which indicated that the Ministry was inclined to yield
on the question of going into Committee on the Bill. I afterwards
much regretted that I had gone away; not that my presence was
necessary; but because I should have liked to have sate through
so tremendous a storm. Towards eight in the morning the Speaker
was almost fainting. The Ministerial members, however, were as
true as steel. They furnished the Ministry with the resolution
which it wanted. "If the noble Lord yields," said one of our men,
"all is lost." Old Sir Thomas Baring sent for his razor, and
Benett, the member for Wiltshire, for his night-cap; and they
were both resolved to spend the whole day in the House rather
than give way. If the Opposition had not yielded, in two hours
half London would have been in Old Palace Yard.

Since Tuesday the Tories have been rather cowed. But their
demeanour, though less outrageous than at the beginning of the
week, indicates what would in any other time be called extreme
violence. I have not been once in bed till three in the morning
since last Sunday. To-morrow we have a holiday. I dine at
Lansdowne House. Next week I dine with Littleton, the member for
Staffordshire, and his handsome wife. He told me that I should
meet two men whom I am curious to see, Lord Plunket and the
Marquess Wellesley; let alone the Chancellor, who is not a
novelty to me.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: July 25, 1831.

My dear Sister,--On Saturday evening I went to Holland House.
There I found the Dutch Ambassador, M. de Weissembourg, Mr. and
Mrs. Vernon Smith, and Admiral Adam, a son of old Adam, who
fought the duel with Fox. We dined like Emperors, and jabbered in
several languages. Her Ladyship, for an esprit fort, is the
greatest coward that I ever saw. The last time that I was there
she was frightened out of her wits by the thunder. She closed all
the shutters, drew all the curtains, and ordered candles in broad
day to keep out the lightning, or rather the appearance of the
lightning. On Saturday she was in a terrible taking about the
cholera; talked of nothing else; refused to eat any ice because
somebody said that ice was bad for the cholera; was sure that the
cholera was at Glasgow; and asked me why a cordon of troops was
not instantly placed around that town to prevent all intercourse
between the infected and the healthy spots. Lord Holland made
light of her fears. He is a thoroughly good-natured, open,
sensible man; very lively; very intellectual; well read in
politics, and in the lighter literature both of ancient and
modern times. He sets me more at ease than almost any person that
I know, by a certain good-humoured way of contradicting that he
has. He always begins by drawing down his shaggy eyebrows, making
a face extremely like his uncle, wagging his head and saying:
"Now do you know, Mr. Macaulay, I do not quite see that. How do
you make it out?" He tells a story delightfully; and bears the
pain of his gout, and the confinement and privations to which it
subjects him, with admirable fortitude and cheerfulness. Her
Ladyship is all courtesy and kindness to me; but her demeanour to
some others, particularly to poor Allen, is such as it quite
pains me to witness. He really is treated like a negro slave.
"Mr. Allen, go into my drawing-room and bring my reticule." "Mr.
Allen, go and see what can be the matter that they do not bring
up dinner." "Mr. Allen, there is not enough turtle-soup for you.
You must take gravy-soup or none." Yet I can scarcely pity the
man. He has an independent income; and, if he can stoop to be
ordered about like a footman, I cannot so much blame her for the
contempt with which she treats him.

Perhaps I may write again to-morrow.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

Library of the House of Commons

July 26, 1831.

My dear Sister,--Here I am seated, waiting for the debate on the
borough of St. Germains with a very quiet party,--Lord Milton,
Lord Tavistock, and George Lamb. But, instead of telling you in
dramatic form my conversations with Cabinet Ministers, I shall, I
think, go back two or three days, and complete the narrative
which I left imperfect in my epistle of yesterday.

[This refers to a passage in a former letter, likewise written
from the Library of the House.

"'Macaulay!' Who calls Macaulay? Sir James Graham. What can he
have to say to me? Take it dramatically:

Sir J. G. Macaulay!

Macaulay. What?

Sir J. G. Whom are you writing to, that you laugh so much over
your letter?

Macaulay. To my constituents at Caine, to be sure. They expect
news of the Reform Bill every day.

Sir J. G. Well, writing to constituents is less of a plague to
you than to most people, to judge by your face.

Macaulay. How do you know that I am not writing a billet doux to
a lady?

Sir J. G. You look more like it, by Jove!

Cutlar Ferguson, M.P. for Kirkcudbright. Let ladies and
constituents alone, and come into the House. We are going on to
the case of the borough of Great Bedwin immediately."]

At half after seven on Sunday I was set down at Littleton's
palace, for such it is, in Grosvenor Place. It really is a noble
house; four superb drawing-rooms on the first floor, hung round
with some excellent pictures--a Hobbema, (the finest by that
artist in the world, it is said,) and Lawrence's charming
portrait of Mrs. Littleton. The beautiful original, by the bye,
did not make her appearance. We were a party of gentlemen. But
such gentlemen! Listen, and be proud of your connection with one
who is admitted to eat and drink in the same room with beings so
exalted. There were two Chancellors, Lord Brougham and Lord
Plunket. There was Earl Gower; Lord St. Vincent; Lord Seaford;
Lord Duncannon; Lord Ebrington; Sir James Graham; Sir John
Newport; the two Secretaries of the Treasury, Rice and Ellice;
George Lamb; Denison; and half a dozen more Lords and
distinguished Commoners, not to mention Littleton himself. Till
last year he lived in Portman Square. When he changed his
residence his servants gave him warning. They could not, they
said, consent to go into such an unheard-of part of the world as
Grosvenor Place. I can only say that I have never been in a finer
house than Littleton's, Lansdowne House excepted,--and perhaps
Lord Milton's, which is also in Grosvenor Place. He gave me a
dinner of dinners. I talked with Denison, and with nobody else. I
have found out that the real use of conversational powers is to
put them forth in tete-a-tete. A man is flattered by your talking
your best to him alone. Ten to one he is piqued by your
overpowering him before a company. Denison was agreeable enough.
I heard only one word from Lord Plunket, who was remarkably
silent. He spoke of Doctor Thorpe, and said that, having heard the
Doctor in Dublin, he should like to hear him again in London.
"Nothing easier," quoth Littleton; "his chapel is only two doors
off; and he will be just mounting the pulpit." "No," said Lord
Plunket; "I can't lose my dinner." An excellent saying, though
one which a less able man than Lord Plunket might have uttered.

At midnight I walked away with George Lamb, and went--where for a
ducat? "To bed," says Miss Hannah. Nay, my sister, not so; but to
Brooks's. There I found Sir James Macdonald; Lord Duncannon, who
had left Littleton's just before us; and many other Whigs and
ornaments of human nature. As Macdonald and I were rising to
depart we saw Rogers, and I went to shake hands with him. You
cannot think how kind the old man was to me. He shook my hand
over and over, and told me that Lord Plunket longed to see me in
a quiet way, and that he would arrange a breakfast party in a day
or two for that purpose.

Away I went from Brooks's--but whither? "To bed now, I am sure,"
says little Anne. No, but on a walk with Sir James Macdonald to
the end of Sloane Street, talking about the Ministry, the Reform
Bill, and the East India question.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

House of Commons Smoking Room: Saturday.

My dear Sister,--The newspapers will have, explained the reason
of our sitting to-day. At three this morning I left the House. At
two this afternoon I have returned to it, with the thermometer at
boiling heat, and four hundred and fifty people stowed together
like negroes in the John Newton's slaveship. I have accordingly
left Sir Francis Burdett on his legs, and repaired to the
smoking-room; a large, wainscoted, uncarpeted place, with tables
covered with green baize and writing materials. On a full night
it is generally thronged towards twelve o'clock with smokers. It
is then a perfect cloud of fume. There have I seen, (tell it not
to the West Indians,) Buxton blowing fire out of his mouth. My
father will not believe it. At present, however, all the doors
and windows are open, and the room is pure enough from tobacco to
suit my father himself.

Get Blackwood's new number. There is a description of me in it.
What do you think he says that I am? "A little, splay-footed,
ugly, dumpling of a fellow, with a mouth from ear to ear."
Conceive how such a charge must affect a man so enamoured of his
own beauty as I am.

I said a few words the other night. They were merely in reply,
and quite unpremeditated, and were not ill received. I feel that
much practice will be necessary to make me a good debater on
points of detail; but my friends tell me that I have raised my
reputation by showing that I was quite equal to the work of
extemporaneous reply. My manner, they say, is cold and wants
care. I feel this myself. Nothing but strong excitement, and a
great occasion, overcomes a certain reserve and mauvaise honte
which I have in public speaking; not a mauvaise honte which in
the least confuses me, or makes me hesitate for a word, but which
keeps me from putting any fervour into my tone or my action. This
is perhaps in some respects an advantage; for, when I do warm, I
am the most vehement speaker in the House, and nothing strikes an
audience so much as the animation of an orator who is generally
cold.

I ought to tell you that Peel was very civil, and cheered me
loudly; and that impudent leering Croker congratulated the House
on the proof which I had given of my readiness. He was afraid, he
said, that I had been silent so long on account of the many
allusions which had been made to Calne. Now that I had risen
again he hoped that they should hear me often. See whether I do
not dust that varlet's jacket for him in the next number of the
Blue and Yellow. I detest him more than cold boiled veal. ["By
the bye," Macaulay writes elsewhere, "you never saw such a scene
as Croker's oration on Friday night. He abused Lord John Russell;
he abused Lord Althorp; he abused the Lord Advocate, and we took
no notice;--never once groaned or cried 'No!' But he began to
praise Lord Fitzwilliam;--'a venerable nobleman, an excellent and
amiable nobleman' and so forth; and we all broke out together
with 'Question!' 'No, no!' 'This is too bad!' 'Don't, don't!' He
then called Canning his right honourable friend. 'Your friend!
damn your impudent face!' said the member who sate next me."]

After the debate I walked about the streets with Bulwer till near
three o'clock. I spoke to him about his novels with perfect
sincerity, praising warmly, and criticising freely. He took the
praise as a greedy boy takes apple-pie, and the criticism as a
good dutiful boy takes senna-tea. He has one eminent merit, that
of being a most enthusiastic admirer of mine; so that I may be
the hero of a novel yet, under the name of Delamere or Mortimer.
Only think what an honour!

Bulwer is to be editor of the New Monthly Magazine. He begged me
very earnestly to give him something for it. I would make no
promises; for I am already over head and ears in literary
engagements. But I may possibly now and then send him some trifle
or other. At all events I shall expect him to puff me well. I do
not see why I should not have my puffers as well as my
neighbours.

I am glad that you have read Madame de Stael's Allemagne. The
book is a foolish one in some respects; but it abounds with
information, and shows great mental power. She was certainly the
first woman of her age; Miss Edgeworth, I think, the second; and
Miss Austen the third.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: August 29, 1831.

My dear Sister,--Here I am again settled, sitting up in the House
of Commons till three o'clock five days in the week, and getting
an indigestion at great dinners the remaining two. I dined on
Saturday with Lord Althorp, and yesterday with Sir James Graham.
Both of them gave me exactly the same dinner; and, though I am
not generally copious on the repasts which my hosts provide for
me, I must tell you, for the honour of official hospitality, how
our Ministers regale their supporters. Turtle, turbot, venison,
and grouse, formed part of both entertainments.

Lord Althorp was extremely pleasant at the head of his own table.
We were a small party; Lord Ebrington, Hawkins, Captain Spencer,
Stanley, and two or three more. We all of us congratulated Lord
Althorp on his good health and spirits. He told us that he never
took exercise now; that from his getting up, till four o'clock,
he was engaged in the business of his office; that at four he
dined, went down to the House at five, and never stirred till the
House rose, which is always after midnight; that he then went
home, took a basin of arrow-root with a glass of sherry in it,
and went to bed, where he always dropped asleep in three minutes.
"During the week," said he, "which followed my taking office, I
did not close my eyes for anxiety. Since that time I have never
been awake a quarter of an hour after taking off my clothes."
Stanley laughed at Lord Althorp's arrow-root, and recommended his
own supper, cold meat and warm negus; a supper which I will
certainly begin to take when I feel a desire to pass the night
with a sensation as if I was swallowing a nutmeg-grater every
third minute.

We talked about timidity in speaking. Lord Althorp said that he
had only just got over his apprehensions. "I was as much afraid,"
he said, "last year as when first I came into Parliament. But now
I am forced to speak so often that I am quite hardened. Last
Thursday I was up forty times." I was not much surprised at this
in Lord Althorp, as he is certainly one of the most modest men in
existence. But I was surprised to hear Stanley say that he never
rose without great uneasiness. "My throat and lips," he said,
"when I am going to speak, are as dry as those of a man who is
going to be hanged." Nothing can be more composed and cool than
Stanley's manner. His fault is on that side. A little hesitation
at the beginning of a speech is graceful; and many eminent
speakers have practised it, merely in order to give the
appearance of unpremeditated reply to prepared speeches; but
Stanley speaks like a man who never knew what fear, or even
modesty, was. Tierney, it is remarkable, who was the most ready
and fluent debater almost ever known, made a confession similar
to Stanley's. He never spoke, he said, without feeling his knees
knock together when he rose.

My opinion of Lord Althorp is extremely high. In fact, his
character is the only stay of the Ministry. I doubt whether any
person has ever lived in England who, with no eloquence, no
brilliant talents, no profound information, with nothing in short
but plain good sense and an excellent heart, possessed so much
influence both in and out of Parliament. His temper is an
absolute miracle. He has been worse used than any Minister ever
was in debate; and he has never said one thing inconsistent, I do
not say with gentlemanlike courtesy, but with real benevolence.
Lord North, perhaps, was his equal in suavity and good-nature;
but Lord North was not a man of strict principles. His
administration was not only an administration hostile to liberty,
but it was supported by vile and corrupt means,--by direct
bribery, I fear, in many cases. Lord Althorp has the temper of
Lord North with the principles of Romilly. If he had the
oratorical powers of either of those men, he might do anything.
But his understanding, though just, is slow, and his elocution
painfully defective. It is, however, only justice to him to say
that he has done more service to the Reform Bill even as a
debater than all the other Ministers together, Stanley excepted.

We are going,--by we I mean the Members of Parliament who are for
reform,--as soon as the Bill is through the Commons, to give a
grand dinner to Lord Althorp and Lord John Russell, as a mark of
our respect. Some people wished to have the other Cabinet
Ministers included; but Grant and Palmerston are not in
sufficiently high esteem among the Whigs to be honoured with such
a compliment.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: September 9, 1835.

My dear Sister,--I scarcely know where to begin, or where to end,
my story of the magnificence of yesterday. No pageant can be
conceived more splendid. The newspapers will happily save me the
trouble of relating minute particulars. I will therefore give you
an account of my own proceedings, and mention what struck me
most. I rose at six. The cannon awaked me; and, as soon as I got
up, I heard the bells pealing on every side from all the steeples
in London. I put on my court-dress, and looked a perfect Lovelace
in it. At seven the glass coach, which I had ordered for myself
and some of my friends, came to the door. I called in Hill Street
for William Marshall, M.P. for Beverley, and in Cork Street for
Strutt the Member for Derby, and Hawkins the Member for
Tavistock. Our party being complete, we drove through crowds of
people, and ranks of horseguards in cuirasses and helmets, to
Westminster Hall, which we reached as the clock struck eight.

The House of Commons was crowded, and the whole assembly was in
uniform. After prayers we went out in order by lot, the Speaker
going last. My county, Wiltshire, was among the first drawn; so I
got an excellent place in the Abbey, next to Lord Mahon, who is a
very great favourite of mine, and a very amusing companion,
though a bitter Tory.

Our gallery was immediately over the great altar. The whole vast
avenue of lofty pillars was directly in front of us. At eleven
the guns fired, the organ struck up, and the procession entered.
I never saw so magnificent a scene. All down that immense vista
of gloomy arches there was one blaze of scarlet and gold. First
came heralds in coats stiff with embroidered lions, unicorns, and
harps; then nobles bearing the regalia, with pages in rich
dresses carrying their coronets on cushions; then the Dean and
Prebendaries of Westminster in copes of cloth of gold; then a
crowd of beautiful girls and women, or at least of girls and
women who at a distance looked altogether beautiful, attending on
the Queen. Her train of purple velvet and ermine was borne by six
of these fair creatures. All the great officers of state in full
robes, the Duke of Wellington with his Marshal's staff, the Duke
of Devonshire with his white rod, Lord Grey with the Sword of
State, and the Chancellor with his seals, came in procession.
Then all the Royal Dukes with their trains borne behind them, and
last the King leaning on two Bishops. I do not, I dare say, give
you the precise order. In fact, it was impossible to discern any
order. The whole abbey was one blaze of gorgeous dresses, mingled
with lovely faces.

The Queen behaved admirably, with wonderful grace and dignity.
The King very awkwardly. The Duke of Devonshire looked as if he
came to be crowned instead of his master. I never saw so princely
a manner and air. The Chancellor looked like Mephistopheles
behind Margaret in the church. The ceremony was much too long,
and some parts of it were carelessly performed. The Archbishop
mumbled. The Bishop of London preached, well enough indeed, but
not so effectively as the occasion required; and, above all, the
bearing of the King made the foolish parts of the ritual appear
monstrously ridiculous, and deprived many of the better parts of
their proper effect. Persons who were at a distance perhaps did
not feel this; but I was near enough to see every turn of his
finger, and every glance of his eye. The moment of the crowning
was extremely fine. When the Archbishop placed the crown on the
head of the King, the trumpets sounded, and the whole audience
cried out "God save the King." All the Peers and Peeresses put on
their coronets, and the blaze of splendour through the Abbey
seemed to be doubled. The King was then conducted to the raised
throne, where the Peers successively did him homage, each of them
kissing his cheek, and touching the crown. Some of them were
cheered, which I thought indecorous in such a place, and on such
an occasion. The Tories cheered the Duke of Wellington; and our
people, in revenge, cheered Lord Grey and Brougham.

You will think this a very dull letter for so great a subject;
but I have only had time to scrawl these lines in order to catch
the post. I have not a minute to read them over. I lost
yesterday, and have been forced to work to-day. Half my article
on Boswell went to Edinburgh the day before yesterday. I have,
though I say it who should not say it, beaten Croker black and
blue. Impudent as he is, I think he must be ashamed of the pickle
in which I leave him. [Mr. Carlyle reviewed Croker's book in
"Fraser's Magazine" a few months after the appearance of
Macaulay's article in the "Edinburgh." The two Critics seem to
have arrived at much the same conclusion as to the merits of the
work. "In fine," writes Mr. Carlyle, "what ideas Mr. Croker
entertains of a literary _whole_, and the thing called _Book_,
and how the very Printer's Devils did not rise in mutiny against
such a conglomeration as this, and refuse to print it, may remain
a problem . . . . It is our painful duty to declare, aloud, if
that be necessary, that his gift, as weighed against the hard
money which the booksellers demand for giving it you, is (in our
judgment) very much the lighter. No portion, accordingly, of our
small floating capital has been embarked in the business, or ever
shall be. Indeed, were we in the market for such a thing, there
is simply no edition of Boswell to which this last would seem
preferable,"]

Ever yours

T. B. M.


To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: September 13, 1831.

My dear Sister,--I am in high spirits at the thought of soon
seeing you all in London, and being again one of a family, and of
a family which I love so much. It is well that one has something
to love in private life; for the aspect of public affairs is very
menacing;--fearful, I think, beyond what people in general
imagine. Three weeks, however, will probably settle the whole,
and bring to an issue the question, Reform or Revolution. One or
the other I am certain that we must and shall have. I assure you
that the violence of the people, the bigotry of the Lords, and
the stupidity and weakness of the Ministers, alarm me so much
that even my rest is disturbed by vexation and uneasy
forebodings; not for myself; for I may gain, and cannot lose; but
for this noble country, which seems likely to be ruined without
the miserable consolation of being ruined by great men. All seems
fair as yet, and will seem fair for a fortnight longer. But I
know the danger from information more accurate and certain than,
I believe, anybody not in power possesses; and I perceive, what
our men in power do not perceive, how terrible the danger is.

I called on Lord Lansdowne on Sunday. He told me distinctly that
he expected the Bill to be lost in the Lords, and that, if it
were lost, the Ministers must go out. I told him, with as much
strength of expression as was suited to the nature of our
connection, and to his age and rank, that, if the Ministers
receded before the Lords, and hesitated to make Peers, they and
the Whig party were lost; that nothing remained but an insolent
oligarchy on the one side, and an infuriated people on the other;
and that Lord Grey and his colleagues would become as odious and
more contemptible than Peel and the Duke of Wellington. Why did
they not think of all this earlier? Why put their hand to the
plough, and look back? Why begin to build without counting the
cost of finishing? Why raise the public appetite, and then baulk
it? I told him that the House of Commons would address the King
against a Tory Ministry. I feel assured that it would do so. I
feel assured that, if those who are bidden will not come, the
highways and hedges will be ransacked to get together a reforming
Cabinet. To one thing my mind is made up. If nobody else will
move an address to the Crown against a Tory Ministry, I will.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

London: October 17, 1831.

My dear Ellis,--I should have written to you before, but that I
mislaid your letter and forgot your direction. When shall you be
in London? Of course you do not mean to sacrifice your
professional business to the work of numbering the gates, and
telling the towers, of boroughs in Wales. [Mr. Ellis was one of
the Commissioners appointed to arrange the boundaries of
Parliamentary boroughs in connection with the Reform Bill.] You
will come back, I suppose, with your head full of ten pound
householders instead of eroes and of Caermarthen and Denbigh
instead of Carians and Pelasgians. Is it true, by the bye, that
the Commissioners are whipped on the boundaries of the boroughs
by the beadles, in order that they may not forget the precise
line which they have drawn? I deny it wherever I go, and assure
people that some of my friends who are in the Commission would
not submit to such degradation.

You must have been hard-worked indeed, and soundly whipped too,
if you have suffered as much for the Reform Bill as we who
debated it. I believe that there are fifty members of the House
of Commons who have done irreparable injury to their health by
attendance on the discussions of this session. I have got through
pretty well, but I look forward, I confess, with great dismay to
the thought of recommencing; particularly as Wetherell's cursed
lungs seem to be in as good condition as ever.

I have every reason to be gratified by the manner in which my
speeches have been received. To say the truth, the station which
I now hold in the House is such that I should not be inclined to
quit it for any place which was not of considerable importance.
What you saw about my having a place was a
blunder of a stupid reporter's. Croker was taunting the
Government with leaving me to fight their battle, and to rally
their followers; and said that the honourable and learned member
for Calne, though only a practising barrister in title, seemed to
be in reality the most efficient member of the Government. By the
bye, my article on Croker has not only smashed his book, but has
hit the Westminster Review incidentally. The Utilitarians took on
themselves to praise the accuracy of the most inaccurate writer
that ever lived, and gave as an instance of it a note in which,
as I have shown, he makes a mistake of twenty years and more.
John Mill is in a rage, and says that they are in a worse scrape
than Croker; John Murray says that it is a damned nuisance; and
Croker looks across the House of Commons at me with a leer of
hatred, which I repay with a gracious smile of pity.

I am ashamed to have said so much about myself. But you asked for
news about me. No request is so certain to be granted, or so
certain to be a curse to him who makes it as that which you have
made to me.

Ever yours

T. B. MACAULAY.

London: January 9, 1832.

Dear Napier,--I have been so much engaged by bankrupt business,
as we are winding up the affairs of many estates, that I shall
not be able to send off my article about Hampden till Thursday
the 12th. It will be, I fear, more than forty pages long. As
Pascal said of his eighteenth letter, I would have made it
shorter if I could have kept it longer. You must indulge me,
however; for I seldom offend in that way.

It is in part a narrative. This is a sort of composition which I
have never yet attempted. You will tell me, I am sure with
sincerity, how you think that I succeed in it. I have said as
little about Lord Nugent's book as I decently could.

Ever yours

T. B. M.


London: January 19, 1832.

Dear Napier,--I will try the Life of Lord Burleigh, if you will
tell Longman to send me the book. However bad the work may be, it
will serve as a heading for an article on the times of Elizabeth.
On the whole, I thought it best not to answer Croker. Almost all
the little pamphlet which he published, (or rather printed, for I
believe it is not for sale,) is made up of extracts from
Blackwood; and I thought that a contest with your grog-drinking,
cock-fighting, cudgel-playing Professor of Moral Philosophy would
be too degrading. I could have demolished every paragraph of the
defence. Croker defended his thuetoi philoi by quoting a passage
of Euripides which, as every scholar knows, is corrupt; which is
nonsense and false metre if read as he reads it; and which
Markland and Matthiae have set right by a most obvious
correction. But, as nobody seems to have read his vindication, we
can gain nothing by refuting it. ["Mr. Croker has favoured us
with some Greek of his own. 'At the altar,' say Dr. Johnson. 'I
recommended my th ph.' 'These letters,' says the editor. (which
Dr. Strahan seems not to have understood,) probably mean
_departed friends._' Johnson was not a first-rate Greek scholar;
but he knew more Greek than most boys when they leave school; and
no schoolboy could venture to use the word thuetoi in the sense
which Mr. Croker ascribes to it without imminent danger of a
flogging."--Macaulay's Review of Croker's Boswell.]

Ever yours

T. B. MACAULAY.

CHAPTER V.

1832-1834.

Macaulay is invited to stand for Leeds--The Reform bill passes--
Macaulay appointed Commissioner of the Board of Control--His life in
office--Letters to his sisters--Contested election at Leeds--
Macaulay's bearing as a candidate--Canvassing--Pledges--Intrusion of
religion into politics--Placemen in Parliament--Liverpool--Margaret
Macaulay's marriage--How it affected her brother--He is returned for
Leeds--Becomes Secretary of the Board of Control--Letters to Hannah
Macaulay--Session of 1832--Macaulay's Speech on the India Bill--His
regard for Lord Glenelg--Letters to Hannah Macaulay--The West Indian
question--Macaulay resigns Office--He gains his point, and resumes his
place--Emancipation of the Slaves--Death of Wilberforce--Macaulay is
appointed Member of the Supreme Council of India--Letters to Hannah
Macaulay, Lord Lansdowne, and Mr. Napier--Altercation between Lord
Althorp and Mr. Shiel--Macaulay's appearance before the Committee of
Investigation--He sails for India.

DURING the earlier half of the year 1832 the vessel of Reform was
still labouring heavily; but, long before she was through the
breakers, men had begun to discount the treasures which she was
bringing into port. The time was fast approaching when the country
would be called upon to choose its first Reformed Parliament. As if
the spectacle of what was doing at Westminster did not satisfy their
appetite for political excitement, the Constituencies of the future
could not refrain from anticipating the fancied pleasures of an
electoral struggle. Impatient to exercise their privileges, and to
show that they had as good an eye for a man as those patrons of
nomination seats whose discernment was being vaunted nightly in a
dozen speeches from the Opposition benches of the House of Commons,
the great cities were vying with each other to seek representatives
worthy of the occasion and of themselves. The Whigs of Leeds, already
provided with one candidate in a member of the great local firm of the
Marshalls, resolved to seek for another among the distinguished
politicians of their party. As early as October 1831 Macaulay had
received a requisition from that town, and had pledged himself to
stand as soon as it had been elevated into a Parliamentary borough.
The Tories, on their side, brought forward Mr. Michael Sadler, the
very man on whose behalf the Duke of Newcastle had done "what he liked
with his own" in Newark,--and, at the last general election, had done
it in vain. Sadler, smarting from the lash of the Edinburgh Review,
infused into the contest an amount of personal bitterness that for his
own sake might better have been spared; and, during more than a
twelvemonth to come, Macaulay lived the life of a candidate whose own
hands are full of public work at a time when his opponent has nothing
to do except to make himself disagreeable. But, having once undertaken
to fight the battle of the Leeds Liberals, he fought it stoutly and
cheerily; and he would have been the last to claim it as a merit,
that, with numerous opportunities of a safe and easy election at his
disposal, he remained faithful to the supporters who had been so
forward to honour him with their choice.

The old system died hard; but in May 1832 came its final agony. The
Reform Bill had passed the Commons, and had been read a second time in
the Upper House; but the facilities which Committee affords for
maiming and delaying a measure of great magnitude and intricacy proved
too much for the self-control of the Lords. The King could not bring
himself to adopt that wonderful expedient by which the unanimity of
the three branches of our legislature may, in the last resort, be
secured. Deceived by an utterly fallacious analogy, his Majesty began
to be persuaded that the path of concession would lead him whither it
had led Louis the Sixteenth; and he resolved to halt on that path at
the point where his Ministers advised him to force the hands of their
lordships by creating peers. The supposed warnings of the French
Revolution, which had been dinned into the ears of the country by
every Tory orator from Peel to Sibthorpe, at last had produced their
effect on the royal imagination. Earl Grey resigned, and the Duke of
Wellington, with a loyalty which certainly did not stand in need of
such an unlucky proof, came forward to meet the storm. But its
violence was too much even for his courage and constancy. He could not
get colleagues to assist him in the Cabinet, or supporters to vote
with him in Parliament, or soldiers to fight for him in the streets;
and it was evident that in a few days his position would be such as
could only be kept by fighting.

The revolution had in truth commenced. At a meeting of the political
unions on the slope of Newhall Hill at Birmingham a hundred thousand
voices had sung the words:

 God is our guide. No swords we draw.
 We kindle not war's battle fires.
 By union, justice, reason, law,
 We claim the birthright of our sires.

But those very men were now binding themselves by a declaration that,
unless the Bill passed, they would pay no taxes, nor purchase property
distrained by the tax-gatherer. In thus renouncing the first
obligation of a citizen they did in effect draw the sword, and they
would have been cravens if they had left it in the scabbard. Lord
Milton did something to enhance the claim of his historic house upon
the national gratitude by giving practical effect to this audacious
resolve; and, after the lapse of two centuries, another Great
Rebellion, more effectual than its predecessor, but so brief and
bloodless that history does not recognise it as a rebellion at all,
was inaugurated by the essentially English proceeding of a quiet
country gentleman telling the Collector to call again. The crisis
lasted just a week. The Duke had no mind for a succession of
Peterloos, on a vaster scale, and with a different issue. He advised
the King to recall his Ministers; and his Majesty, in his turn,
honoured the refractory lords with a most significant circular letter,
respectful in form, but unmistakable in tenor. A hundred peers of the
Opposition took the hint, and contrived to be absent whenever Reform
was before the House. The Bill was read for a third time by a majority
of five to one on the 4th of June; a strange, and not very
complimentary, method of celebrating old George the Third's birthday.
On the 5th it received the last touches in the Commons; and on the 7th
it became an Act, in very much the same shape, after such and so many
vicissitudes, as it wore when Lord John Russell first presented it to
Parliament.

Macaulay, whose eloquence had signalised every stage of the conflict,
and whose printed speeches are, of all its authentic records, the most
familiar to readers of our own day, was not left without his reward.
He was appointed one of the Commissioners of the Board of Control,
which, for three quarters of a century from 1784 onwards, represented
the Crown in its relations to the East Indian directors. His duties,
like those of every individual member of a Commission, were light or
heavy as he chose to make them; but his own feeling with regard to
those duties must not be deduced from the playful allusions contained
in letters dashed off, during the momentary leisure of an over-busy
day, for the amusement of two girls who barely numbered forty years
between them. His speeches and essays teem with expressions of a far
deeper than official interest in India and her people; and his minutes
remain on record, to prove that he did not affect the sentiment for a
literary or oratorical purpose. The attitude of his own mind with
regard to our Eastern empire is depicted in the passage on Burke, in
the essay on Warren Hastings, which commences with the words, "His
knowledge of India--," and concludes with the sentence, "Oppression in
Bengal was to him the same thing as oppression in the streets of
London." That passage, unsurpassed as it is in force of language, and
splendid fidelity of detail, by anything that Macaulay ever wrote or
uttered, was inspired, as all who knew him could testify, by sincere
and entire sympathy with that great statesman of whose humanity and
breadth of view it is the merited, and not inadequate, panegyric.

In Margaret Macaulay's journal there occurs more than one mention of
her brother's occasional fits of contrition on the subject of his own
idleness; but these regrets and confessions must be taken for what
they are worth, and for no more. He worked much harder than he gave
himself credit for. His nature was such that whatever he did was done
with all his heart, and all his power; and he was constitutionally
incapable of doing it otherwise. He always under-estimated the tension
and concentration of mind which he brought to bear upon his labours,
as compared with that which men in general bestow on whatever business
they may have in hand; and, to-wards the close of life, this
honourable self-deception no doubt led him to draw far too largely
upon his failing strength, under the impression that there was
nothing unduly severe in the efforts to which he continued to brace
himself with ever increasing difficulty.

During the eighteen months that he passed at the Board of Control he
had no time for relaxation, and very little for the industry which he
loved the best. Giving his days to India, and his nights to the
inexorable demands of the Treasury Whip, he could devote a few hours
to the Edinburgh Review only by rising at five when the rules of the
House of Commons had allowed him to get to bed betimes on the previous
evening. Yet, under these conditions, he contrived to provide Mr.
Napier with the highly finished articles on Horace Walpole and Lord
Chatham, and to gratify a political opponent, who was destined to be a
life-long friend, by his kindly criticism and spirited summary of Lord
Mahon's "History of the War of the Succession in Spain." And, in the
"Friendship's Offering" of 1833, one of those mawkish annual
publications of the album species which were then in fashion, appeared
his poem of the Armada; whose swinging couplets read as if somewhat
out of place in the company of such productions as "The Mysterious
Stranger, or the Bravo of Banff;" "Away to the Greenwood, a song;" and
"Lines on a Window that had been frozen," beginning with,

 "Pellucid pane, this morn on thee
  My fancy shaped both tower and tree."

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay

Bath: June 10, 1832.

My dear Sisters,--Everything has gone wrong with me. The people at
Calne fixed Wednesday for my re-election on taking office; the very
day on which I was to have been at a public dinner at Leeds. I shall
therefore remain here till Wednesday morning, and read Indian politics
in quiet. I am already deep in Zemindars, Ryots, Polygars, Courts of
Phoujdary, and Courts of Nizamut Adawlut. I can tell you which of the
native Powers are subsidiary, and which independent, and read you
lectures of an hour on our diplomatic transactions at the courts of
Lucknow, Nagpore, Hydrabad, and Poonah. At Poonah, indeed, I need not
tell you that there is no court; for the Paishwa, as you are doubtless
aware, was deposed by Lord Hastings in the Pindarree War. Am I not in
fair training to be as great a bore as if I had myself been in India?--
that is to say, as great a bore as the greatest.

I am leading my watering-place life here; reading, writing, and
walking all day; speaking to nobody but the waiter and the
chambermaid; solitary in a great crowd, and content with solitude. I
shall be in London again on Thursday, and shall also be an M. P. From
that day you may send your letters as freely as ever; and pray do not
be sparing of them. Do you read any novels at Liverpool? I should fear
that the good Quakers would twitch them out of your hands, and appoint
their portion in the fire. Yet probably you have some safe place, some
box, some drawer with a key, wherein a marble-covered book may lie for
Nancy's Sunday reading. And, if you do not read novels, what do you
read? How does Schiller go on? I have sadly neglected Calderon; but,
whenever I have a month to spare, I shall carry my conquests far and
deep into Spanish literature.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

London: July 2, 1832.

My dear Sisters,--I am, I think, a better correspondent than you two
put together. I will venture to say that I have written more letters,
by a good many, than I have received, and this with India and the
Edinburgh Review on my hands; the Life of Mirabeau to be criticised;
the Rajah of Travancore to be kept in order; and the bad money, which
the Emperor of the Burmese has had the impudence to send us byway of
tribute, to be exchanged for better. You have nothing to do but to be
good, and write. Make no excuses, for your excuses are contradictory.
If you see sights, describe them; for then you have subjects. If you
stay at home, write; for then you have time. Remember that I never saw
the cemetery or the railroad. Be particular, above all, in your
accounts of the Quakers. I enjoin this especially on Nancy; for from
Meg I have no hope of extracting a word of truth.

I dined yesterday at Holland House; all Lords except myself. Lord
Radnor, Lord Poltimore, Lord King, Lord Russell, and his uncle Lord
John. Lady Holland was very gracious, praised my article on Burleigh
to the skies, and told me, among other things, that she had talked on
the preceding day for two hours with Charles Grant upon religion, and
had found him very liberal and tolerant. It was, I suppose, the
cholera which sent her Ladyship to the only saint in the Ministry for
ghostly counsel. Poor Macdonald's case was most undoubtedly cholera.
It is said that Lord Amesbury also died of cholera, though no very
strange explanation seems necessary to account for the death of a man
of eighty-four. Yesterday it was rumoured that the three Miss
Molyneuxes, of whom by the way there are only two, were all dead in
the same way; that the Bishop of Worcester and Lord Barham were no
more; and many other foolish stories. I do not believe there is the
slightest ground for uneasiness; though Lady Holland apparently
considers the case so serious that she has taken her conscience out of
Allen's keeping, and put it into the hands of Charles Grant.

Here I end my letter; a great deal too long already for so busy a man
to write, and for such careless correspondents to receive.

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

London: July 6, 1832.

 Be you Foxes, be you Pitts,
 You must write to silly chits.
 Be you Tories, be you Whigs,
 You must write to sad young gigs.
 On whatever board you are--
 Treasury, Admiralty, War,
 Customs, Stamps, Excise, Control;--
 Write you must, upon my soul.

So sings the judicious poet; and here I sit in my parlour, looking out
on the Thames, and divided, like Garrick in Sir Joshua's picture,
between Tragedy and Comedy; a letter to you, and a bundle of papers
about Hydrabad, and the firm of Palmer and Co., late bankers to the
Nizam.

Poor Sir Walter Scott is going back to Scotland by sea tomorrow. All
hope is over; and he has a restless wish to die at home. He is many
thousand pounds worse than nothing. Last week he was thought to be so
near his end that some people went, I understand, to sound Lord
Althorp about a public funeral. Lord Althorp said, very like himself,
that if public money was to be laid out, it would be better to give it
to the family than to spend it in one day's show. The family, however,
are said to be not ill off.

I am delighted to hear of your proposed tour, but not so well pleased
to be told that you expect to be bad correspondents during your stay
at Welsh inns. Take pens and ink with you, if you think that you shall
find none at the Bard's Head, or the Glendower Arms. But it will be
too bad if you send me no letters during a tour which will furnish so
many subjects. Why not keep a journal, and minute down in it all that
you see and hear? and remember that I charge you, as the venerable
circle charged Miss Byron, to tell me of every person who "regards you
with an eye of partiality."

What can I say more? as the Indians end their letters. Did not Lady
Holland tell me of some good novels? I remember:--Henry Masterton,
three volumes, an amusing story and a happy termination. Smuggle it
in, next time that you go to Liverpool, from some circulating library;
and deposit it in a lock-up place out of the reach of them that are
clothed in drab; and read it together at the curling hour.

My article on Mirabeau will be out in the forthcoming number. I am not
a good judge of my own compositions, I fear; but I think that it will
be popular. A Yankee has written to me to say that an edition of my
works is about to be published in America with my life prefixed, and
that he shall be obliged to me to tell him when I was born, whom I
married, and so forth. I guess I must answer him slick right away.
For, as the judicious poet observes,

 Though a New England man lolls back in his chair,
 With a pipe in his mouth, and his legs in the air,
 Yet surely an Old England man such as I
 To a kinsman by blood should be civil and spry.

How I run on in quotation! But, when I begin to cite the verses of our
great writers, I never can stop. Stop I must, however.

Yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

London: July 18, 1832.

My dear Sisters,--I have heard from Napier. He speaks rapturously of my
article on Dumont, [Dumont's "Life of Mirabeau." See the Miscellaneous
Writings of Lord Macaulay.] but sends me no money. Allah blacken his
face! as the Persians say. He has not yet paid me for Burleigh.

We are worked to death in the House of Commons, and we are henceforth
to sit on Saturdays. This, indeed, is the only way to get through our
business. On Saturday next we shall, I hope, rise before seven, as I
am engaged to dine on that day with pretty, witty Mrs.--. I fell in
with her at Lady Grey's great crush, and found her very agreeable. Her
husband is nothing in society. Ropers has some very good stories about
their domestic happiness,--stories confirming a theory of mine which,
as I remember, made you very angry. When they first married, Mrs.--
treated her husband with great respect. But, when his novel came out
and failed completely, she changed her conduct, and has, ever since
that unfortunate publication, henpecked the poor author unmercifully.
And the case, says Ropers, is the harder, because it is suspected that
she wrote part of the book herself. It is like the scene in Milton
where Eve, after tempting Adam, abuses him for yielding to temptation.
But do you not remember how I told you that much of the love of women
depended on the eminence of men? And do you not remember how, on
behalf of your sex, you resented the imputation?

As to the present state of affairs, abroad and at home, I cannot sum
it up better than in these beautiful lines of the poet:

 Peel is preaching, and Croker is lying.
 The cholera's raging, the people are dying.
 When the House is the coolest, as I am alive,
 The thermometer stands at a hundred and five.
 We debate in a heat that seems likely to burn us,
 Much like the three children who sang in the furnace.
 The disorders at Paris have not ceased to plague us;
 Don Pedro, I hope, is ere this on the Tagus;
 In Ireland no tithe can be raised by a parson;
 Mr. Smithers is just hanged for murder and arson;
 Dr. Thorpe has retired from the Lock, and 'tis said
 That poor little Wilks will succeed in his stead.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

London: July 21 1832.

My dear Sisters,--I am glad to find that there is no chance of Nancy's
turning Quaker. She would, indeed, make a queer kind of female Friend.

What the Yankees will say about me I neither know nor care. I told
them the dates of my birth, and of my coming into Parliament. I told
them also that I was educated at Cambridge. As to my early bon-mots,
my crying for holidays, my walks to school through showers of cats
and dogs, I have left all those for the "Life of the late Right
Honourable Thomas Babington Macaulay, with large extracts from his
correspondence, in two volumes, by the Very Rev. J. Macaulay, Dean of
Durham, and Rector of Bishopsgate, with a superb portrait from the
picture by Pickersgill in the possession of the Marquis of Lansdowne."

As you like my verses, I will some day or other write you a whole
rhyming letter. I wonder whether any man ever wrote doggrel so easily.
I run it off just as fast as my pen can move, and that is faster by
about three words in a minute than any other pen that I know. This
comes of a schoolboy habit of writing verses all day long. Shall I
tell you the news in rhyme? I think I will send you a regular sing-
song gazette.

 We gained a victory last night as great as e'er was known.
 We beat the Opposition upon the Russian loan.
 They hoped for a majority, and also for our places.
 We won the day by seventy-nine. You should have seen their faces.
 Old Croker, when the shout went down our rank, looked blue with rage.
 You'd have said he had the cholera in the spasmodic stage.
 Dawson was red with ire as if his face was smeared with berries;
 But of all human visages the worst was that of Herries.
 Though not his friend, my tender heart I own could not but feel
 A little for the misery of poor Sir Robert Peel.
 But hang the dirty Tories! and let them starve and pine!
 Huzza for the majority of glorious seventy-nine!

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

House of Commons Smoking-Room

July 23, 1832.

My dear Sisters,--I am writing here, at eleven at night, in this
filthiest of all filthy atmospheres, and in the vilest of all vile
company; with the smell of tobacco in my nostrils, and the ugly,
hypocritical face of Lieutenant-- before my eyes. There he sits writing
opposite to me. To whom, for a ducat? To some secretary of an
Hibernian Bible Society; or to some old woman who gives cheap tracts,
instead of blankets, to the starving peasantry of Connemara; or to
some good Protestant Lord who bullies his Popish tenants. Reject not
my letter, though it is redolent of cigars and genuine pigtail; for
this is the room--

The room,--but I think I'll describe it in rhyme,
That smells of tobacco and chloride of lime.
The smell of tobacco was always the same;
But the chloride was brought since the cholera came.

But I must return to prose, and tell you all that has fallen out since
I wrote last. I have been dining with the Listers at Knightsbridge.
They are in a very nice house, next, or almost next, to that which the
Wilberforces had. We had quite a family party. There were George
Villiers, and Hyde Villiers, and Edward Villiers. Charles was not
there. George and Hyde rank very high in my opinion. I liked their
behaviour to their sister much. She seems to be the pet of the whole
family; and it is natural that she should be so. Their manners are
softened by her presence; and any roughness and sharpness which they
have in intercourse with men vanishes at once. They seem to love the
very ground that she treads on; and she is undoubtedly a charming
woman, pretty, clever, lively, and polite.

I was asked yesterday evening to go to Sir John Burke's, to meet
another heroine who was very curious to see me. Whom do you think?
Lady Morgan. I thought, however, that, if I went, I might not
improbably figure in her next novel; and, as I am not ambitious of
such an honour, I kept away. If I could fall in with her at a great
party, where I could see unseen and hear unheard, I should very much
like to make observations on her; but I certainly will not, if I can
help it, meet her face to face, lion to lioness.

That confounded chattering --, has just got into an argument about
the Church with an Irish papist who has seated himself at my elbow;
and they keep such a din that I cannot tell what I am writing. There
they go. The Lord Lieutenant--the Bishop of Derry-Magee--O'Connell--
your Bible meetings--your Agitation meetings--the propagation of the
Gospel--Maynooth College--the Seed of the Woman shall bruise the
Serpent's head. My dear Lieutenant, you will not only bruise, but
break, my head with your clatter. Mercy! mercy! However, here I am at
the end of my letter, and I shall leave the two demoniacs to tear each
other to pieces.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

Library of the H. of C.
July 30, 1832, 11 o'clock at night.

My dear Sisters,--Here I am. Daniel Whittle Harvey is speaking; the
House is thin; the subject is dull; and I have stolen away to write to
you. Lushington is scribbling at my side. No sound is heard but the
scratching of our pens, and the ticking of the clock. We are in a far
better atmosphere than in the smoking-room, whence I wrote to you last
week; and the company is more decent, inasmuch as that naval officer,
whom Nancy blames me for describing in just terms, is not present.

By the bye, you know doubtless the lines which are in the mouth of
every member of Parliament, depicting the comparative merits of the
two rooms. They are, I think, very happy.

 If thou goest into the Smoking-room
 Three plagues will thee befall,--
 The chloride of lime, the tobacco smoke,
 And the Captain who's worst of all,
 The canting Sea-captain,
 The prating Sea-captain,
 The Captain who's worst of all.

 If thou goest into the Library
 Three good things will thee befall,--
 Very good books, and very good air,
 And M*c**l*y, who's best of all,
 The virtuous M*c**l*y,
 The prudent M*c**l*y,
 M*c**l*y who's best of all.

Oh, how I am worked! I never see Fanny from Sunday to Sunday. All my
civilities wait for that blessed day; and I have so many scores of
visits to pay that I can scarcely find time for any of that Sunday
reading in which, like Nancy, I am in the habit of indulging.
Yesterday, as soon as I was fixed in my best and had breakfasted, I
paid a round of calls to all my friends who had the cholera. Then I
walked to all the clubs of which I am a member, to see the newspapers.
The first of these two works you will admit to be a work of mercy;
the second, in a political man, one of necessity. Then, like a good
brother, I walked under a burning sun to Kensington to ask Fanny how
she did, and stayed there two hours. Then I went to Knightsbridge to
call on Mrs. Listen and chatted with her till it was time to go and
dine at the Athenaeum. Then I dined, and after dinner, like a good
young man, I sate and read Bishop Heber's journal till bedtime. There
is a Sunday for you! I think that I excel in the diary lire. I will
keep a journal like the Bishop, that my memory may

 "Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust."

Next Sunday I am to go to Lord Lansdowne's at Richmond, so that I hope
to have something to tell you. But on second thoughts I will tell you
nothing, nor ever will write to you again, nor ever speak to you
again. I have no pleasure in writing to undutiful sisters. Why do you
not send me longer letters? But I am at the end of my paper, so that I
have no more room to scold.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

London: August 14, 1832.

My dear Sisters,--Our work is over at last; not, however, till it has
half killed us all.[On the 8th August, 1832, Macaulay writes to Lord
Mahon: "We are now strictly on duty. No furloughs even for a dinner
engagement, or a sight of Taglioni's legs, can be obtained. It is very
hard to keep forty members in the House. Sibthorpe and Leader are on
the watch to count us out; and from six till two we never venture
further than the smoking-room without apprehension. In spite of all
our exertions the end of the Session seems further and further off
every day. If you would do me the favour of inviting Sibthorpe to
Chevening Park you might be the means of saving my life, and that of
thirty or forty more of us who are forced to swallow the last dregs of
the oratory of this Parliament; and nauseous dregs they are."] On
Saturday we met,--for the last time, I hope, on business. When the
House rose, I set off for Holland House. We had a small party, but a
very distinguished one. Lord Grey, the Chancellor, Lord Palmerston,
Luttrell, and myself were the only guests. Allen was of course at the
end of the table, carving the dinner and sparring with my Lady. The
dinner was not so good as usual; for the French cook was ill; and her
Ladyship kept up a continued lamentation during the whole repast. I
should never have found out that everything was not as it should be
but for her criticisms. The soup was too salt; the cutlets were not
exactly comme il faut; and the pudding was hardly enough boiled. I was
amused to hear from the splendid mistress of such a house the same
sort of apologies which -- made when her cook forgot the joint, and
sent up too small a dinner to table. I told Luttrell that it was a
comfort to me to find that no rank was exempted from these
afflictions.

They talked about --'s marriage. Lady Holland vehemently defended the
match; and, when Allen said that -- had caught a Tartar, she quite
went off into one of her tantrums: "She a Tartar! Such a charming girl
a Tartar! He is a very happy man, and your language is insufferable:
insufferable, Mr. Allen." Lord Grey had all the trouble in the world
to appease her. His influence, however, is very great. He prevailed on
her to receive Allen again into favour, and to let Lord Holland have a
slice of melon, for which he had been petitioning most piteously, but
which she had steadily refused on account of his gout. Lord Holland
thanked Lord Grey for his intercession.. "Ah, Lord Grey, I wish you
were always here. It is a fine thing to be Prime Minister." This
tattle is worth nothing, except to show how much the people whose
names will fill the history of our times resemble, in all essential
matters, the quiet folks who live in Mecklenburg Square and Brunswick
Square.

I slept in the room which was poor Mackintosh's. The next day, Sunday,
-- came to dinner. He scarcely ever speaks in the society of Holland
House. Rogers, who is the bitterest and most cynical observer of
little traits of character that ever I knew-, once said to me of him:
"Observe that man. He never talks to men; he never talks to girls;
but, when he can get into a circle of old tabbies, he is just in his
element. He will sit clacking with an old woman for hours together.
That always settles my opinion of a young fellow."

I am delighted to find that you like my review on Mirabeau, though I
am angry with Margaret for grumbling at my Scriptural allusions, and
still more angry with Nancy for denying my insight into character. It
is one of my strong points. If she knew how far I see into hers, she
would he ready to hang herself. Ever yours

T. B. M.


To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay.

London: August 16, 1832,

My dear Sisters,--We begin to see a hope of liberation. To-morrow, or
on Saturday at furthest, the hope to finish our business. I did not
reach home till four this morning, after a most fatiguing and yet
rather amusing night. What passed will not find its way into the
papers, as the gallery was locked during most of the time. So I will
tell you the story.

There is a bill before the House prohibiting those processions of
Orangemen which have excited a good deal of irritation in Ireland.
This bill was committed yesterday night. Shaw, the Recorder of Dublin,
an honest man enough, but a bitter Protestant fanatic, complained that
it should be brought forward so late in the Session. Several of his
friends, he said, had left London believing that the measure had been
abandoned. It appeared, however, that Stanley and Lord Althorp had
given fair notice of their intention; so that, if the absent members
had been mistaken, the fault was their own; and the House was for
going on. Shaw said warmly that he would resort to all the means of
delay in his power, and moved that the chairman should leave the
chair. The motion was negatived by forty votes to two. Then the first
clause was read. Shaw divided the House again on that clause. He was
beaten by the same majority. He moved again that the chairman should
leave the chair. He was beaten again. He divided on the second clause.
He was beaten again. He then said that he was sensible that he was
doing very wrong; that his conduct was unhandsome and vexatious; that
he heartily begged our pardons; but that he had said that he would
delay the bill as far as the forms of the House would permit; and that
he must keep his word. Now came a discussion by which Nancy, if she
had been in the ventilator, [A circular ventilator, in the roof of the
House of Commons, was the only Ladies' Gallery that existed in the
year 1832.] might have been greatly edified, touching the nature of
vows; whether a man's promise given to himself,--a promise from which
nobody could reap any advantage, and which everybody wished him to
violate,--constituted an obligation. Jephtha's daughter was a case in
point, and was cited by somebody sitting near me. Peregrine Courtenay
on one side of the House, and Lord Palmerston on the other, attempted
to enlighten the poor Orangeman on the question of casuistry. They
might as well have preached to any madman out of St. Luke's. "I feel,"
said the silly creature, "that I am doing wrong, and acting very
unjustifiably. If gentlemen will forgive me, I will never do so again.
But I must keep my word." We roared with laughter every time he
repeated his apologies. The orders of the House do not enable any
person absolutely to stop the progress of a bill in Committee, but
they enable him to delay it grievously. We divided seventeen times,
and between every division this vexatious Irishman made us a speech of
apologies and self-condemnation. Of the two who had supported him at
the beginning of his freak one soon sneaked away. The other,
Sibthorpe, stayed to the last, not expressing remorse like Shaw, but
glorying in the unaccommodating temper he showed and in the delay
which he produced. At last the bill went through. Then Shaw rose;
congratulated himself that his vow was accomplished; said that the
only atonement he could make for conduct so unjustifiable was to vow
that he would never make such a vow again; promised to let the bill go
through its future stages without any more divisions; and contented
himself with suggesting one or two alterations in the details. "I hint
at these amendments," he said. "If the Secretary for Ireland approves
of them, I hope he will not refrain from introducing them because they
are brought forward by me. I am sensible that I have forfeited all
claim to the favour of the House. I will not divide on any future
stage of the bill." We were all heartily pleased with these events;
for the truth was that the seventeen divisions occupied less time than
a real hard debate would have done, and were infinitely more amusing.
The oddest part of the business is that Shaw's frank good-natured way
of proceeding, absurd as it was, has made him popular. He was never so
great a favourite with the House as after harassing it for two or
three hours with the most frivolous opposition. This is a curious
trait of the House of Commons. Perhaps you will find this long story,
which I have not time to read over again, very stupid and
unintelligible. But I have thought it my duty to set before you the
evil consequences of making vows rashly, and adhering to them
superstitiously; for in truth, my Christian brethren, or rather my
Christian sisters, let us consider &c. &c. &c.

But I reserve the sermon on promises, which I had to preach, for
another occasion.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah and Margaret Macaulay

London: August 17, 1832.

My dear Sisters,--I brought down my story of Holland House to
dinnertime on Saturday evening. To resume my narrative, I slept there
on Sunday night. On Monday morning, after breakfast, I walked to town
with Luttrell, whom I found a delightful companion. Before we went, we
sate and chatted with Lord Holland in the library for a quarter of an
hour. He was very entertaining. He gave us an account of a visit which
he paid long ago to the Court of Denmark; and of King Christian, the
madman, who was at last deprived of all real share in the government
on account of his infirmity. "Such a Tom of Bedlam I never saw," said
Lord Holland. "One day the Neapolitan Ambassador came to the levee,
and made a profound bow to his Majesty. His Majesty bowed still lower.
The Neapolitan bowed down his head almost to the ground; when, behold!
the King clapped his hands on his Excellency's shoulders, and jumped
over him like a boy playing at leap-frog. Another day the English
Ambassador was sitting opposite the King at dinner. His Majesty asked
him to take wine. The glasses were filled. The Ambassador bowed, and
put the wine to his lips. The King grinned hideously and threw his
wine into the face of one of the footmen. The other guests kept the
most profound gravity; but the Englishman, who had but lately come to
Copenhagen, though a practised diplomatist, could not help giving some
signs of astonishment. The King immediately addressed him in French:
'Eh, mais, Monsieur l'Envoye d'Angleterre, qu'avez-vous done? Pourquoi
riez-vous? Est-ce qu'il y'ait quelque chose qui vous ait diverti?
Faites-moi le plaisir de me l'indiquer. J'aime beaucoup les
ridicules.'"

Parliament is up at last. We official men are now left alone at the
West End of London, and are making up for our long confinement in the
mornings by feasting together at night. On Wednesday I dined with
Labouchere at his official residence in Somerset House. It is well
that he is a bachelor; for he tells me that the ladies his neighbours
make bitter complaints of the unfashionable situation in which they
are cruelly obliged to reside gratis. Yesterday I dined with Will
Brougham, and an official party, in Mount Street. We are going to
establish a Club, to be confined to members of the House of Commons in
place under the present Government, who are to dine together weekly at
Grillon's Hotel, and to settle the affairs of the State better, I
hope, than our masters at their Cabinet dinners.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: September 20, 1832

My dear Sister,--I am at home again from Leeds, where everything is
going on as well as possible. I, and most of my friends, feel sanguine
as to the result. About half my day was spent in speaking, and hearing
other people speak; in squeezing and being squeezed; in shaking hands
with people whom I never saw before, and whose faces and names I
forget within a minute after being introduced to them. The rest was
passed in conversation with my leading friends, who are very honest
substantial manufacturers. They feed me on roast beef and Yorkshire
pudding; at night they put me into capital bedrooms; and the only
plague which they give me is that they are always begging me to
mention some food or wine for which I have a fancy, or some article of
comfort and convenience which I may wish them to procure.

I travelled to town with a family of children who ate without
intermission from Market Harborough, where they got into the coach, to
the Peacock at Islington, where they got out of it. They breakfasted
as if they had fasted all the preceding day. They dined as if they
had never breakfasted. They ate on the road one large basket of
sandwiches, another of fruit, and a boiled fowl; besides which there
was not an orange-girl, an old man with cakes, or a boy with
filberts, who came to the coach-side when we stopped to change horses,
of whom they did not buy something.

I am living here by myself with no society, or scarcely any, except my
books. I read a play of Calderon before I breakfast; then look over
the newspaper; frank letters; scrawl a line or two to a foolish girl
in Leicestershire; and walk to my Office. There I stay till near five,
examining claims of money-lenders on the native sovereigns of India,
and reading Parliamentary papers. I am beginning to understand
something about the Bank, and hope, when next I go to Rothley Temple,
to be a match for the whole firm of Mansfield and Babington on
questions relating to their own business. When I leave the Board, I
walk for two hours; then I dine; and I end the day quietly over a
basin of tea and a novel.

On Saturday I go to Holland House, and stay there till Monday. Her
Ladyship wants me to take up my quarters almost entirely there; but I
love my own chambers and independence, and am neither qualified nor
inclined to succeed Allen in his post. On Friday week, that is to-
morrow week, I shall go for three days to Sir George Philips's, at
Weston, in Warwickshire. He has written again in terms half
complaining; and, though I can ill spare time for the visit, yet, as
he was very kind to me when his kindness was of some consequence to
me, I cannot, and will not, refuse.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay

London: September 25, 1832.

My dear Sister,--I went on Saturday to Holland House, and stayed there
Sunday. It was legitimate Sabbath employment,--visiting the sick,--
which, as you well know, always stands first among the works of mercy
enumerated in good books. My Lord was ill, and my Lady thought herself
so. He was, during the greater part of the day, in bed. For a few
hours he lay on his sofa, wrapped in flannels. I sate by him about
twenty minutes, and was then ordered away. He was very weak and
languid; and, though the torture of the gout was over, was still in
pain; but he retained all his courage, and all his sweetness of
temper. I told his sister that I did not think that he was suffering
much. "I hope not," said she; "but it is impossible to judge by what
he says; for through the sharpest pain of the attack he never
complained." I admire him more, I think, than any man whom I know. He
is only fifty-seven, or fifty-eight. He is precisely the man to whom
health would be particularly valuable; for he has the keenest zest for
those pleasures which health would enable him to enjoy. He is,
however, an invalid, and a cripple. He passes some weeks of every year
in extreme torment. When he is in his best health he can only limp a
hundred yards in a day. Yet he never says a cross word. The sight of
him spreads good humour over the face of every one who comes near him.
His sister, an excellent old maid as ever lived, and the favourite of
all the young people of her acquaintance, says that it is quite a
pleasure to nurse him. She was reading the "Inheritance" to him as he
lay in bed, and he enjoyed it amazingly. She is a famous reader; more
quiet and less theatrical than most famous readers, and therefore the
fitter for the bed-side of a sick man. Her Ladyship had fretted
herself into being ill,  could eat nothing but the breast of a
partridge, and was frightened out of her wits by hearing a dog howl.
She was sure that this noise portended her death, or my Lord's.
Towards the evening, however, she brightened up, and was in very good
spirits. My visit was not very lively. They dined at four, and the
company was, as you may suppose at this season, but scanty. Charles
Greville, commonly called, heaven knows why, Punch Greville, came on
the Saturday. Byng, named from his hair Poodle Byng, came on the
Sunday. Allen, like the poor, we had with us always. I was grateful,
however, for many pleasant evenings passed there when London was full,
and Lord Holland out of bed. I therefore did my best to keep the house
alive. I had the library and the delightful gardens to myself during
most of the day, and I got through my visit very well.

News you have in the papers. Poor Scott is gone, and I cannot be sorry
for it. A powerful mind in ruins is the most heart-breaking thing
which it is possible to conceive. Ferdinand of Spain is gone too; and,
I fear, old Mr. Stephen is going fast. I am safe at Leeds. Poor Hyde
Villiers is very ill. I am seriously alarmed about him. Kindest love
to all.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

Weston House: September 29, 1832.

My dear Sister,--I came hither yesterday, and found a handsome house,
pretty grounds, and a very kind host and hostess. The house is really
very well planned. I do not know that I have ever seen so happy an
imitation of the domestic architecture of Elizabeth's reign. The
oriels, towers, terraces, and battlements are in the most perfect
keeping; and the building is as convenient within as it is picturesque
without. A few weather-stains, or a few American creepers, and a
little ivy, would make it perfect; and all that will come, I suppose,
with time. The terrace is my favourite spot. I always liked "the trim
gardens" of which Milton speaks, and thought that Brown and his
imitators went too far in bringing forests and sheep-walks up to the
very windows of drawing-rooms.

I came through Oxford. It was as beautiful a day as the second day of
our visit, and the High Street was in all its glory. But it made me
quite sad to find myself there without you and Margaret. All my old
Oxford associations are gone. Oxford, instead of being, as it used to
be, the magnificent old city of the seventeenth century,--still
preserving its antique character among the improvements of modern
times, and exhibiting in the midst of upstart Birminghams and
Manchesters the same aspect which it wore when Charles held his court
at Christchurch, and Rupert led his cavalry over Magdalene Bridge, is
now to me only the place where I was so happy with my little sisters.
But I was restored to mirth, and even to indecorous mirth, by what
happened after we had left the fine old place behind us. There was a
young fellow of about five-and-twenty, mustachioed and smartly
dressed, in the coach with me. He was not absolutely uneducated; for
he was reading a novel, the Hungarian brothers, the whole way. We
rode, as I told you, through the High Street. The coach stopped to
dine; and this youth passed half an hour in the midst of that city of
palaces. He looked about him with his mouth open, as he re-entered the
coach, and all the while that we were driving away past the Ratcliffe
Library, the Great Court of All Souls, Exeter, Lincoln, Trinity,
Balliol, and St. John's. When we were about a mile on the road he
spoke the first words that I had heard him utter. "That was a pretty
town enough. Pray, sir, what is it called?" I could not answer him for
laughing; but he seemed quite unconscious of his own absurdity.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

During all the period covered by this correspondence the town of Leeds
was alive with the agitation of a turbulent, but not very dubious,
contest. Macaulay's relations with the electors whose votes he was
courting are too characteristic to be omitted altogether from the
story of his life; though the style of his speeches and manifestoes is
more likely to excite the admiring envy of modern members of
Parliament, than to be taken as a model for their communications to
their own constituents. This young politician, who depended on office
for his bread, and on a seat in the House of Commons for office,
adopted from the first an attitude of high and almost peremptory
independence which would have sat well on a Prime Minister in his
grand climacteric. The following letter, (some passages of which have
been here omitted, and others slightly condensed,) is strongly marked
in every line with the personal qualities of the writer.

London: August 3, 1832.

"My dear Sir,--I am truly happy to find that the opinion of my friends
at Leeds on the subject of canvassing agrees with that which I have
long entertained. The practice of begging for votes is, as it seems to
me, absurd, pernicious, and altogether at variance with the true
principles of representative government. The suffrage of an elector
ought not to be asked, or to be given as a personal favour. It is as
much for the interest of constituents to choose well, as it can be for
the interest of a candidate to be chosen. To request an honest man to
vote according to his conscience is superfluous. To request him to
vote against his conscience is an insult. The practice of canvassing
is quite reasonable under a system in which men are sent to Parliament
to serve themselves. It is the height of absurdity under a system
under which men are sent to Parliament to serve the public. While we
had only a mock representation, it was natural enough that this
practice should be carried to a great extent. I trust it will soon
perish with the abuses from which it sprung. I trust that the great
and intelligent body of people who have obtained the elective
franchise will see that seats in the House of Commons ought not to be
given, like rooms in an almshouse, to urgency of solicitation; and
that a man who surrenders his vote to caresses and supplications
forgets his duty as much as if he sold it for a bank-note. I hope to
see the day when an Englishman will think it as great an affront to be
courted and fawned upon in his capacity of elector as in his capacity
of juryman. He would be shocked at the thought of finding an unjust
verdict because the plaintiff or the defendant had been very civil and
pressing; and, if he would reflect, he would, I think, be equally
shocked at the thought of voting for a candidate for whose public
character he felt no esteem, merely because that candidate had called
upon him, and begged very hard, and had shaken his hand very warmly.
My conduct is before the electors of Leeds. My opinions shall on all
occasions be stated to them with perfect frankness. If they approve
that conduct, if they concur in those opinions, they ought, not for my
sake, but for their own, to choose me as their member. To be so
chosen, I should indeed consider as a high and enviable honour; but I
should think it no honour to be returned to Parliament by persons who,
thinking me destitute of the requisite qualifications, had yet been
wrought upon by cajolery and importunity to poll for me in despite of
their better judgment.

"I wish to add a few words touching a question which has lately been
much canvassed; I mean the question of pledges. In this letter, and in
every letter which I have written to my friends at Leeds, I have
plainly declared my opinions. But I think it, at this conjuncture, my
duty to declare that I will give no pledges. I will not bind myself to
make or to support any particular motion. I will state as shortly as I
can some of the reasons which have induced me to form this
determination. The great beauty of the representative system is, that
it unites the advantages of popular control with the advantages
arising from a division of labour. Just as a physician understands
medicine better than an ordinary man, just as a shoemaker makes shoes
better than an ordinary man, so a person whose life is passed in
transacting affairs of State becomes a better statesman than an
ordinary man. In politics, as well as every other department of life,
the public ought to have the means of checking those who serve it. If
a man finds that he derives no benefit from the prescription of his
physician, he calls in another. If his shoes do not fit him, he
changes his shoemaker. But when he has called in a physician of whom
he hears a good report, and whose general practice he believes to be
judicious, it would be absurd in him to tie down that physician to
order particular pills and particular draughts. While he continues to
be the customer of a shoemaker, it would be absurd in him to sit by
and mete every motion of that shoemaker's hand. And in the same
manner, it would, I think, be absurd in him to require positive
pledges, and to exact daily and hourly obedience, from his
representative. My opinion is, that electors ought at first to choose
cautiously; then to confide liberally; and, when the term for which
they have selected their member has expired, to review his conduct
equitably, and to pronounce on the whole taken together.

"If the people of Leeds think proper to repose in me that confidence
which is necessary to the proper discharge of the duties of a
representative, I hope that I shall not abuse it. If it be their
pleasure to fetter their members by positive promises, it is in their
power to do so. I can only say that on such terms I cannot
conscientiously serve them.

"I hope, and feel assured, that the sincerity with which I make this
explicit declaration, will, if it deprive me of the votes of my
friends at Leeds, secure to me what I value far more highly, their
esteem.

"Believe me ever, my dear Sir,

"Your most faithful Servant,

"T. B. MACAULAY."

This frank announcement, taken by many as a slight, and by some as a
downright challenge, produced remonstrances which, after the interval
of a week, were answered by Macaulay in a second letter; worth
reprinting if it were only for the sake of his fine parody upon the
popular cry which for two years past had been the watchword of
Reformers.

"I was perfectly aware that the avowal of my feelings on the subject
of pledges was not likely to advance my interest at Leeds. I was
perfectly aware that many of my most respectable friends were likely
to differ from me; and therefore I thought it the more necessary to
make, uninvited, an explicit declaration of my feelings. If ever there
was a time when public men were in an especial measure _bound to speak
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth_, to the people,
this is that time. Nothing is easier than for a candidate to avoid
unpopular topics as long as possible, and, when they are forced on
him, to take refuge in evasive and unmeaning phrases. Nothing is
easier than for him to give extravagant promises while an election is
depending, and to forget them as soon as the return is made. I will
take no such course. I do not wish to obtain a single vote on false
pretences. Under the old system I have never been the flatterer of the
great. Under the new system I will not be the flatterer of the people.
The truth, or what appears to me to be such, may sometimes be
distasteful to those whose good opinion I most value. I shall
nevertheless always abide by it, and trust to their good sense, to
their second thoughts, to the force of reason, and the progress of
time. If, after all, their decision should be unfavourable to me, I
shall submit to that decision with fortitude and good humour. It is
not necessary to my happiness that I should sit in Parliament; but it
is necessary to my happiness that I should possess, in Parliament or
out of Parliament, the consciousness of having done what is right."

Macaulay had his own ideas as to the limits within which constituents
are justified in exerting their privilege of questioning a candidate;
and, on the first occasion when those limits were exceeded, he made a
notable example of the transgressor. During one of his public
meetings, a voice was heard to exclaim from the crowd in the body of
the hall: "An elector wishes to know the religious creed of Mr.
Marshall and Mr. Macaulay." The last-named gentleman was on his legs
in a moment. "Let that man stand up!" he cried. "Let him stand on a
form, where I can see him!" The offender, who proved to be a Methodist
preacher, was heisted on to a bench by his indignant neighbours;
nerving himself even in that terrible moment by a lingering hope that
he might yet be able to hold his own. But the unhappy man had not a
chance against Macaulay, who harangued him as if he were the living
embodiment of religious intolerance and illegitimate curiosity. "I
have heard with the greatest shame and sorrow the question which has
been proposed to me; and with peculiar pain do I learn that this
question was proposed by a minister of religion. I do most deeply
regret that any person should think it necessary to make a meeting
like this an arena for theological discussion. I will not be a party
to turning this assembly to such a purpose. My answer is short, and in
one word. Gentlemen, I am a Christian." At this declaration the
delighted audience began to cheer; but Macaulay would have none of
their applause. "This is no subject," he said, "for acclamation. I
will say no more. No man shall speak of me as the person who, when
this disgraceful inquisition was entered upon in an assembly of
Englishmen, brought forward the most sacred subjects to be canvassed
here, and be turned into a matter for hissing or for cheering. If on
any future occasion it should happen that Mr. Carlile should favour
any large meeting with his infidel attacks upon the Gospel, he shall
not have it to say that I set the example. Gentlemen, I have done; I
tell you, I will say no more; and if the person who has thought fit to
ask this question has the feelings worthy of a teacher of religion, he
will not, I think, rejoice that he has called me forth."

This ill-fated question had been prompted by a report, diligently
spread through the town, that the Whig candidates were Unitarians; a
report which, even if correct, would probably have done little to
damage their electioneering prospects. There are few general remarks
which so uniformly hold good as the observation that men are not
willing to attend the religious worship of people who believe less
than themselves, or to vote at elections for people who believe more
than themselves. While the congregations at a high Anglican service
are in part composed of Low churchmen and Broad churchmen; while
Presbyterians and Wesleyans have no objection to a sound discourse
from a divine of the Establishment; it is seldom the case that any but
Unitarians are seen inside a Unitarian chapel. On the other hand, at
the general election of 1874, when not a solitary Roman Catholic was
returned throughout the length and breadth of the island of Great
Britain, the Unitarians retained their long acknowledged pre-eminence
as the most over-represented sect in the kingdom.

While Macaulay was stern in his refusal to gratify his electors with
the customary blandishments, he gave them plenty of excellent
political instruction; which he conveyed to them in rhetoric, not
premeditated with the care that alone makes speeches readable after a
lapse of years, but for this very reason all the more effective when
the passion of the moment was pouring itself from his lips in a stream
of faultless, but unstudied, sentences. A course of mobs, which turned
Cobden into an orator, made of Macaulay a Parliamentary debater; and
the ear and eye of the House of Commons soon detected, in his replies
from the Treasury bench, welcome signs of the invaluable training that
can be got nowhere except on the hustings and the platform. There is
no better sample of Macaulay's extempore speaking than the first words
which he addressed to his committee at Leeds after the Reform Bill had
received the Royal assent. "I find it difficult to express my
gratification at seeing such an assembly convened at such a time. All
the history of our own country, all the history of other countries,
furnishes nothing parallel to it. Look at the great events in our own
former history, and in every one of them, which, for importance, we
can venture to compare with the Reform Bill, we shall find something
to disgrace and tarnish the achievement. It was by the assistance of
French arms and of Roman bulls that King John was harassed into giving
the Great Charter. In the times of Charles I., how much injustice, how
much crime, how much bloodshed and misery, did it cost to assert the
liberties of England! But in this event, great and important as it is
in substance, I confess I think it still more important from the
manner in which it has been achieved. Other countries have obtained
deliverances equally signal and complete, but in no country has that
deliverance been obtained with such perfect peace; so entirely within
the bounds of the Constitution; with all the forms of law observed;
the government of the country proceeding in its regular course; every
man going forth unto his labour until the evening. France boasts of
her three days of July, when her people rose, when barricades fenced
the streets, and the entire population of the capital in grins
successfully vindicated their liberties. They boast, and justly, of
those three days of July; but I will boast of our ten days of May. We,
too, fought a battle, but it was with moral arms. We, too, placed an
impassable barrier between ourselves and military tyranny; but we
fenced ourselves only with moral barricades. Not one crime committed,
not one acre confiscated, not one life lost, not one instance of
outrage or attack on the authorities or the laws. Our victory has not
left a single family in mourning. Not a tear, not a drop of blood, has
sullied the pacific and blameless triumph of a great people."

The Tories of Leeds, as a last resource, fell to denouncing Macaulay
as a placeman; a stroke of superlative audacity in a party which,
during eight-and-forty years, had been out of office for only fourteen
months. It may well be imagined that he found plenty to say in his own
defence. "The only charge which malice can prefer against me is that I
am a placeman. Gentlemen, is it your wish that those persons who are
thought worthy of the public confidence should never possess the
confidence of the King? Is it your wish that no men should be
Ministers but those whom no populous places will take as their
representatives? By whom, I ask, has the Reform Bill been carried? By
Ministers. Who have raised Leeds into the situation to return members
to Parliament? It is by the strenuous efforts of a patriotic Ministry
that that great result has been produced. I should think that the
Reform Bill had done little for the people, if under it the service of
the people was not consistent with the service of the Crown."

Just before the general election Hyde Villiers died, and the
Secretaryship to the Board of Control became vacant. Macaulay
succeeded his old college friend in an office that gave him weighty
responsibility, defined duties, and, as it chanced, exceptional
opportunities for distinction. About the same time, an event occurred
which touched him more nearly than could any possible turn of fortune
in the world of politics. His sisters Hannah and Margaret had for some
months been almost domesticated among a pleasant nest of villas which
lie in the southern suburb of Liverpool, on Dingle Bank; a spot whose
natural beauty nothing can spoil, until in the fulness of time its
inevitable destiny shall convert it into docks. The young ladies were
the guests of Mr. John Cropper, who belonged to the Society of
Friends, a circumstance which readers who have got thus far into the
Macaulay correspondence will doubtless have discovered for themselves.
Before the visit was over, Margaret became engaged to the brother of
her host, Mr. Edward Cropper, a man in every respect worthy of the
personal esteem and the commercial prosperity which have fallen to his
lot.

There are many who will be surprised at finding in Macaulay's letters,
both now and hereafter, indications of certain traits in his
disposition with which the world, knowing him only through his
political actions and his published works, may perhaps be slow to
credit him; but which, taking his life as a whole, were predominant in
their power to affect his happiness and give matter for his thoughts.
Those who are least partial to him will allow that his was essentially
a virile intellect. He wrote, he thought, he spoke, he acted, like a
man. The public regarded him as an impersonation of vigour, vivacity,
and self-reliance; but his own family, together with one, and probably
only one, of his friends, knew that his affections were only too
tender, and his sensibilities only too acute. Others may well be loth
to parade what he concealed; but a portrait of Macaulay, from which
these features were omitted, would be imperfect to the extent of
misrepresentation; and it must be acknowledged that, where he loved,
he loved more entirely, and more exclusively, than was well for
himself. It was improvident in him to concentrate such intensity of
feeling upon relations who, however deeply they were attached to him,
could not always be in a position to requite him with the whole of
their time, and the whole of their heart. He suffered much for that
improvidence; but he was too just and too kind to permit that others
should suffer with him; and it is not for one who obtained by
inheritance a share of his inestimable affection to regret a weakness
to which he considers himself by duty bound to refer.

How keenly Macaulay felt the separation from his sister it is
impossible to do more than indicate. He never again recovered that
tone of thorough boyishness, which had been produced by a long
unbroken habit of gay and affectionate intimacy with those younger
than himself; indulged in without a suspicion on the part of any
concerned that it was in its very nature transitory and precarious.
For the first time he was led to doubt whether his scheme of life was
indeed a wise one; or, rather, he began to be aware that he had never
laid out any scheme of life at all. But with that unselfishness which
was the key to his character and to much of his career, (resembling in
its quality what we sometimes admire in a woman, rather than what we
ever detect in a man,) he took successful pains to conceal his
distress from those over whose happiness it otherwise could not have
failed to cast a shadow.

"The attachment between brothers and sisters," he writes in November
1832, "blameless, amiable, and delightful as it is, is so liable to be
superseded by other attachments that no wise man ought to suffer it to
become indispensable to him. That women shall leave the home of their
birth, and contract ties dearer than those of consanguinity, is a law
as ancient as the first records of the history of our race, and as
unchangeable as the constitution of the human body and mind. To repine
against the nature of things, and against the great fundamental law of
all society, because, in consequence of my own want of foresight, it
happens to bear heavily on me, would be the basest and most absurd
selfishness.

"I have still one more stake to lose. There remains one event for
which, when it arrives, I shall, I hope, be prepared. From that
moment, with a heart formed, if ever any man's heart was formed, for
domestic happiness, I shall have nothing left in this world but
ambition. There is no wound, however, which time and necessity will
not render endurable; and, after all, what am I more than my fathers,--
than the millions and tens of millions who have been weak enough to
pay double price for some favourite number in the lottery of life, and
who have suffered double disappointment when their ticket came up a
blank?"

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

Leeds: December 12, 1832

My dear Sister,--The election here is going on as well as possible.
Today the poll stands thus:

 Marshall     Macaulay     Sadler
  1,804        1,792        1,353

The probability is that Sadler will give up the contest. If he
persists, he will be completely beaten. The voters are under 4,000 in
number; those who have already polled are 3,100; and about five
hundred will not poll at all. Even if we were not to bring up another
man, the probability is that we should win. On Sunday morning early I
hope to be in London; and I shall see you in the course of the day.

I had written thus far when your letter was delivered to me. I am
sitting in the midst of two hundred friends, all mad with exultation
and party spirit, all glorying over the Tories, and thinking me the
happiest man in the world. And it is all that I can do to hide my
tears, and to command my voice, when it is necessary for me to reply
to their congratulations. Dearest, dearest sister, you alone are now
left to me. Whom have I on earth but thee? But for you, in the midst
of all these successes, I should wish that I were lying by poor Hyde
Villiers. But I cannot go on. I am wanted to waste an address to the
electors; and I shall lay it on Sadler pretty heavily. By what strange
fascination is it that ambition and resentment exercise such power
over minds which ought to be superior to them? I despise myself for
feeling so bitterly towards this fellow as I do. But the separation
from dear Margaret has jarred my whole temper. I am cried up here to
the skies as the most affable and kind-hearted of then, while I feel a
fierceness and restlessness within me, quite new, and almost
inexplicable.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: December 24, 1832.

My dear Sister,--I am much obliged to you for your letter, and am
gratified by all its contents, except what you say about your own
cough. As soon as you come back, you shall see Dr. Chambers, if you
are not quite well. Do not oppose me in this; for I have set my heart
on it. I dined on Saturday at Lord Essex's in Belgrave Square. But
never was there such a take-in. I had been given to understand that
his Lordship's cuisine was superintended by the first French artists,
and that I should find there all the luxuries of the Almanach des
Gourmands. What a mistake! His lordship is luxurious, indeed, but in
quite a different way. He is a true Englishman. Not a dish on his
table but what Sir Roger de Coverley, or Sir Hugh Tyrold, [The uncle
of Miss Burney's Camilla.] might have set before his guests. A huge
haunch of venison on the sideboard; a magnificent piece of beef at the
bottom of the table; and before my Lord himself smoked, not a dindon
aux truffes, but a fat roasted goose stuffed with sage and onions. I
was disappointed, but very agreeably; for my tastes are, I fear,
incurably vulgar, as you may perceive by my fondness for Mrs. Meeke's
novels.

Our party consisted of Sharp; Lubbock; Watson, M.P. for Canterbury;
and Rich, the author of "What will the Lords do?" who wishes to be M.
P. for Knaresborough. Rogers was to have been of the party; but his
brother chose that very day to die upon, so that poor Sam had to
absent himself. The Chancellor was also invited, but he had scampered
off to pass his Christmas with his old mother in Westmoreland. We had
some good talk, particularly about Junius's Letters. I learned some
new facts which I will tell you when we meet. I am more and more
inclined to believe that Francis was one of the people principally
concerned.

Ever yours

T.B. M.

On the 29th of January, 1833, commenced the first Session of the
Reformed Parliament. The main incidents of that Session, so fruitful
in great measures of public utility, belong to general history; if
indeed Clio herself is not fated to succumb beneath the stupendous
undertaking of turning Hansard into a narrative imbued with human
interest. O'Connell,--criticising the King's speech at vast length,
and passing in turns through every mood from the most exquisite pathos
to downright and undisguised ferocity,--at once plunged the House into
a discussion on Ireland, which alternately blazed and smouldered
through four livelong nights. Shed and Grattan spoke finely; Peel and
Stanley admirably; Bulwer made the first of his successes, and Cobbett
the second of his failures; but the longest and the loudest cheers
were those which greeted each of the glowing periods in which
Macaulay, as the champion of the Whig party, met the great agitator
face to face with high, but not intemperate, defiance.["We are called
base, and brutal, and bloody. Such are the epithets which the
honourable and learned member for Dublin thinks it becoming to pour
forth against the party to which he owes every political privilege
that he enjoys. The time will come when history will do justice to the
Whigs of England, and will faithfully relate how much they did and
suffered for Ireland. I see on the benches near me men who might, by
uttering one word against Catholic Emancipation.--nay, by merely
abstaining from uttering a word in favour of Catholic Emancipation,--
have been returned to this House without difficulty or expense, and
who, rather than wrong their Irish fellow-subjects, were content to
relinquish all the objects of their honourable ambition, and to retire
into private life with conscience and fame untarnished. As to one
eminent person, who seems to be regarded with especial malevolence by
those who ought never to mention his name without respect and
gratitude, I will only say this, that the loudest clamour which the
honourable and learned gentleman can excite against Lord Grey will be
trifling when compared with the clamour which Lord Grey withstood in
order to place the honourable and learned gentleman where he now sits.
Though a young member of the Whig party I will venture to speak in the
name of the whole body. I tell the honourable and learned gentleman,
that the same spirit which sustained us in a just contest for him will
sustain us in an equally just contest against him. Calumny, abuse,
royal displeasure, popular fury, exclusion from office, exclusion from
Parliament, we were ready to endure them all, rather than that he
should be less than a British subject. We never will suffer him to be
more."] In spite of this flattering reception, he seldom addressed the
House. A subordinate member of a Government, with plenty to do in his
own department, finds little temptation, and less encouragement, to
play the debater. The difference of opinion between the two Houses
concerning the Irish Church Temporalities Bill, which constituted the
crisis of the year, was the one circumstance that excited in
Macaulay's mind any very lively emotions; but those emotions, being
denied their full and free expression in the oratory of a partisan,
found vent in the doleful prognostications of a despairing patriot
which fill his letters throughout the months of June and July. His
abstinence from the passing topics of Parliamentary controversy
obtained for him a friendly, as well as an attentive, hearing from
both sides of the House whenever he spoke on his own subjects; and did
much to smooth the progress of those immense and salutary reforms with
which the Cabinet had resolved to accompany the renewal of the India
Company's Charter.

So rapid had been the march of events under that strange imperial
system established in the East by the enterprise and valour of three
generations of our countrymen, that each of the periodical revisions
of that system was, in effect, a revolution. The legislation of 1813
destroyed the monopoly of the Indian trade. In 1833 the time had
arrived when it was impossible any longer to maintain the monopoly of
the China trade; and the extinction of this remaining commercial
privilege could not fail to bring upon the Company commercial ruin.
Skill, and energy, and caution, however happily combined, would not
enable rulers who were governing a population larger than that
governed by Augustus, and making every decade conquests more extensive
than the conquests of Trajan, to compete with private merchants in an
open market. England, mindful of the inestimable debt which she owed
to the great Company, did not intend to requite her benefactors by
imposing on them a hopeless task. Justice and expediency could be
reconciled by one course, and one only;--that of buying up the assets
and liabilities of the Company on terms the favourable character of
which should represent the sincerity of the national gratitude.
Interest was to be paid from the Indian exchequer at the rate of ten
guineas a year on every hundred pounds of stock; the Company was
relieved of its commercial attributes, and became a corporation
charged with the function of ruling Hindoostan; and its directors, as
has been well observed, remained princes, but merchant princes no
longer.

The machinery required for carrying into effect this gigantic
metamorphosis was embodied in a bill every one of whose provisions
breathed the broad, the fearless, and the tolerant spirit with which
Reform had inspired our counsels. The earlier Sections placed the
whole property of the Company in trust for the Crown, and enacted that
"from and after the 22nd day of April 1834 the exclusive right of
trading with the dominions of the Emperor of China, and of trading in
tea, shall cease." Then came clauses which threw open the whole
continent of India as a place of residence for all subjects of his
Majesty; which pronounced the doom of Slavery; and which ordained that
no native of the British territories in the East should "by reason
only of his religion, place of birth, descent, or colour, be disabled
from holding any place, office, or employment." The measure was
introduced by Mr. Charles Grant, the President of the Board of
Control, and was read a second time on Wednesday the 10th July. On
that occasion Macaulay defended the bill in a thin House; a
circumstance which may surprise those who are not aware that on a
Wednesday, and with an Indian question on the paper, Cicero replying
to Hortensius would hardly draw a quorum. Small as it was, the
audience contained Lord John Russell, Peel, O'Connell, and other
masters in the Parliamentary craft. Their unanimous judgment was
summed up by Charles Grant, in words which every one who knows the
House of Commons will recognise as being very different from the
conventional verbiage of mutual senatorial flattery. "I must embrace
the opportunity of expressing, not what I felt, (for language could
not express it,) but of making an attempt to convey to the House my
sympathy with it in its admiration of the speech of my honourable and
learned friend; a speech which, I will venture to assert, has never
been exceeded within these walls for the development of statesmanlike
policy and practical good sense. It exhibited all that is noble in
oratory; all that is sublime, I had almost said, in poetry; all that
is truly great, exalted, and virtuous in human nature. If the House at
large felt a deep interest in this magnificent display, it may judge
of what were my emotions when I perceived in the hands of my honourable
friend the great principles which he expounded glowing with fresh
colours, and arrayed in all the beauty of truth."

There is no praise more gratefully treasured than that which is
bestowed by a generous chief upon a subordinate with whom he is on the
best of terms. Macaulay to the end entertained for Lord Glenelg that
sentiment of loyalty which a man of honour and feeling will always
cherish with regard to the statesman under whom he began his career as
a servant of the Crown. [The affinity between this sentiment and that
of the Quaestor towards his first Proconsul, so well described in the
Orations against Verres, is one among the innumerable points of
resemblance between the public life of ancient Rome and modern
England.] The Secretary repaid the President for his unvarying
kindness and confidence by helping him to get the bill through
committee with that absence of friction which is the pride and delight
of official men. The vexed questions of Establishment and Endowment,
(raised by the clauses appointing bishops to Madras and Bombay, and
balancing them with as many salaried Presbyterian chaplains,)
increased the length of the debates and the number of the divisions;
but the Government carried every point by large majorities, and, with
slight modifications in detail, and none in principle, the measure
became law with the almost universal approbation both of Parliament
and the country.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

House of Commons.
Monday night, half-past 12.

My dear Sister,--The papers will scarcely contain any account of what
passed yesterday in the House of Commons in the middle of the day.
Grant and I fought a battle with Briscoe and O'Connell in defence of
the Indian people, and won it by 38 to 6. It was a rascally claim of a
dishonest agent of the Company against the employers whom he had
cheated, and sold to their own tributaries. [In his great Indian
speech Macaulay referred to this affair, in a passage, the first
sentence of which has, by frequent quotation, been elevated into an
apophthegm: "A broken head in Cold Bath Fields produces a greater
sensation than three pitched battles in India. A few weeks ago we had
to decide on a claim brought by an individual against the revenues of
India. If it had been an English question the walls would scarcely
have held the members who would have flocked to the division. It was
an Indian question; and we could scarcely, by dint of supplication,
make a House."] The nephew of the original claimant has been pressing
his case on the Board most vehemently. He is an attorney living in
Russell Square, and very likely hears the word at St. John's Chapel.
He hears it however to very little purpose; for he lies as much as if
he went to hear a "cauld clatter of morality" at the parish church.

I remember that, when you were at Leamington two years ago, I used to
fill my letters with accounts of the people with whom I dined. High
life was new to me then; and now it has grown so familiar that I
should not, I fear, be able, as I formerly was, to select the striking
circumstances. I have dined with sundry great folks since you left
London, and I have attended a very splendid rout at Lord Grey's. I
stole thither, at about eleven, from the House of Commons with Stewart
Mackenzie. I do not mean to describe the beauty of the ladies, nor the
brilliancy of stars and uniforms. I mean only to tell you one
circumstance which struck, and even affected me. I was talking to Lady
Charlotte Lindsay, the daughter of Lord North, a great favourite of
mine, about the apartments and the furniture, when she said with a
good deal of emotion: "This is an interesting visit to me. I have
never been in this house for fifty years. It was here that I was
born; I left it a child when my father fell from power in 1782,
and I have never crossed the threshold since." Then she told me
how the rooms seemed dwindled to her; how the staircase, which
appeared to her in recollection to be the most spacious and
magnificent that she had ever seen, had disappointed her. She
longed, she said, to go over the garrets and rummage her old
nursery. She told me how, in the No-Popery riots of 1780, she was
taken out of bed at two o'clock in the morning. The mob threatened
Lord North's house. There were soldiers at the windows, and an
immense and furious crowd in Downing Street. She saw, she said,
from her nursery the fires in different parts of London; but she
did not understand the danger; and only exulted in being up at
midnight. Then she was conveyed through the Park to the Horse
Guards as the safest place; and was laid, wrapped up in blankets,
on the table in the guardroom in the midst of the officers. "And
it was such fun," she said, "that I have ever after had rather a
liking for insurrections."

I write in the midst of a crowd. A debate on Slavery is going on in
the Commons; a debate on Portugal in the Lords. The door is slamming
behind me every moment, and people are constantly going out and in.
Here comes Vernon Smith. "Well, Vernon, what are they doing?"
"Gladstone has just made a very good speech, and Howick is answering
him." "Aye, but in the House of Lords?" "They will beat us by twenty,
they say." "Well, I do not think it matters much." "No; nobody out of
the House of Lords cares either for Don Pedro, or for Don Miguel."

There is a conversation between two official men in the Library of the
House of Commons on the night of the 3rd June 1833, reported word for
word. To the historian three centuries hence this letter will be
invaluable. To you, ungrateful as you are, it will seem worthless.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

Smoking-Room of the House of Commons
June 6, 1833.

My Darling,--Why am I such a fool as to write to a gypsey at
Liverpool, who fancies that none is so good as she if she sends one
letter for my three? A lazy chit whose fingers tire with penning a
page in reply to a quire! There, Miss, you read all the first sentence
of my epistle, and never knew that you were reading verse. I have some
gossip for you about the Edinburgh Review. Napier is in London, and
has called on me several times. He has been with the publishers, who
tell him that the sale is falling off; and in many private parties,
where he hears sad complaints. The universal cry is that the long dull
articles are the ruin of the Review. As to myself, he assures me that
my articles are the only things which keep the work up at all. Longman
and his partners correspond with about five hundred booksellers in
different parts of the kingdom. All these booksellers, I find, tell
them that the Review sells, or does not sell, according as there are,
or are not, articles by Mr. Macaulay. So, you see, I, like Mr.
Darcy,[The central male figure in "Pride and Prejudice."] shall not
care how proud I am. At all events, I cannot but be pleased to learn
that, if I should be forced to depend on my pen for subsistence, I can
command what price I choose.

The House is sitting; Peel is just down; Lord Palmerston is speaking;
the heat is tremendous; the crowd stifling; and so here I am in the
smoking-room, with three Repealers making chimneys of their mouths
under my very nose.

 To think that this letter will bear to my Anna
 The exquisite scent of O'Connor's Havannah!

You know that the Lords have been foolish enough to pass a vote
implying censure on the Ministers.[On June 3rd, 1833, a vote of
censure on the Portuguese policy of the Ministry was moved by the Duke
of Wellington, and carried in the Lords by 79 votes to 69. On June 6th
a counter-resolution was carried in the Commons by 361 votes to 98.]
The Ministers do not seem inclined to take it of them. The King has
snubbed their Lordships properly; and in about an hour, as I guess,
(for it is near eleven), we shall have come to a Resolution in direct
opposition to that agreed to by the Upper House. Nobody seems to care
one straw for what the Peers say about any public matter. A Resolution
of the Court of Common Council, or of a meeting at Freemasons' Hall,
has often made a greater sensation than this declaration of a branch of
the Legislature against the Executive Government. The institution of
the Peerage is evidently dying a natural death.

I dined yesterday--where, and on what, and at what price, I am ashamed
to tell you. Such scandalous extravagance and gluttony I will not
commit to writing. I blush when I think of it. You, however, are not
wholly guiltless in this matter. My nameless offence was partly
occasioned by Napier; and I have a very strong reason for wishing to
keep Napier in good humour. He has promised to be at Edinburgh when I
take a certain damsel thither; to loop out for very nice lodgings for
us in Queen Street; to show us everything and everybody; and to see us
as far as Dunkeld on our way northward, if we do go northward. In
general I abhor visiting; but at Edinburgh we must see the people as
well as the walls and windows; and Napier will be a capital guide.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: June 14, 1833.

My dear Sister,--I do not know what you may have been told. I may have
grumbled, for ought I know, at not having more letters from you; but,
as to being angry, you ought to know by this time what sort of anger
mine is when you are its object.

You have seen the papers, I dare say, and you will perceive that I did
not speak yesterday night.[The night of the First Reading of the India
Bill.] The House was thin. The debate was languid. Grant's speech had
done our work sufficiently for one night; and both he and Lord Althorp
advised me to reserve myself for the Second Reading.

What have I to tell you? I will look at my engagement book, to see
where I am to dine.

 Friday June 14    .    Lord Grey.
 Saturday June 15  .    Mr. Boddington.
 Sunday June 16    .    Mr. S. Rice.
 Saturday June 22  .    Sir R. Inglis.
 Thursday June 27  .    The Earl of Ripon.
 Saturday June 29  .    Lord Morpeth.

Read, and envy, and pine, and die. And yet I would give a large slice
of my quarter's salary, which is now nearly due, to be at the Dingle.
I am sick of Lords with no brains in their heads, and Ladies with
paint on their cheeks, and politics, and politicians, and that reeking
furnace of a House. As the poet says,

 Oh! rather would I see this day
 My little Nancy well and merry
 Than the blue riband of Earl Grey,
 Or the blue stockings of Miss Berry.

Margaret tells us that you are better, and better, and better. I want
to hear that you are well. At all events our Scotch tour will set you
up. I hope, for the sake of the tour, that we shall keep our places;
but I firmly believe that, before many days have passed, a desperate
attempt will be made in the House of Lords to turn us out. If we stand
the shock, we shall be firmer than ever. I am not without anxiety as to
the result; yet I believe that Lord Grey understands the position in
which he is placed, and, as for the King, he will not forget his last
blunder, I will answer for it, even if he should live to the age of
his father. [This "last blunder" was the refusal of the King to stand
by his Ministers in May 1832. Macaulay proved a bad prophet; for,
after an interval of only three years, William the Fourth repeated his
blunder in an aggravated form.]

But why plague ourselves about politics when we have so much
pleasanter things to talk of? The Parson's Daughter; don't you like
the Parson's Daughter? What a wretch Harbottle was! And Lady Frances,
what a sad worldly woman! But Mrs. Harbottle, dear suffering angel!
and Emma Level, all excellence! Dr. Mac Gopus you doubtless like; but
you probably do not admire the Duchess and Lady Catherine. There is a
regular cone over a novel for you! But, if you will have my opinion, I
think it Theodore Book's worst performance; far inferior to the
Surgeon's Daughter; a set of fools making themselves miserable by
their own nonsensical fancies and suspicions. Let me hear your
opinion, for I will be sworn that,

 In spite of all the serious world,
 Of all the thumbs that ever twirled,
 Of every broadbrim-shaded brow,
 Of every tongue that e'er said "thou,"
 You still read books in marble covers
 About smart girls and dapper lovers.

But what folly I have been scrawling! I must go to work.

 I cannot all day
 Be neglecting Madras
 And slighting Bombay
 For the sake of a lass.

Kindest love to Edward, and to the woman who owns him.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

London: June 17, 1833.

Dear Hannah,--All is still anxiety here. Whether the House of
Lords will throw out the Irish Church Bill, whether the King will
consent to create new Peers, whether the Tories will venture to
form a Ministry, are matters about which we are all in complete
doubt. If the Ministry should really be changed, Parliament will,
I feel quite sure, be dissolved. Whether I shall have a seat in
the next Parliament I neither know nor care. I shall regret
nothing for myself but our Scotch tour. For the public I shall,
if this Parliament is dissolved, entertain scarcely any hopes. I
see nothing before us but a frantic conflict between extreme
opinions; a short period of oppression; then a convulsive
reaction; and then a tremendous crash of the Funds, the Church,
the Peerage, and the Throne. It is enough to make the most
strenuous royalist lean a little to republicanism to think that
the whole question between safety and general destruction may
probably, at this most fearful conjuncture, depend on a single
man whom the accident of his birth has placed in a situation to
which certainly his own virtues or abilities would never have
raised him.

The question must come to a decision, I think, within the
fortnight. In the meantime the funds are going down, the
newspapers are storming, and the faces of men on both sides are
growing day by day more gloomy and anxious. Even during the most
violent part of the contest for the Reform Bill I do not remember
to have seen so much agitation in the political circles. I have
some odd anecdotes for you, which I will tell you when we meet.
If the Parliament should be dissolved, the West Indian and East
Indian Bills are of course dropped. What is to become of the
slaves? What is to become of the tea-trade? Will the negroes,
after receiving the Resolutions of the House of Commons promising
them liberty, submit to the cart-whip? Will our merchants consent
to have the trade with China, which has just been offered to
them, snatched away? The Bank Charter, too, is suspended. But
that is comparatively a trifle. After all, what is it to me who
is in or out, or whether those fools of Lords are resolved to
perish, and drag the King to perish with them in the ruin which
they have themselves made? I begin to wonder what the fascination
is which attracts men, who could sit over their tea and their
books in their own cool quiet room, to breathe bad air, hear bad
speeches, lounge up and down the long gallery, and doze uneasily
on the green benches till three in the morning. Thank God, these
luxuries are not necessary to me. My pen is sufficient for my
support, and my sister's company is sufficient for my happiness.
Only let me see her well and cheerful, and let offices in
Government, and seats in Parliament, go to those who care for
them. If I were to leave public life to-morrow, I declare that,
except for the vexation which it might give you and one or two
others, the event would not be in the slightest degree painful to
me. As you boast of having a greater insight into character than
I allow to you, let me know how you explain this philosophical
disposition of mine, and how you reconcile it with my ambitious
inclinations. That is a problem for a young lady who professes
knowledge of human nature.

Did I tell you that I dined at the Duchess of Kent's, and sate
next that loveliest of women, Mrs. Littleton? Her husband, our
new Secretary for Ireland, told me this evening that Lord
Wellesley, who sate near us at the Duchess's, asked Mrs.
Littleton afterwards who it was that was talking to her. "Mr.
Macaulay." "Oh! "said the Marquess," I am very sorry I did not
know it. I have a most particular desire to be acquainted with
that man." Accordingly Littleton has engaged me to dine with him,
in order to introduce me to the Marquess. I am particularly
curious, and always was, to know him. He has made a great and
splendid figure in history, and his weaknesses, though they make
his character less worthy of respect, make it more interesting as
a study. Such a blooming old swain I never saw; hair combed with
exquisite nicety, a waistcoat of driven snow, and a star and
garter put on with rare skill.

To-day we took up our Resolutions about India to the House of
Lords. The two Houses had a conference on the subject in an old
Gothic room called the Painted Chamber. The painting consists in
a mildewed daub of a woman in the niche of one of the windows.
The Lords sate in little cocked hats along a table; and we stood
uncovered on the other side, and delivered in our Resolutions. I
thought that before long it may be our turn to sit, and theirs to
stand.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

London: June 21, 1833.

Dear Hannah,--I cannot tell you how delighted I was to learn from
Fanny this morning that Margaret pronounces you to be as well as
she could wish you to be. Only continue so, and all the changes
of public life will be as indifferent to me as to Horatio. If I
am only spared the misery of seeing you suffer, I shall be found

 A man that fortune's buffets and rewards
 Has ta'en with equal thanks.

Whether we are to have buffets or rewards is known only to Heaven
and to the Peers. I think that their Lordships are rather cowed.
Indeed, if they venture on the course on which they lately seemed
bent, I would not give sixpence for a coronet or a penny for a
mitre.

I shall not read the Repealers; and I think it very impudent in
you to make such a request. Have I nothing to do but to be your
novel-taster? It is rather your duty to be mine. What else have
you to do? I have read only one novel within the last week, and a
most precious one it was: the Invisible Gentleman. Have you ever
read it? But I need not ask. No doubt it has formed part of your
Sunday studies. A wretched, trumpery, imitation of Godwin's worst
manner. What a number of stories I shall have to tell you when we
meet!--which will be, as nearly as I can guess, about the 10th or
12th of August. I shall be as rich as a Jew by that time.

 Next Wednesday will be quarter-day;
 And then, if I'm alive,
 Of sterling pounds I shall receive
 Three hundred seventy-five.

 Already I possess in cash
 Two hundred twenty-four,
 Besides what I have lent to John
 Which makes up twenty more.

 Also the man who editeth
 The Yellow and the Blue
 Doth owe me ninety pounds at least,
 All for my last review.

 So, if my debtors pay their debts,
 You'll find, dear sister mine,
 That all my wealth together makes
 Seven hundred pounds and nine.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

The rhymes in which Macaulay unfolds his little budget derive a
certain dignity and meaning from the events of the ensuing weeks.
The unparalleled labours of the Anti-Slavery leaders were at
length approaching a successful issue, and Lord Grey's Cabinet
had declared itself responsible for the emancipation of the West
Indian negroes. But it was already beginning to be known that the
Ministerial scheme, in its original shape, was not such as would
satisfy even the more moderate Abolitionists. Its most
objectionable feature was shadowed forth in the third of the
Resolutions with which Mr. Stanley, who had the question in
charge, prefaced the introduction of his bill: "That all persons,
now slaves, be entitled to be registered as apprenticed
labourers, and to acquire thereby all the rights and privileges
of freemen, subject to the restriction of labouring, for a time
to be fixed by Parliament, for their present owners." It was
understood that twelve years would be proposed as the period of
apprenticeship; although no trace of this intention could be
detected in the wording of the Resolution. Macaulay, who thought
twelve years far too long, felt himself justified in supporting
the Government during the preliminary stages; but he took
occasion to make some remarks indicating that circumstances might
occur which would oblige him to resign office, and adopt a line
of his own.

As time went on it became evident that his firmness would be put
to the test; and a severe test it was. A rising statesman, whose
prospects would be irremediably injured by abruptly quitting a
Government that seemed likely to be in power for the next quarter
of a century; a zealous Whig, who shrank from the very appearance
of disaffection to his party; a man of sense, with no ambition to
be called Quixotic; a member for a large constituency, possessed
of only seven hundred pounds in the world when his purse was at
its fullest; above all, an affectionate son and brother, now,
more than ever, the main hope and reliance of those whom he held
most dear;--it may well be believed that he was not in a hurry
to act the martyr. His father's affairs were worse than bad. The
African firm, without having been reduced to declare itself
bankrupt, had ceased to exist as a house of business; or existed
only so far that for some years to come every penny that Macaulay
earned, beyond what the necessities of life demanded, was
scrupulously devoted to paying, and at length to paying off, his
father's creditors; a dutiful enterprise in which he was assisted
by his brother Henry, [Henry married in 1841 a daughter of his
brother's old political ally, Lord Denman. He died at Boa Vista,
in 1846, leaving two sons, Henry, and Joseph, Macaulay.] a young
man of high spirit and excellent abilities, who had recently been
appointed one of the Commissioners of Arbitration in the Prize
Courts at Sierra Leone.

The pressure of pecuniary trouble was now beginning to make
itself felt even by the younger members of the family. About this
time, or perhaps a little earlier, Hannah Macaulay writes thus to
one of her cousins: "You say nothing about coming to us. You must
come in good health and spirits. Our trials ought not greatly to
depress us; for, after all, all we want is money, the easiest
want to bear; and, when we have so many mercies--friends who love
us and whom we love; no bereavements; and, above all, (if it be
not our own fault,) a hope full of immortality--let us not be so
ungrateful as to repine because we are without what in itself
cannot make our happiness."

Macaulay's colleagues, who, without knowing his whole story, knew
enough to be aware that he could ill afford to give up office,
were earnest in their remonstrances; but he answered shortly, and
almost roughly: "I cannot go counter to my father. He has devoted
his whole life to the question, and I cannot grieve him by giving
way when he wishes me to stand firm." During the crisis of the
West India Bill, Zachary Macaulay and his son were in constant
correspondence. There is something touching in the picture which
these letters present of the older man, (whose years were coming
to a close in poverty which was the consequence of his having
always lived too much for others,) discussing quietly and gravely
how, and when, the younger was to take a step that in the opinion
of them both would be fatal to his career; and this with so
little consciousness that there was anything heroic in the course
which they were pursuing, that it appears never to have occurred
to either of their that any other line of conduct could possibly
be adopted.

Having made up his mind as to what he should do, Macaulay set
about it with as good a grace as is compatible with the most
trying position in which a man, and especially a young man, can
find himself. Carefully avoiding the attitude of one who bargains
or threatens, he had given timely notice in the proper quarter of
his intentions and his views. At length the conjuncture arrived
when decisive action could no longer be postponed. On the 24th of
July Mr. Thomas Fowell Buxton moved an amendment in Committee,
limiting the apprenticeship to the shortest period necessary for
establishing the system of free labour. Macaulay, whose
resignation was already in Lord Althorp's hands, made a speech
which produced all the more effect as being inornate, and, at
times, almost awkward. Even if deeper feelings had not restrained
the range of his fancy and the flow of his rhetoric, his judgment
would have told him that it was not the moment for an oratorical
display. He began by entreating the House to extend to him that
indulgence which it had accorded on occasions when he had
addressed it "with more confidence and with less harassed
feelings." He then, at some length, exposed the effects of the
Government proposal. "In free countries the master has a choice
of labourers, and the labourer has a choice of masters; but in
slavery it is always necessary to give despotic power to the
master. This bill leaves it to the magistrate to keep peace
between master and slave. Every time that the slave takes twenty
minutes to do that which the master thinks he should do in
fifteen, recourse must be had to the magistrate. Society would
day and night be in a constant state of litigation, and all
differences and difficulties must be solved by judicial
interference."

He did not share in Mr. Buxton's apprehension of gross cruelty as
a result of the apprenticeship. "The magistrate would be
accountable to the Colonial Office, and the Colonial Office to
the House of Commons, in which every lash which was inflicted
under magisterial authority would be told and counted. My
apprehension is that the result of continuing for twelve years
this dead slavery,--this state of society destitute of any vital
principle,--will be that the whole negro population will sink
into weak and drawling inefficacy, and will be much less fit for
liberty at the end of the period than at the commencement. My
hope is that the system will die a natural death; that the
experience of a few months will so establish its utter
inefficiency as to induce the planters to abandon it, and to
substitute for it a state of freedom. I have voted," he said,
"for the Second Reading, and I shall vote for the Third Reading;
but, while the bill is in Committee, I shall join with other
honourable gentlemen in doing all that is possible to amend it."

Such a declaration, coming from the mouth of a member of the
Government, gave life to the debate, and secured to Mr. Buxton
an excellent division, which under the circumstances was
equivalent to a victory. The next day Mr. Stanley rose; adverted
shortly to the position in which the Ministers stood; and
announced that the term of apprenticeship would be reduced from
twelve years to seven. Mr. Buxton, who, with equal energy and
wisdom, had throughout the proceedings acted as leader of the
Anti-slavery party in the House of Commons, advised his friends
to make the best of the concession; and his counsel was followed
by all those Abolitionists who were thinking more of their cause
than of themselves. It is worthy of remark that Macaulay's
prophecy came true, though not at so early a date as he ventured
to anticipate. Four years of the provisional system brought all
parties to acquiesce in the premature termination of a state of
things which denied to the negro the blessings of freedom, and to
the planter the profits of slavery.

"The papers," Macaulay writes to his father, "will have told you
all that has happened, as far as it is known to the public. The
secret history you will have heard from Buxton. As to myself,
Lord Althorp told me yesterday night that the Cabinet had
determined not to accept my resignation. I have therefore the
singular good luck of having saved both my honour and my place,
and of having given no just ground of offence either to the
Abolitionists or to my party-friends. I have more reason than
ever to say that honesty is the best policy."

This letter is dated the 27th of July. On that day week,
Wilberforce was carried to his grave in Westminster Abbey. "We
laid him," writes Macaulay, "side by side with Canning, at the
feet of Pitt, and within two steps of Fox and Grattan." He died
with the promised land full in view. Before the end of August
Parliament abolished slavery, and the last touch was put to the
work that had consumed so many pure and noble lives. In a letter
of congratulation to Zachary Macaulay, Mr. Buxton says: "Surely
you have reason to rejoice. My sober and deliberate opinion is
that you have done more towards this consummation than any other
man. For myself, I take pleasure in acknowledging that you have
been my tutor all the way through, and that I could have done
nothing without you." Such was the spirit of these men, who,
while the struggle lasted, were prodigal of health and ease; but
who, in the day of triumph, disclaimed, each for himself, even
that part of the merit which their religion allowed them to
ascribe to human effort and self-sacrifice.

London: July 11, 1833.

Dear Hannah,--I have been so completely overwhelmed with business
for some days that I have not been able to find time for writing
a line. Yesterday night we read the India Bill a second time. It
was a Wednesday, and the reporters gave hardly any account of
what passed. They always resent being forced to attend on that
day, which is their holiday. I made the best speech, by general
agreement, and in my own opinion, that I ever made in my life. I
was an hour and three-quarters up; and such compliments as I had
from Lord Althorp, Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Wynne,
O'Connell, Grant, the Speaker, and twenty other people, you never
heard. As there is no report of the speech, I have been
persuaded, rather against my will, to correct it for publication.
I will tell you one compliment that was paid me, and which
delighted me more than any other. An old member said to me: "Sir,
having heard that speech may console the young people for never
having heard Mr. Burke." [A Tory member said that Macaulay
resembled both the Burkes: that he was like the first from his
eloquence, and like the second from his stopping other people's
mouths.]

The Slavery Bill is miserably bad. I am fully resolved not to be
dragged through the mire, but to oppose, by speaking and voting,
the clauses which I think objectionable. I have told Lord Althorp
this, and have again tendered my resignation. He hinted that he
thought that the Government would leave me at liberty to take my
own line, but that he must consult his colleagues. I told him
that I asked for no favour; that I knew what inconvenience would
result if official men were allowed to dissent from Ministerial
measures, and yet to keep their places; and that I should not
think myself in the smallest degree ill-used if the Cabinet
accepted my resignation. This is the present posture of affairs.
In the meantime the two Houses are at daggers drawn. Whether the
Government will last to the end of the Session I neither know nor
care. I am sick of Boards, and of the House of Commons; and pine
for a few quiet days, a cool country breeze, and a little
chatting with my dear sister.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay

London: July 19, 1833.

My dear Sister,--I snatch a few minutes to write a single line to
you. We went into Committee on the India Bill at twelve this
morning, sate till three, and are just set at liberty for two
hours. At five we recommence, and shall be at work till midnight.
In the interval between three and five I have to despatch the
current business of the office, which, at present, is fortunately
not heavy; to eat my dinner, which I shall do at Grant's; and to
write a short scrawl to my little sister.

My work, though laborious, has been highly satisfactory. No Bill,
I believe, of such importance,--certainly no important Bill in my
time, has been received with such general approbation. The very
cause of the negligence of the reporters, and of the thinness of
the House, is that we have framed our measure so carefully as to
give little occasion for debate. Littleton, Denison, and many
other members, assure me that they never remember to have seen a
Bill better drawn or better conducted.

On Monday night, I hope, my work will be over. Our Bill will have
been discussed, I trust, for the last time in the House of
Commons; and, in all probability, I shall within forty-eight
hours after that time be out of office. I am fully determined not
to give way about the West India Bill; and I can hardly expect,--
I am sure I do not wish,--that the Ministers should suffer me to
keep my place and oppose their measure. Whatever may befall me or
my party, I am much more desirous to come to an end of this
interminable Session than to stay either in office or in
Parliament. The Tories are quite welcome to take everything, if
they will only leave me my pen and my books, a warm fireside, and
you chattering beside it. This sort of philosophy, an odd kind of
cross between Stoicism and Epicureanism, I have learned, where
most people unlearn all their philosophy, in crowded senates and
fine drawing-rooms.

But time flies, and Grant's dinner will be waiting. He keeps open
house for us during this fight.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

London: July 22, 1833.

My dear Father,--We are still very anxious here. The Lords, though
they have passed the Irish Church Bill through its first stage,
will very probably mutilate it in Committee. It will then be for
the Ministers to decide whether they can with honour keep their
places. I believe that they will resign if any material
alteration should be made; and then everything is confusion.

These circumstances render it very difficult for me to shape my
course right with respect to the West India Bill, the Second
Reading of which stands for this evening. I am fully resolved to
oppose several of the clauses. But to declare my intention
publicly, at a moment when the Government is in danger, would
have the appearance of ratting. I must be guided by
circumstances; but my present intention is to say nothing on the
Second Reading. By the time that we get into Committee the
political crisis, will, I hope, be over; the fate of the Church
Bill will be decided one way or the other; and I shall be able to
take my own course on the Slavery question without exposing
myself to the charge of deserting my friends in a moment of
peril.

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: July 24, 1833,

My dear Sister,--You will have seen by the papers that the West
India debate on Monday night went off very quietly in little more
than an hour. To-night we expect the great struggle, and I fear
that, much against my inclination, I must bear a part in it. My
resignation is in Lord Althorp's hands. He assures me that he
will do his utmost to obtain for me liberty to act as I like on
this question; but Lord Grey and Stanley are to be consulted, and
I think it very improbable that they will consent to allow me so
extraordinary a privilege. I know that, if I were Minister, I
would not allow such latitude to any man in office; and so I told
Lord Althorp. He answered in the kindest and most flattering
manner; told me that in office I had surpassed their
expectations, and that, much as they wished to bring me in last
year, they wished much more to keep me in now. I told him in
reply that the matter was one for the Ministers to settle, purely
with a view to their own interest; that I asked for no
indulgence; that I could make no terms; and that, what I would
not do to serve them, I certainly would not do to keep my place.
Thus the matter stands. It will probably be finally settled
within a few hours.

This detestable Session goes on lengthening, and lengthening,
like a human hair in one's mouth. (Do you know that delicious
sensation?) Last month we expected to have been up before the
middle of August. Now we should be glad to be quite certain of
being in the country by the first of September. One comfort I
shall have in being turned out: I will not stay a day in London
after the West India Bill is through Committee; which I hope it
will be before the end of next week.

The new Edinburgh Review is not much amiss; but I quite agree
with the publishers, the editor, and the reading public
generally, that the number would have been much the better for an
article of thirty or forty pages from the pen of a gentleman who
shall be nameless.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: July 25, 1833.

My dear Sister,--The plot is thickening. Yesterday Buxton moved
an instruction to the Committee on the Slavery Bill, which the
Government opposed, and which I supported. It was extremely
painful to me to speak against all my political friends; so
painful that at times I could hardly go on. I treated them as
mildly as I could; and they all tell me that I performed my
difficult task not ungracefully. We divided at two this morning,
and were 151 to 158. The Ministers found that, if they persisted,
they would infallibly be beaten. Accordingly they came down to
the House at twelve this day, and agreed to reduce the
apprenticeship to seven years for the agricultural labourers, and
to five years for the skilled labourers. What other people may do
I cannot tell; but I am inclined to be satisfied with this
concession; particularly as I believe that, if we press the thing
further, they will resign, and we shall have no Bill at all, but
instead of it a Tory Ministry and a dissolution. Some people
flatter me with the assurance that our large minority, and the
consequent change in the Bill, have been owing to me. If this be
so, I have done one useful act at least in my life.

I shall now certainly remain in office; and if, as I expect, the
Irish Church Bill passes the Lords, I may consider myself as safe
till the next Session; when Heaven knows what may happen. It is
still quite uncertain when we may rise. I pine for rest, air, and
a taste of family life, more than I can express. I see nothing
but politicians, and talk about nothing but politics.

I have not read Village Belles. Tell me, as soon as you can get
it, whether it is worth reading. As John Thorpe [The young Oxford
man in "Northanger Abbey."]
says "Novels! Oh Lord! I never read novels. I have something else
to do."

Farewell.

T. B. M,

To Hannah M. Macaulay,

London: July 27, 1833.

My dear Sister,--Here I am, safe and well, at the end of one of
the most stormy weeks that the oldest man remembers in
Parliamentary affairs. I have resigned my office, and my
resignation has been refused. I have spoken and voted against the
Ministry under which I hold my place. The Ministry has been so
hard run in the Commons as to be forced to modify its plan; and
has received a defeat in the Lords, [On the 25th of July the
Archbishop of Canterbury carried an amendment on the Irish Church
Bill, against the Government, by 84 votes to 82.]--a slight one
to be sure, and on a slight matter,--yet such that I, and many
others, fully believed twenty-four hours ago that they would have
resigned. In fact, some of the Cabinet,--Grant among the rest, to
my certain knowledge, were for resigning. At last Saturday has
arrived. The Ministry is as strong as ever. I am as good friends
with the Ministers as ever. The East India Bill is carried
through our House. The West India Bill is so far modified that, I
believe, it will be carried. The Irish Church Bill has got
through the Committee in the Lords; and we are all beginning to
look forward to a Prorogation in about three weeks.

To-day I went to Hayden's to be painted into his great picture of
the Reform Banquet. Ellis was with me, and declares that Hayden
has touched me off to a nicety. I am sick of pictures of my own
face. I have seen within the last few days one drawing of it, one
engraving, and three paintings. They all make me a very handsome
fellow. Hayden pronounces my profile a gem of art, perfectly
antique; and, what is worth the praise of ten Haydens, I was told
yesterday that Mrs. Littleton, the handsomest woman in London,
had paid me exactly the same compliment. She pronounced Mr.
Macaulay's profile to be a study for an artist. I have bought a
new looking-glass and razor-case on the strength of these
compliments, and am meditating on the expediency of having my
hair cut in the Burlington Arcade, rather than in Lamb's Conduit
Street. As Richard says,

 "Since I am crept in favour with myself,
  I will maintain it with some little cost."

I begin, like Sir Walter Elliot, [The Baronet in "Persuasion."]
to rate all my acquaintance according to their beauty. But what
nonsense I write, and in times that make many merry men look
grave!

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: July 29, 1833.

My dear Sister,--I dined last night at Holland House. There was a
very pleasant party. My Lady was courteous, and my Lord
extravagantly entertaining, telling some capital stories about
old Bishop Horsley, which were set off with some of the drollest
mimicry that I ever saw. Among many others there were Sir James
Graham; and Dr. Holland, who is a good scholar as well as a good
physician; and Wilkie, who is a modest, pleasing companion as
well as an excellent artist. For ladies, we had her Grace of--;
and her daughter Lady--, a fine, buxom, sonsy lass, with more
colour than, I am sorry to say, is often seen among fine ladies.
So our dinner and our soiree were very agreeable.

We narrowly escaped a scene at one time. Lord is in the navy, and
is now on duty in the fleet at the Tagus. We got into a
conversation about Portuguese politics. His name was mentioned,
and Graham, who is First Lord of the Admiralty, complimented the
Duchess on her son's merit, to which, he said, every despatch
bore witness. The Duchess forthwith began to entreat that he
might be recalled. He was very ill, she said. If he stayed longer
on that station she was sure that he would die; and then she
began to cry. I cannot bear to see women cry, and the matter
became serious, for her pretty daughter began to bear her
company. That hardhearted Lord-- seemed to be diverted by the
scene. He, by all accounts, has been doing little else than
making women cry during the last five-and-twenty years. However,
we all were as still as death while the wiping of eyes and the
blowing of noses proceeded. At last Lord Holland contrived to
restore our spirits; but, before the Duchess went away, she
managed to have a tete-a-tete with Graham, and, I have no doubt,
begged and blubbered to some purpose. I could not help thinking
how many honest stout-hearted fellows are left to die on the most
unhealthy stations for want of being related to some Duchess who
has been handsome, or to some Duchess's daughter who still is so.

The Duchess said one thing that amused us. We were talking about
Lady Morgan. "When she first came to London," said Lord Holland,
"I remember that she carried a little Irish harp about with her
wherever she went." Others denied this. I mentioned what she says
in her Book of the Boudoir. There she relates how she went one
evening to Lady--'s with her little Irish harp, and how strange
everybody thought it. "I see nothing very strange," said her
Grace, "in her taking her harp to Lady--'s. If she brought it
safe away with her, that would have been strange indeed." On
this, as a friend of yours says, we la-a-a-a-a-a-a-ft.

I am glad to find that you approve of my conduct about the
Niggers. I expect, and indeed wish, to be abused by the Agency
Society. My father is quite satisfied, and so are the best part
of my Leeds friends.

I amuse myself, as I walk back from the House at two in the
morning, with translating Virgil. I am at work on one of the most
beautiful episodes, and am succeeding pretty well. You shall have
what I have done when I come to Liverpool, which will be, I hope,
in three weeks or thereanent.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: July 31, 1833.

My dear Sister,--Political affairs look cheeringly. The Lords
passed the Irish Church Bill yesterday, and mean, we understand,
to give us little or no trouble about the India Bill. There is
still a hitch in the Commons about the West India Bill,
particularly about the twenty millions for compensation to the
planters; but we expect to carry our point by a great majority.
By the end of next week we shall be very near the termination of
our labours. Heavy labours they have been.

So Wilberforce is gone! We talk of burying him in Westminster
Abbey; and many eminent men, both Whigs and Tories, are desirous
to join in paying him this honour. There is, however, a story
about a promise given to old Stephen that they should both lie in
the same grave. Wilberforce kept his faculties, and, except when
he was actually in fits, his spirits, to the very last. He was
cheerful and full of anecdote only last Saturday. He owned that
he enjoyed life much, and that he had a great desire to live
longer. Strange in a man who had, I should have said, so little
to attach him to this world, and so firm a belief in another; in
a man with an impaired fortune, a weak spine, and a worn-out
stomach! What is this fascination which makes us cling to
existence in spite of present sufferings and of religious hopes?
Yesterday evening I called at the house in Cadogan Place, where
the body is lying. I was truly fond of him; that is, "je l'aimais
comme l'on aime." And how is that? How very little one human
being generally cares for another! How very little the world
misses anybody! How soon the chasm left by the best and wisest
men closes! I thought, as I walked back from Cadogan Place, that
our own selfishness when others are taken away ought to teach us
how little others will suffer at losing us. I thought that, if I
were to die to-morrow, not one of the fine people, whom I dine
with every week, will take a cotelette aux petits pois the less
on Saturday at the table to which I was invited to meet them, or
will smile less gaily at the ladies over the champagne. And I am
quite even with them. What are those pretty lines of Shelley?

 Oh, world, farewell!
 Listen to the passing bell.
 It tells that thou and I must part
 With a light and heavy heart.

There are not ten people in the world whose deaths would spoil my
dinner; but there are one or two whose deaths would break my
heart. The more I see of the world, and the more numerous my
acquaintance becomes, the narrower and more exclusive my
affection grows, and the more I cling to my sisters, and to one
or two old tried friends of my quiet days. But why should I go on
preaching to you out of Ecclesiastes? And here comes,
fortunately, to break the train of my melancholy reflections, the
proof of my East India Speech from Hansard; so I must put my
letter aside, and correct the press. Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: August 2, 1833.

My dear Sister,--I agree with your judgment on Chesterfield's
Letters. They are for the most part trash; though they contain
some clever passages, and the style is not bad. Their celebrity
must be attributed to causes quite distinct from their literary
merit, and particularly to the position which the author held in
society. We see in our own time that the books written by public
men of note are generally rated at more than their real value:
Lord Granville's little compositions, for example; Canning's
verses; Fox's history; Brougham's treatises. The writings of
people of high fashion, also, have a value set on them far higher
than that which intrinsically belongs to them. The verses of the
late Duchess of Devonshire, or an occasional prologue by Lord
Alvanley, attract a most undue share of attention. If the present
Duke of Devonshire, who is the very "glass of fashion and mould
of form," were to publish a book with two good pages, it would be
extolled as a masterpiece in half the drawing-rooms of London.
Now Chesterfield was, what no person in our time has been or can
be, a great political leader, and at the same time the
acknowledged chief of the fashionable world; at the head of the
House of Lords, and at the head of laze; Mr. Canning and the Duke
of Devonshire in one. In our time the division of labour is
carried so far that such a man could not exist. Politics require
the whole of energy, bodily and mental, during half the year; and
leave very little time for the bow window at White's in the day,
or for the crush-room of the Opera at night. A century ago the
case was different. Chesterfield was at once the most
distinguished orator in the Upper House, and the undisputed
sovereign of wit and fashion. He held this eminence for about
forty years. At last it became the regular custom of the higher
circles to laugh whenever he opened his mouth, without waiting
for his bon mot. He used to sit at White's with a circle of young
men of rank round him, applauding every syllable that he uttered.
If you wish for a proof of the kind of position which
Chesterfield held among his contemporaries, look at the
prospectus of Johnson's Dictionary. Look even at Johnson's angry
letter. It contains the strongest admission of the boundless
influence which Chesterfield exercised over society. When the
letters of such a man were published, of course they were
received more favourably by far than they deserved.

So much for criticism. As to politics, everything seems tending
to repose; and I should think that by this day fortnight we shall
probably be prorogued. The Jew Bill was thrown out yesterday
night by the Lords. No matter. Our turn will come one of these
days.

If you want to see me puffed and abused by somebody who evidently
knows nothing about me, look at the New Monthly for this month.
Bulwer, I see, has given up editing it. I suppose he is making
money in some other way; for his dress must cost as much as that
of any five other members of Parliament.

To-morrow Wilberforce is to be buried. His sons acceded, with
great eagerness, to the application made to them by a
considerable number of the members of both Houses that the
funeral should be public. We meet to-morrow at twelve at the
House of Commons, and we shall attend the coffin into the Abbey.
The Duke of Wellington, Lord Eldon, and Sir R. Peel have put down
their names, as well as the Ministers and the Abolitionists.

My father urges me to pay some tribute to Wilberforce in the
House of Commons. If any debate should take place on the third
reading of the West India Bill in which I might take part, I
should certainly embrace the opportunity of doing honour to his
memory. But I do not expect that such an occasion will arise. The
House seems inclined to pass the Bill without more contest; and
my father must be aware that anything like theatrical display,--
anything like a set funeral oration not springing naturally out
of the discussion of a question,--is extremely distasteful to the
House of Commons.

I have been clearing off a great mass of business, which had
accumulated at our office while we were conducting our Bill
through Parliament. Today I had the satisfaction of seeing the
green boxes, which a week ago were piled up with papers three or
four feet high, perfectly empty. Admire my superhuman industry.
This I will say for myself, that, when I do sit down to work, I
work harder and faster than any person that I ever knew.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

The next letter, in terms too clear to require comment,
introduces the mention of what proved to be the most important
circumstance in Macaulay's life.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: August 17, 1833.

My dear Sister,--I am about to write to you on a subject which to
you and Margaret will be one of the most agitating interest; and
which, on that account chiefly, is so to me.

By the new India bill it is provided that one of the members of
the Supreme Council, which is to govern our Eastern Empire, is to
be chosen from among persons who are not servants of the Company.
It is probable, indeed nearly certain, that the situation will be
offered to me.

The advantages are very great. It is a post of the highest
dignity and consideration. The salary is ten thousand pounds a
year. I am assured by persons who know Calcutta intimately, and
who have themselves mixed in the highest circles and held the
highest offices at that Presidency, that I may live in splendour
there for five thousand a year, and may save the rest of the
salary with the accruing interest. I may therefore hope to return
to England at only thirty-nine, in the full vigour of life, with
a fortune of thirty thousand pounds. A larger fortune I never
desired.

I am not fond of money, or anxious about it. But, though every
day makes me less and less eager for wealth, every day shows me
more and more strongly how necessary a competence is to a man who
desires to be either great or useful. At present the plain fact
is that I can continue to be a public man only while I can
continue in office. If I left my place in the Government, I must
leave my seat in Parliament too. For I must live; I can live only
by my pen; and it is absolutely impossible for any man to write
enough to procure him a decent subsistence, and at the same time
to take an active part in politics. I have not during this
Session been able to send a single line to the Edinburgh Review;
and, if I had been out of office, I should have been able to do
very little. Edward Bulwer has just given up the New Monthly
Magazine on the ground that he cannot conduct it, and attend to
his Parliamentary duties. Cobbett has been compelled to neglect
his Register so much that its sale has fallen almost to nothing.
Now, in order to live like a gentleman, it would be necessary for
me to write, not as I have done hitherto, but regularly, and even
daily. I have never made more than two hundred a year by my pen.
I could not support myself in comfort on less than five hundred;
and I shall in all probability have many others to support. The
prospects of our family are, if possible, darker than ever.

In the meantime my political outlook is very gloomy. A schism in
the Ministry is approaching. It requires only that common
knowledge of public affairs, which any reader of the newspapers
may possess, to see this; and I have more, much more, than common
knowledge on the subject. They cannot hold together. I tell you
in perfect seriousness that my chance of keeping my present
situation for six months is so small, that I would willingly sell
it for fifty pounds down. If I remain in office, I shall, I fear,
lose my political character. If I go out, and engage in
opposition, I shall break most of the private ties which I have
formed during the last three years. In England I see nothing
before me, for some time to come, but poverty, unpopularity, and
the breaking up of old connections.

If there were no way out of these difficulties, I would encounter
them with courage. A man can always act honourably and uprightly;
and, if I were in the Fleet Prison or the rules of the King's
Bench, I believe that I could find in my own mind resources which
would preserve me from being positively unhappy. But, if I could
escape from these impending disasters, I should wish to do so. By
accepting the post which is likely to be offered to me, I
withdraw myself for a short time from the contests of faction
here. When I return, I shall find things settled, parties formed
into new combinations, and new questions under discussion. I
shall then be able, without the scandal of a violent separation,
and without exposing myself to the charge of inconsistency, to
take my own line. In the meantime I shall save my family from
distress; and shall return with a competence honestly earned, as
rich as if I were Duke of Northumberland or Marquess of
Westminster, and able to act on all public questions without even
a temptation to deviate from the strict line of duty. While in
India, I shall have to discharge duties not painfully laborious,
and of the highest and most honourable kind. I shall have
whatever that country affords of comfort or splendour; nor will
my absence be so long that my friends, or the public here, will
be likely to lose sight of me.

The only persons who know what I have written to you are Lord
Grey, the Grants, Stewart Mackenzie, and George Babington.
Charles Grant and Stewart Mackenzie, who know better than most
men the state of the political world, think that I should act
unwisely in refusing this post; and this though they assure me,--
and, I really believe, sincerely,--that they shall feel the loss
of my society very acutely. But what shall I feel? And with what
emotions, loving as I do my country and my family, can I look
forward to such a separation, enjoined, as I think it is, by
prudence and by duty? Whether the period of my exile shall be one
of comfort,--and, after the first shock, even of happiness,--
depends on you. If, as I expect, this offer shall be made to me,
will you go with me? I know what a sacrifice I ask of you. I know
how many dear and precious ties you must, for a time, sunder. I
know that the splendour of the Indian Court, and the gaieties of
that brilliant society of which you would be one of the leading
personages, have no temptation for you. I can bribe you only by
telling you that, if you will go with me, I will love you better
than I love you now, if I can.

I have asked George Babington about your health and mine. He says
that he has very little apprehension for me, and none at all for
you. Indeed, he seemed to think that the climate would be quite
as likely to do you good as harm.

All this is most strictly secret. You may, of course, show the
letter to Margaret; and Margaret may tell Edward; for I never
cabal against the lawful authority of husbands. But further the
thing must not go. It would hurt my father, and very justly, to
hear of it from anybody before he hears of it from myself; and,
if the least hint of it were to get abroad, I should be placed in
a very awkward position with regard to the people at Leeds. It is
possible, though not probable, that difficulties may arise at the
India House; and I do not mean to say anything to any person, who
is not already in the secret, till the Directors have made their
choice, and till the King's pleasure has been taken.

And now think calmly over what I have written. I would not have
written on the subject even to you, till the matter was quite
settled, if I had not thought that you ought to have full time to
make up your mind. If you feel an insurmountable aversion to
India, I will do all in my power to make your residence in
England comfortable during my absence, and to enable you to
confer instead of receiving benefits. But if my dear sister would
consent to give me, at this great crisis of my life, that proof,
that painful and arduous proof, of her affection, which I beg of
her, I think that she will not repent of it. She shall not, if
the unbounded confidence and attachment of one to whom she is
dearer than life can compensate her for a few years' absence from
much that she loves.

Dear Margaret! She will feel this. Consult her, my love, and let
us both have the advantage of such advice as her excellent
understanding, and her warm affection for us, may furnish. On
Monday next, at the latest, I expect to be with you. Our Scotch
tour, under these circumstances, must be short. By Christmas it
will be fit that the new Councillor should leave England. His
functions in India commence next April. We shall leave our dear
Margaret, I hope, a happy mother.

Farewell, my dear sister. You cannot tell how impatiently I shall
wait for your answer.

T. B. M.

This letter, written under the influence of deep and varied
emotions, was read with feelings of painful agitation and
surprise. India was not then the familiar name that it has become
to a generation which regards a visit to Cashmere as a trip to be
undertaken between two London seasons, and which discusses over
its breakfast table at home the decisions arrived at on the
previous afternoon in the Council-room of Simla or Calcutta. In
those rural parsonages and middle-class households where service
in our Eastern territories now presents itself in the light of a
probable and desirable destiny for a promising son, those same
territories were forty years ago regarded as an obscure and
distant region of disease and death. A girl who had seen no
country more foreign than Wales, and crossed no water broader and
more tempestuous than the Mersey, looked forward to a voyage
which (as she subsequently learned by melancholy experience),
might extend over six weary months, with an anxiety that can
hardly be imagined by us who spend only half as many weeks on the
journey between Dover and Bombay. A separation from beloved
relations under such conditions was a separation indeed; and, if
Macaulay and his sister could have foreseen how much of what they
left at their departure they would fail to find on their return,
it is a question whether any earthly consideration could have
induced them to quit their native shore. But Hannah's sense of
duty was too strong for these doubts and tremors; and, happily,
(for on the whole her resolution was a fortunate one,) she
resolved to accompany her brother in an expatriation which he
never would have faced without her. With a mind set at ease by a
knowledge of her intention, he came down to Liverpool as soon as
the Session was at an end; and carried her off on a jaunt to
Edinburgh, in a post-chaise furnished with Horace Walpole's
letters for their common reading, and Smollett's collected works
for his own. Before October he was back at the Board of Control;
and his letters recommenced, as frequent and rather more serious
and business-like than of old.

London: October 5, 1833

Dear Hannah,--Life goes on so quietly here, or rather stands so
still, that I have nothing, or next to nothing, to say. At the
Athenaeum I now and then fall in with some person passing through
town on his way to the Continent or to Brighton. The other day I
met Sharp, and had a long talk with him about everything and
everybody,--metaphysics, poetry, politics, scenery, and painting.
One thing I have observed in Sharp, which is quite peculiar to
him among town-wits and diners-out. He never talks scandal. If he
can say nothing good of a man, he holds his tongue. I do not, of
course, mean that in confidential communication about politics he
does not speak freely of public men; but about the foibles of
private individuals I do not believe that, much as I have talked
with him, I ever heard him utter one word. I passed three or four
hours very agreeably in his company at the club.

I have also seen Kenny for an hour or two. I do not know that I
ever mentioned Kenny to you. When London is overflowing, I meet
such numbers of people that I cannot remember half their names.
This is the time at which every acquaintance, however slight,
attracts some degree of attention. In the desert island, even
poor Poll was something of a companion to Robinson Crusoe. Kenny
is a writer of a class which, in our time, is at the very bottom
of the literary scale. He is a dramatist. Most of the farces, and
three-act plays, which have succeeded during the last eight or
ten years, are, I am told, from his pen. Heaven knows that, if
they are the farces and plays which I have seen, they do him but
little honour. However, this man is one of our great comic
writers. He has the merit, such as it is, of hitting the very bad
taste of our modern audiences better than any other person who
has stooped to that degrading work. We had a good deal of
literary chat; and I thought him a clever shrewd fellow.

My father is poorly; not that anything very serious is the matter
with him; but he has a cold, and is in low spirits.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

London: October 14, 1833

Dear Hannah,--I have just finished my article on Horace Walpole.
This is one of the happy moments of my life; a stupid task
performed; a weight taken off my mind. I should be quite joyous
if I had only you to read it to. But to Napier it must go
forthwith; and, as soon as I have finished this letter, I shall
put it into the general post with my own fair hands. I was up at
four this morning to put the last touch to it. I often differ
with the majority about other people's writings, and still
oftener about my own; and therefore I may very likely be
mistaken; but I think that this article will be a hit. We shall
see. Nothing ever cost me more pains than the first half; I never
wrote anything so flowingly as the latter half; and I like the
latter half the best. I have laid it on Walpole so unsparingly
that I shall not be surprised if Miss Berry should cut me. You
know she was Walpole's favourite in her youth. Neither am I sure
that Lord and Lady Holland will be well pleased. But they ought
to be obliged to me; for I refrained for their sake from laying a
hand, which has been thought to be not a light one, on that old
rogue the first Lord Holland. [Lord Holland, once upon a time,
speaking to Macaulay of his grandfather, said: "He had that
temper which kind folks have been pleased to say belongs to my
family; but he shared the fault that belonged to that school of
statesmen, an utter disbelief in public virtue."]

Charles Grant is still at Paris; ill, he says. I never knew a man
who wanted setting to rights so often. He goes as badly as your
watch.

My father is at me again to provide for P--. What on earth have I
to do with P--? The relationship is one which none but Scotchmen
would recognise. The lad is such a fool that he would utterly
disgrace my recommendation. And, as if to make the thing more
provoking, his sisters say that he must be provided for in
England, for that they cannot think of parting with him. This, to
be sure, matters little; for there is at present just as little
chance of getting anything in India as in England.

But what strange folly this is which meets me in every quarter;
people wanting posts in the army, the navy, the public offices,
and saying that, if they cannot find such posts, they must
starve! How do all the rest of mankind live? If I had not
happened to be engaged in politics, and if my father had not been
connected, by very extraordinary circumstances, with public men,
I should never have dreamed of having places. Why cannot P-- be
apprenticed to some hatter or tailor? He may do well in such a
business; he will do detestably ill as a clerk in my office. He
may come to make good coats; he will never, I am sure, write good
despatches. There is nothing truer than Poor Richard's say: "We
are taxed twice as heavily by our pride as by the state." The
curse of England is the obstinate determination of the middle
classes to make their sons what they call gentlemen. So we are
overrun by clergymen without livings; lawyers without briefs;
physicians without patients; authors without readers; clerks
soliciting employment, who might have thriven, and been above the
world, as bakers, watchmakers, or innkeepers. The next time my
father speaks to me about P--, I will offer to subscribe twenty
guineas towards making a pastry-cook of him. He had a sweet tooth
when he was a child.

So you are reading Burnet! Did you begin from the beginning? What
do you think of the old fellow? He was always a great favourite
of mine; honest, though careless; a strong party man on the right
side, yet with much kind feeling towards his opponents, and even
towards his personal enemies. He is to me a most entertaining
writer; far superior to Clarendon in the art of amusing, though
of course far Clarendon's inferior in discernment, and in dignity
and correctness of style. Do you know, by the bye, Clarendon's
life of himself? I like it, the part after the Restoration at
least, better than his great History.

I am very quiet; rise at seven or half-past; read Spanish till
ten; breakfast; walk to my office; stay there till four; take a
long walk, dine towards seven; and am in bed before eleven. I am
going through Don Quixote again, and admire it more than ever. It
is certainly the best novel in the world, beyond all comparison.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: October 21, 1833.

My dear Sister,--Grant is here at last, and we have had a very
long talk about matters both public and private. The Government
would support my appointment; but he expects violent opposition
from the Company. He mentioned my name to the Chairs, and they
were furious. They know that I have been against them through the
whole course of the negotiations which resulted in the India
Bill. They put their opposition on the ground of my youth,--a
very flattering objection to a man who this week completes his
thirty-third year. They spoke very highly of me in other
respects; but they seemed quite obstinate.

The question now is whether their opposition will be supported by
the other Directors. If it should be so, I have advised Grant
most strongly to withdraw my name, to put up some other man, and
then to fight the battle to the utmost. We shall be suspected of
jobbing if we proceed to extremities on behalf of one of
ourselves; but we can do what we like, if it is in favour of some
person whom we cannot be suspected of supporting from interested
motives. From the extreme unreasonableness and pertinacity which
are discernible in every communication that we receive from the
India House at present, I am inclined to think that I have no
chance of being chosen by them, without a dispute in which I
should not wish the Government to engage for such a purpose. Lord
Grey says that I have a right to their support if I ask for it;
but that, for the sake of his administration generally, he is
very adverse to my going. I do not think that I shall go.
However, a few days will decide the matter.

I have heard from Napier. He praises my article on Walpole in
terms absolutely extravagant. He says that it is the best that I
ever wrote; and, entre nous, I am not very far from agreeing with
him. I am impatient to have your opinion. No flattery pleases me
so much as domestic flattery. You will have the Number within the
week.

Ever yours

T. B. M

To Macvey Napier, Esq.

London: October 21, 1833.

Dear Napier,--I am glad to learn that you like my article. I like
it myself; which is not much my habit. Very likely the public,
which has often been kinder to my performances than I was, may on
this, as on other occasions, differ from me in opinion. If the
paper has any merit, it owes it to the delay of which you must, I
am sure, have complained very bitterly in your heart. I was so
thoroughly dissatisfied with the article, as it stood at first,
that I completely re-wrote it; altered the whole arrangement;
left out ten or twelve pages in one part; and added twice as many
in another. I never wrote anything so slowly as the first half,
or so rapidly as the last half.

You are in an error about Akenside, which I must clear up for his
credit, and for mine. You are confounding the Ode to Curio and
the Epistle to Curio. The latter is generally printed at the end
of Akenside's works, and is, I think, the best thing that he ever
wrote. The Ode is worthless. It is merely an abridgment of the
Epistle executed in the most unskilful way. Johnson says, in his
Life of Akenside, that no poet ever so much mistook his powers as
Akenside when he took to lyric composition. "Having," I think the
words are, "written with great force and poignancy his Epistle to
Curio, he afterwards transformed it into an Ode only disgraceful
to its author." ["Akenside was one of the fiercest and the most
uncompromising of the young patriots out of Parliament. When he
found that the change of administration had produced no change of
system, he gave vent to his indignation in the 'Epistle to
Curio,' the best poem that he ever wrote; a poem, indeed, which
seems to indicate that, if he had left lyrical composition to
Cray and Collins, and had employed his powers in grave and
elevated satire, he might have disputed the pre-eminence of
Dryden." This passage occurs in Macaulay's Essay on Horace
Walpole. In the course of the same Essay, Macaulay remarks that
"Lord Chesterfield stands much lower in the estimation of
posterity than he would have done if his letters had never been
published."]

When I said that Chesterfield had lost by the publication of his
letters, I of course considered that he had much to lose; that he
has left an immense reputation, founded on the testimony of all
his contemporaries of all parties, for wit, taste, and eloquence;
that what remains of his Parliamentary oratory is superior to
anything of that time that has come down to us, except a little
of Pitt's. The utmost that can be said of the letters is that
they are the letters of a cleverish man; and there are not many
which are entitled even to that praise. I think he would have
stood higher if we had been left to judge of his powers,--as we
judge of those of Chatham, Mansfield, Charles Townshend, and many
others,--only by tradition, and by fragments of speeches
preserved in Parliamentary reports.

I said nothing about Lord Byron's criticism on Walpole, because I
thought it, like most of his Lordship's criticism, below
refutation. On the drama Lord Byron wrote more nonsense than on
any subject. He wanted to have restored the unities. His practice
proved as unsuccessful as his theory was absurd. His admiration
of the "Mysterious Mother" was of a piece with his thinking
Gifford, and Rogers, greater poets than Wordsworth, and
Coleridge.

Ever yours truly

T. B. MACAULAY.

London: October 28, 1833.

Dear Hannah,--I wish to have Malkin as head of the Commission at
Canton, and Grant seems now to be strongly bent on the same
plan. [Sir Benjamin Malkin, a college friend of Macaulay, was
afterwards a judge in the Supreme Court at Calcutta.] Malkin is a
man of singular temper, judgment, and firmness of nerve. Danger
and responsibility, instead of agitating and confusing him,
always bring out whatever there is in him. This was the
reason of his great success at Cambridge. He made a figure there
far beyond his learning or his talents, though both his learning
and his talents are highly respectable. But the moment that he
sate down to be examined, which is just the situation in which
all other people, from natural flurry, do worse than at other
times, be began to do his very best. His intellect became
clearer, and his manner more quiet, than usual. He is the very
man to make up his mind in three minutes if the Viceroy of Canton
were in a rage, the mob bellowing round the doors of the factory,
and an English ship of war making preparations to bombard the
town.

A propos of places, my father has been at me again about P--.
Would you think it? This lad has a hundred and twenty pounds a
year for life! I could not believe my ears; but so it is; and I,
who have not a penny, with half a dozen brothers and sisters as
poor as myself, am to move heaven and earth to push this boy who,
as he is the silliest, is also, I think, the richest relation
that I have in the world.

I am to dine on Thursday with the Fishmongers' Company, the first
company for gourmandise in the world. Their magnificent Hall near
London Bridge is not yet built, but, as respects eating and
drinking, I shall be no loser; for we are to be entertained at
the Albion Tavern. This is the first dinner-party that I shall
have been to for a long time. There is nobody in town that I know
except official men, and they have left their wives and
households in the country. I met Poodle Byng, it is true, the day
before yesterday in the street; and he begged me to make haste to
Brooks's; for Lord Essex was there, he said, whipping up for a
dinner-party; cursing and swearing at all his friends for being
out of town; and wishing--what an honour!--that Macaulay was in
London. I preserved all the dignity of a young lady in an affaire
du coeur. "I shall not run after my Lord, I assure you. If he
wants me, he knows where he may hear of me." This nibble is the
nearest approach to a dinner-party that I have had.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

London: November 1, 1833.

Dear Hannah,--I have not much to add to what I told you
yesterday; but everything that I have to add looks one way. We
have a new Chairman and Deputy Chairman, both very strongly in my
favour. Sharp, by whom I sate yesterday at the Fishmongers'
dinner, told me that my old enemy James Mill had spoken to him on
the subject. Mill is, as you have heard, at the head of one of
the principal departments of the India House. The late Chairman
consulted him about me; hoping, I suppose, to have his support
against me. Mill said, very handsomely, that he would advise the
Company to take me; for, as public men went, I was much above the
average, and, if they rejected me, he thought it very unlikely
that they would get anybody so fit. This is all the news that I
have to give you. It is not much. But I wish to keep you as fully
informed of what is going on as I am myself.

Old Sharp told me that I was acting quite wisely, but that he
should never see me again; and he cried as he said it. [Mr. Sharp
died in 1837, before Macaulay's return from India.] I encouraged
him; and told him that I hoped to be in England again before the
end of 1839, and that there was nothing impossible in our meeting
again. He cheered up after a time; told me that he should
correspond with me, and give me all the secret history both of
politics and of society; and promised to select the best books,
and send them regularly to me.

The Fishmongers' dinner was very good, but not so profusely
splendid as I had expected. There has been a change, I find, and
not before it was wanted. They had got at one time to dining at
ten guineas a head. They drank my health, and I harangued them
with immense applause. I talked all the evening to Sharp. I told
him what a dear sister I had, and how readily she had agreed to
go with me. I had told Grant the same in the morning. Both of
them extolled my good fortune in having such a companion.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

London: November--, 1833.

Dear Hannah,--Things stand as they stood; except that the report
of my appointment is every day spreading more widely; and that I
am beset by advertising dealers begging leave to make up a
hundred cotton shirts for me, and fifty muslin gowns for you, and
by clerks out of place begging to be my secretaries. I am not in
very high spirits to-day, as I have just received a letter from
poor Ellis, to whom I had not communicated my intentions till
yesterday. He writes so affectionately and so plaintively that he
quite cuts me to the heart. There are few indeed from whom I
shall part with so much pain; and he, poor fellow, says that,
next to his wife, I am the person for whom he feels the most
thorough attachment, and in whom he places the most unlimited
confidence.

On the 11th of this month there is to be a dinner given to
Lushington by the electors of the Tower Hamlets. He has
persecuted me with importunities to attend, and make a speech for
him; and my father has joined in the request. It is enough, in
these times, Heaven knows, for a man who represents, as I do, a
town of a hundred and twenty thousand people to keep his own
constituents in good humour; and the Spitalfields weavers, and
Whitechapel butchers, are nothing to me. But, ever since I
succeeded in what everybody allows to have been the most
hazardous attempt of the kind ever made,--I mean in persuading an
audience of manufacturers, all Whigs or Radicals, that the
immediate alteration of the corn-laws was impossible,--I have
been considered as a capital physician for desperate cases in
politics. However,--to return from that delightful theme, my own
praises,--Lushington, who is not very popular with the rabble of
the Tower Hamlets, thinks that an oration from me would give him
a lift. I could not refuse him directly, backed as he was by my
father. I only said that I would attend if I were in London on
the 11th; but I added that, situated as I was, I thought it very
probable that I should be out of town.

I shall go to-night to Miss Berry's soiree. I do not know whether
I told you that she resented my article on Horace Walpole so much
that Sir Stratford Canning advised me not to go near her. She was
Walpole's greatest favourite. His Reminiscences are addressed to
her in terms of the most gallant eulogy. When he was dying at
past eighty, he asked her to marry him, merely that he might make
her a Countess and leave her his fortune. You know that in Vivian
Grey she is called Miss Otranto. I always expected that my
article would put her into a passion, and I was not mistaken; but
she has come round again, and sent me a most pressing and kind
invitation the other day.

I have been racketing lately, having dined twice with Rogers, and
once with Grant. Lady Holland is in a most extraordinary state.
She came to Rogers's, with Allen, in so bad a humour that we were
all forced to rally, and make common cause against her. There was
not a person at table to whom she was not rude; and none of us
were inclined to submit. Rogers sneered; Sydney made merciless
sport of her. Tom Moore looked excessively impertinent; Bobus put
her down with simple straightforward rudeness; and I treated her
with what I meant to be the coldest civility. Allen flew into a
rage with us all, and especially with Sydney, whose guffaws, as
the Scotch say, were indeed tremendous. When she and all the rest
were gone, Rogers made Tom Moore and me sit down with him for
half an hour, and we coshered over the events of the evening.
Rogers said that he thought Allen's firing up in defence of his
patroness the best thing that he had seen in him. No sooner had
Tom and I got into the street than he broke forth: "That such an
old stager as Rogers should talk such nonsense, and give Allen
credit for attachment to anything but his dinner! Allen was
bursting with envy to see us so free, while he was conscious of
his own slavery."

Her Ladyship has been the better for this discipline. She has
overwhelmed me ever since with attentions and invitations. I have
at last found out the cause of her ill-humour, or at least of
that portion of it of which I was the object. She is in a rage at
my article on Walpole, but at what part of it I cannot tell. I
know that she is very intimate with the Waldegraves, to whom the
manuscripts belong, and for whose benefit the letters were
published. But my review was surely not calculated to injure the
sale of the book. Lord Holland told me, in an aside, that he
quite agreed with me, but that we had better not discuss the
subject.

A note; and, by my life, from my Lady Holland: "Dear Mr. Macaulay,
pray wrap yourself very warm, and come to us on Wednesday." No, my
good Lady. I am engaged on Wednesday to dine at the Albion Tavern
with the Directors of the East India Company; now my servants;
next week, I hope, to be my masters.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: November 22, 1833.

My dear Sister,--The decision is postponed for a week; but there
is no chance of an unfavourable result. The Chairs have collected
the opinions of their brethren; and the result is, that, of the
twenty-four Directors, only six or seven at the most will vote
against me.

I dined with the Directors on Wednesday at the Albion Tavern. We
had a company of about sixty persons, and many eminent military
men amongst them. The very courteous manner in which several of
the Directors begged to be introduced to me, and drank my health
at dinner, led me to think that the Chairs have not overstated
the feeling of the Court. One of them, an old Indian and a great
friend of our uncle the General, told me in plain words that he
was glad to hear that I was to be in their service. Another, whom
I do not even know by sight, pressed the Chairman to propose my
health. The Chairman with great judgment refused. It would have
been very awkward to have had to make a speech to them in the
present circumstances.

Of course, my love, all your expenses, from the day of my
appointment, are my affair. My present plan, formed after
conversation with experienced East Indians, is not to burden
myself with an extravagant outfit. I shall take only what will be
necessary for the voyage. Plate, wine, coaches, furniture, glass,
china, can be bought in Calcutta as well as in London. I shall
not have money enough to fit myself out handsomely with such
things here; and to fit myself out shabbily would be folly. I
reckon that we can bring our whole expense for the passage within
the twelve hundred pounds allowed by the Company. My calculation
is that our cabins and board will cost L250 apiece. The passage
of our servants L50 apiece. That makes up L600. My clothes and
etceteras, as Mrs. Meeke observes, I will, I am quite sure, come
within L200. [Mrs. Meeke was his favourite among bad novel-
writers, See page 96.] Yours will, of course, be more. I will
send you L300 to lay out as you like; not meaning to confine you
to it, by any means; but you would probably prefer having a sum
down to sending in your milliner's bills to me. I reckon my
servant's outfit at L50; your maid's at as much more. The whole
will be L1200.

One word about your maid. You really must choose with great
caution. Hitherto the Company has required that all ladies, who
take maidservants with them from this country to India, should
give security to send them back within two years. The reason was,
that no class of people misconducted themselves so much in the
East as female servants from this country. They generally treat
the natives with gross insolence; an insolence natural enough to
people accustomed to stand in a subordinate relation to others
when, for the first time, they find a great population placed in
a servile relation towards them. Then, too, the state of society
is such that they are very likely to become mistresses of the
wealthy Europeans, and to flaunt about in magnificent palanquins,
bringing discredit on their country by the immorality of their
lives and the vulgarity of their manners. On these grounds the
Company has hitherto insisted upon their being sent back at the
expense of those who take them out. The late Act will enable your
servant to stay in India, if she chooses to stay. I hope,
therefore, that you will be careful in your selection. You see
how much depends upon it. The happiness and concord of our native
household, which will probably consist of sixty or seventy
people, may be destroyed by her, if she should be ill-tempered
and arrogant. If she should be weak and vain, she will probably
form connections that will ruin her morals and her reputation. I
am no preacher, as you very well know; but I have a strong sense
of the responsibility under which we shall both lie with respect
to a poor girl, brought by us into the midst of temptations of
which she cannot be aware, and which have turned many heads that
might have been steady enough in a quiet nursery or kitchen in
England.

To find a man and wife, both of whom would suit us, would be very
difficult; and I think it right, also, to offer to my clerk to
keep him in my service. He is honest, intelligent, and
respectful; and, as he is rather inclined to consumption, the
change of climate would probably be useful to him. I cannot bear
the thought of throwing any person who has been about me for five
years, and with whom I have no fault to find, out of bread, while
it is in my power to retain his services.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

London: December 5, 1833

Dear Lord Lansdowne,--I delayed returning an answer to your kind
letter till this day, in order that I might be able to send you
definite intelligence. Yesterday evening the Directors appointed
me to a seat in the Council of India. The votes were nineteen for
me, and three against me.

I feel that the sacrifice which I am about to make is great. But
the motives which urge me to make it are quite irresistible.
Every day that I live I become less and less desirous of great
wealth. But every day makes me more sensible of the importance of
a competence. Without a competence it is not very easy for a
public man to be honest; it is almost impossible for him to be
thought so. I am so situated that I can subsist only in two ways:
by being in office, and by my pen. Hitherto, literature has been
merely my relaxation,--the amusement of perhaps a month in the
year. I have never considered it as the means of support. I have
chosen my own topics, taken my own time, and dictated my own
terms. The thought of becoming a bookseller's hack; of writing to
relieve, not the fulness of the mind, but the emptiness of the
pocket; of spurring a jaded fancy to reluctant exertion; of
filling sheets with trash merely that the sheets may be filled;
of bearing from publishers and editors what Dryden bore from
Tonson, and what, to my own knowledge, Mackintosh bore from
Lardner, is horrible to me. Yet thus it must be, if I should quit
office. Yet to hold office merely for the sake of emolument would
be more horrible still. The situation, in which I have been
placed for some time back, would have broken the spirit of many
men. It has rather tended to make me the most mutinous and
unmanageable of the followers of the Government. I tendered my
resignation twice during the course of the last Session. I
certainly should not have done so if I had been a man of fortune.
You, whom malevolence itself could never accuse of coveting
office for the sake of pecuniary gain, and whom your salary very
poorly compensates for the sacrifice of ease, and of your tastes,
to the public service, cannot estimate rightly the feelings of a
man who knows that his circumstances lay him open to the
suspicion of being actuated in his public conduct by the lowest
motives. Once or twice, when I have been defending unpopular
measures in the House of Commons, that thought has disordered my
ideas, and deprived me of my presence of mind.

If this were all, I should feel that, for the sake of my own
happiness and of my public utility, a few years would be well
spent in obtaining an independence. But this is not all. I am not
alone in the world. A family which I love most fondly is
dependent on me. Unless I would see my father left in his old age
to the charity of less near relations; my youngest brother unable
to obtain a good professional education; my sisters, who are more
to me than any sisters ever were to a brother, forced to turn
governesses or humble companions,--I must do something, I must
make some effort. An opportunity has offered itself. It is in my
power to make the last days of my father comfortable, to educate
my brother, to provide for my sisters, to procure a competence
for myself. I may hope, by the time I am thirty-nine or forty, to
return to England with a fortune of thirty thousand pounds. To me
that would be affluence. I never wished for more.

As far as English politics are concerned, I lose, it is true, a
few years. But, if your kindness had not introduced me very early
to Parliament,--if I had been left to climb up the regular path
of my profession, and to rise by my own efforts,--I should have
had very little chance of being in the House of Commons at forty.
If I have gained any distinction in the eyes of my countrymen,--
if I have acquired any knowledge of Parliamentary and official
business, and any habitude for the management of great affairs,--
I ought to consider these things as clear gain.

Then, too, the years of my absence, though lost, as far as
English politics are concerned, will not, I hope, be wholly lost,
as respects either my own mind or the happiness of my fellow-
creatures. I can scarcely conceive a nobler field than that which
our Indian Empire now presents to a statesman. While some of my
partial friends are blaming me for stooping to accept a share in
the government of that Empire, I am afraid that I am aspiring too
high for my qualifications. I sometimes feel, I most unaffectedly
declare, depressed and appalled by the immense responsibility
which I have undertaken. You are one of the very few public men
of our time who have bestowed on Indian affairs the attention
which they deserve; and you will therefore, I am sure, fully
enter into my feelings.

And now, dear Lord Lansdowne, let me thank you most warmly for
the kind feeling which has dictated your letter. That letter is,
indeed, but a very small part of what I ought to thank you for.
That at an early age I have gained some credit in public life;
that I have done some little service to more than one good cause;
that I now have it in my power to repair the ruined fortunes of
my family, and to save those who are dearest to me from the
misery and humiliation of dependence; that I am almost certain,
if I live, of obtaining a competence by honourable means before I
am past the full vigour of manhood,--this I owe to your
kindness. I will say no more. I will only entreat you to believe
that neither now, nor on any former occasion, have I ever said
one thousandth part of what I feel.

If it will not be inconvenient to you, I propose to go to Bowood
on Wednesday next. Labouchere will be my fellow-traveller. On
Saturday we must both return to town. Short as my visit must be,
I look forward to it with great pleasure.

Believe me, ever,

Yours most faithfully and affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: December 5, 1833

My dear Sister,--I am overwhelmed with business, clearing off my
work here, and preparing for my new functions. Plans of ships,
and letters from captains, pour in without intermission. I really
am mobbed with gentlemen begging to have the honour of taking me
to India at my own time. The fact is that a Member of Council is
a great catch, not merely on account of the high price which he
directly pays for accommodation, but because other people are
attracted by him. Every father of a young writer, or a young
cadet, likes to have his son on board the same vessel with the
great man, to dine at the same table, and to have a chance of
attracting his notice. Everything in India is given by the
Governor in Council; and, though I have no direct voice in the
disposal of patronage, my indirect influence may be great.

Grant's kindness through all these negotiations has been such as
I really cannot describe. He told me yesterday, with tears in his
eyes, that he did not know what the Board would do without me. I
attribute his feeling partly to Robert Grant's absence; not that
Robert ever did me ill offices with him far from it; but Grant's
is a mind that cannot stand alone. It is begging your pardon for
my want of gallantry, a feminine mind. It turns, like ivy, to
some support. When Robert is near him, he clings to Robert.
Robert being away, he clings to me. This may be a weakness in a
public man; but I love him the better for it.

I have lately met Sir James Graham at dinner. He took me aside,
and talked to me on my appointment with a warmth of kindness
which, though we have been always on good terms, surprised me.
But the approach of a long separation, like the approach of
death, brings out all friendly feelings with unusual strength.
The Cabinet, he said, felt the loss strongly. It was great at the
India Board, but in the House of Commons, (he used the word over
and over,) "irreparable." They all, however, he said, agreed
that a man of honour could not make politics a profession unless
he had a competence of his own, without exposing himself to
privation of the severest kind. They felt that they had never had
it in their power to do all they wished to do for me. They had no
means of giving me a provision in England; and they could not
refuse me what I asked in India. He said very strongly that they
all thought that I judged quite wisely; and added that, if God
heard his prayers, and spared my health, I should make a far
greater figure in public life than if I had remained during the
next five or six years in England.

I picked up in a print-shop the other day some superb views of
the suburbs of Chowringhee, and the villas of the Garden Reach.
Selina professes that she is ready to die with envy of the fine
houses and verandahs. I heartily wish we were back again in a
nice plain brick house, three windows in front, in Cadogan Place
or Russell Square, with twelve or fifteen hundred a year, and a
spare bedroom,--(we, like Mrs. Norris, [A leading personage in
Miss Austen's "Mansfield Park."] must always have a spare
bedroom,)--for Edward and Margaret, Love to them both.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Macvey Napier, Esq.

London: December 5, 1833

Dear Napier,--You are probably not unprepared for what I am about
to tell you. Yesterday evening the Directors of the East India
Company elected me one of the members of the Supreme Council. It
will, therefore, be necessary that in a few weeks,--ten weeks, at
furthest,--I should leave this country for a few years.

It would be mere affectation in me to pretend not to know that my
support is of some importance to the Edinburgh Review. In the
situation in which I shall now be placed, a connection with the
Review will be of some importance to me. I know well how
dangerous it is for a public man wholly to withdraw himself from
the public eye. During an absence of six years, I run some risk
of losing most of the distinction, literary and political, which
I have acquired. As a means of keeping myself in the recollection
of my countrymen during my sojourn abroad the Review will be
invaluable to me; nor do I foresee that there will be the
slightest difficulty in my continuing to write for you at least
as much as ever. I have thought over my late articles, and I
really can scarcely call to mind a single sentence in any one of
them which might not have been written at Calcutta as easily as
in London. Perhaps in India I might not have the means of
detecting two or three of the false dates in Croker's Boswell.
But that would have been all. Very little, if any, of the effect
of my most popular articles is produced either by minute research
into rare books, or by allusions to mere topics of the day.

I think therefore that we might easily establish a commerce
mutually beneficial. I shall wish to be supplied with all the
good books which come out in this part of the world. Indeed, many
books which in themselves are of little value, and which, if I
were in England, I should not think it worth while to read, will
be interesting to me in India; just as the commonest daubs, and
the rudest vessels, at Pompeii attract the minute attention of
people who would not move their eyes to see a modern signpost, or
a modern kettle. Distance of place, like distance of time, makes
trifles valuable.

What I propose, then, is that you should pay me for the articles
which I may send you from India, not in money, but in books. As
to the amount I make no stipulations. You know that I have never
haggled about such matters. As to the choice of books, the mode
of transmission, and other matters, we shall have ample time to
discuss them before my departure. Let me know whether you are
willing to make an arrangement on this basis.

I have not forgotten Chatham in the midst of my avocations. I
hope to send you an article on him early next week.

Ever yours sincerely

T. B. MACAULAY.

From the Right Hon. Francis Jeffrey to Macvey Napier, Esq.

24, Moray Place
Saturday evening, December

My dear Napier,--I am very much obliged to you for the permission
to read this. It is to me, I will confess, a solemn and
melancholy announcement. I ought not, perhaps, so to consider it.
But I cannot help it. I was not prepared for six years, and I
must still hope that it will not be so much. At my age, and with
that climate for him, the chances of our ever meeting again are
terribly endangered by such a term. He does not know the extent
of the damage which his secession may be to the great cause of
Liberal government. His anticipations and offers about the Review
are generous and pleasing, and must be peculiarly gratifying to
you. I think, if you can, you should try to see him before he
goes, and I envy you the meeting.

Ever very faithfully yours

F. JEFFREY.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: December 21, 1833.

My dear Sister,--Yesterday I dined at Boddington's. We had a very
agreeable party: Duncannon, Charles Grant, Sharp, Chantrey the
sculptor, Bobus Smith, and James Mill. Mill and I were extremely
friendly, and I found him a very pleasant companion, and a man of
more general information than I had imagined.

Bobus was very amusing. He is a great authority on Indian
matters. He was during several years Advocate-General in Bengal,
and made all his large fortune there. I asked him about the
climate. Nothing, he said, could be pleasanter, except in August
and September. He never ate or drank so much in his life. Indeed,
his looks do credit to Bengal; for a healthier man of his age I
never saw. We talked about expenses. "I cannot conceive," he
said, "how anybody at Calcutta can live on less than L3,000 a
year, or can contrive to spend more than L4,000." We talked of
the insects and snakes, and he said a thing which reminded me of
his brother Sydney: "Always, Sir, manage to have at your table
some fleshy, blooming, young writer or cadet, just come out; that
the musquitoes may stick to him, and leave the rest of the
company alone."

I have been with George Babington to the Asia. We saw her to
every disadvantage, all litter and confusion; but she is a fine
ship, and our cabins will be very good. The captain I like much.
He is an agreeable, intelligent, polished man of forty; and very
good-looking, considering what storms and changes of climate he
has gone through. He advised me strongly to put little furniture
into our cabins. I told him to have yours made as neat as
possible, without regard to expense. He has promised to have it
furnished simply, but prettily; and when you see it, if any
addition occurs to you, it shall be made. I shall spare nothing
to make a pretty little boudoir for you. You cannot think how my
friends here praise you. You are quite Sir James Graham's
heroine.

To-day I breakfasted with Sharp, whose kindness is as warm as
possible. Indeed, all my friends seen to be in the most amiable
mood. I have twice as many invitations as I can accept; and I
have been frequently begged to name my own party. Empty as London
is, I never was so much beset with invitations. Sharp asked me
about you. I told him how much I regretted my never having had
any opportunity of showing you the best part of London society.
He said that he would take care that you should see what was best
worth seeing before your departure. He promises to give us a few
breakfast-parties and dinner-parties, where you will meet as many
as he can muster of the best set in town,--Rogers, Luttrell,
Rice, Tom Moore, Sydney Smith, Grant, and other great wits and
politicians. I am quite delighted at this; both because you will,
I am sure, be amused, and pleased, at a time when you ought to
have your mind occupied, and because even to have mixed a little
in a circle so brilliant will be of advantage to you in India.
You have neglected, and very rightly and sensibly, frivolous
accomplishments; you have not been at places of fashionable
diversion; and it is, therefore, the more desirable that you
should appear among the dancing, pianoforte-playing, opera-going,
damsels at Calcutta as one who has seen society better than any
that they ever approached. I hope that you will not disapprove of
what I have done. I accepted Sharp's offer for you eagerly.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: January 2, 1834.

My dear Sister,--I am busy with an article for Napier. [The first
article on Lord Chatham.] I cannot in the least tell at present
whether I shall like it or not. I proceed with great ease; and in
general I have found that the success of my writings has been in
proportion to the ease with which they have been written.

I had a most extraordinary scene with Lady Holland. If she had
been as young and handsome as she was thirty years ago, she would
have turned my head. She was quite hysterical about my going;
paid me such compliments as I cannot repeat; cried; raved; called
me dear, dear Macaulay. "You are sacrificed to your family. I see
it all. You are too good to them. They are always making a tool
of you; last Session about the slaves; and now sending you to
India!" I always do my best to keep my temper with Lady Holland
for three reasons; because she is a woman; because she is very
unhappy in her health, and in the circumstances of her position;
and because she has a real kindness for me. But at last she said
something about you. This was too much, and I was beginning to
answer her in a voice trembling with anger, when she broke out
again: "I beg your pardon. Pray forgive me, dear Macaulay. I was
very impertinent. I know you will forgive me. Nobody has such a
temper as you. I have said so a hundred times. I said so to Allen
only this morning. I am sure you will bear with my weakness. I
shall never see you again;" and she cried, and I cooled; for it
would have been to very little purpose to be angry with her. I
hear that it is not to me alone that she runs on in this way. She
storms at the Ministers for letting me go. I was told that at one
dinner she became so violent that even Lord Holland, whose temper,
whatever his wife may say, is much cooler than mine, could not
command himself, and broke out: "Don't talk such nonsense, my
Lady. What, the devil! Can we tell a gentleman who has a claim
upon us that he must lose his only chance of getting an
independence in order that he may come and talk to you in an
evening?"

Good-bye, and take care not to become so fond of your own will as
my Lady. It is now my duty to omit no opportunity of giving you
wholesome advice. I am henceforward your sole guardian. I have
bought Gisborne's Duties of Women, Moore's Fables for the Female
Sex, Mrs. King's Female Scripture Characters, and Fordyce's
Sermons. With the help of these books I hope to keep my
responsibility in order on our voyage, and in India.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London: January 4, 1834.

My dear Sister,--I am now buying books; not trashy books which
will only bear one reading; but good books for a library. I have
my eye on all the bookstalls; and I shall no longer suffer you,
when we walk together in London, to drag me past them as you used
to do. Pray make out a list of any which you would like to have.
The provision which I design for the voyage is Richardson,
Voltaire's works, Gibbon, Sismondi's History of the French,
Davila, the Orlando in Italian, Don Quixote in Spanish, Homer in
Greek, Horace in Latin. I must also have some books of
jurisprudence, and some to initiate me in Persian and
Hindostanee. Shall I buy "Dunallan" for you? I believe that in
your eyes it would stand in the place of all the rest together.
But, seriously, let me know what you would like me to procure.

Ellis is making a little collection of Greek classics for me.
Sharp has given me one or two very rare and pretty books, which I
much wanted. All the Edinburgh Reviews are being bound, so that
we shall have a complete set, up to the forth coming number,
which will contain an article of mine on Chatham. And this
reminds me that I must give over writing to you, and fall to my
article. I rather think that it will be a good one.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

London: February 13, 1834.

Dear Napier,--It is true that I have been severely tried by ill-
health during the last few weeks; but I am now rapidly
recovering, and am assured by all my medical advisers that a week
of the sea will make me better than ever I was in my life.

I have several subjects in my head. One is Mackintosh's History;
I mean the fragment of the large work. Another plan which I have
is a very fine one, if it could be well executed. I think that
the time is come when a fair estimate may be formed of the
intellectual and moral character of Voltaire. The extreme
veneration, with which he was regarded during his lifetime, has
passed away; the violent reaction, which followed, has spent
itself; and the world can now, I think, bear to hear the truth,
and to see the man exhibited as he was,--a strange mixture of
greatness and littleness, virtues and vices. I have all his
works, and shall take them in my cabin on the voyage. But my
library is not particularly rich in those books which illustrate
the literary history of his times. I have Rousseau, and
Marmontel's Memoirs, and Madame du Deffand's Letters, and perhaps
a few other works which would be of use. But Grimm's
Correspondence, and several other volumes of memoirs and letters,
would be necessary. If you would make a small collection of the
works which would be most useful in this point of view, and send
it after me as soon as possible, I will do my best to draw a good
Voltaire. I fear that the article must be enormously long,--
seventy pages perhaps;--but you know that I do not run into
unnecessary lengths.

I may perhaps try my hand on Miss Austen's novels. That is a
subject on which I shall require no assistance from books.

Whatever volumes you may send me ought to be half bound; or the
white ants will devour them before they have been three days on
shore. Besides the books which may be necessary for the Review, I
should like to have any work of very striking merit which may
appear during my absence. The particular department of literature
which interests me most is history; above all, English history.
Any valuable book on that subject I should wish to possess.
Sharp, Miss Berry, and some of my other friends, will perhaps,
now and then, suggest a book to you. But it is principally on
your own judgment that I must rely to keep me well supplied.

Yours most truly

T. B. MACAULAY.

On the 4th of February Macaulay bade farewell to his electors, in
an address which the Leeds Tories probably thought too high-flown
for the occasion. ["If, now that I have ceased to be your
servant, and am only your sincere and grateful friend, I may
presume to offer you advice which must, at least, be allowed to
be disinterested, I would say to you: Act towards your future
representatives as you have acted towards me. Choose them, as you
chose me, without canvassing and without expense. Encourage them,
as you encouraged me, always to speak to you fearlessly and
plainly. Reject, as you have hitherto rejected, the wages of
dishonour. Defy, as you have hitherto defied, the threats of
petty tyrants. Never forget that the worst and most degrading
species of corruption is the corruption which operates, not by
hopes, but by fears. Cherish those noble and virtuous principles
for which we have struggled and triumphed together--the principles
of liberty and toleration, of justice and order. Support, as you
have steadily supported, the cause of good government; and may
all the blessings which are the natural fruits of good government
descend upon you and be multiplied to you an hundredfold! May
your manufactures flourish; may your trade be extended; may your
riches increase! May the works of your skill, and the signs of
your prosperity, meet me in the furthest regions of the East, and
give me fresh cause to be proud of the intelligence, the
industry, and the spirit of my constituents!"] But he had not yet
done with the House of Commons. Parliament met on the first
Tuesday in the month; and, on the Wednesday, O'Connell, who had
already contrived to make two speeches since the Session began,
rose for a third time to call attention to words uttered during
the recess by Mr. Hill, the Member for Hull. That gentleman, for
want of something better to say to his constituents, had told
them that he happened to know "that an Irish Member, who spoke
with great violence against every part of the Coercion Bill, and
voted against every clause of it, went to Ministers and said:
'Don't bate a single atom of that Bill, or it will be impossible
for any man to live in Ireland."' O'Connell called upon Lord
Althorp, as the representative of the Government, to say what
truth there was in this statement. Lord Althorp, taken by
surprise, acted upon the impulse of the moment, which in his case
was a feeling of reluctance to throw over poor Mr. Hill to be
bullied by O'Connell and his redoubtable tail. After explaining
that no set and deliberate communication of the nature mentioned
had been made to the Ministers, his Lordship went on to say that
he "should not act properly if he did not declare that he had
good reason to believe that some Irish Members did, in private
conversation, use very different language" from what they had
employed in public.

It was chivalrously, but most unwisely, spoken. O'Connell at once
gave the cue by inquiring whether he himself was among the
Members referred to, and Lord Althorp assured him that such was
not the case. The Speaker tried to interfere; but the matter had
gone too far. One Irish representative after another jumped up to
repeat the same question with regard to his own case, and
received the same answer. At length Sheil rose, and asked whether
he was one of the Members to whole the Noble Lord had alluded.
Lord Althorp replied: "Yes. The honourable and learned gentleman
is one." Sheil, "in the face of his country, and the presence of
his God," asserted that the individual who had given any such
information to the Noble Lord was guilty of a "gross and
scandalous calumny," and added that he understood the Noble Lord
to have made himself responsible for the imputation. Then ensued
one of those scenes in which the House of Commons appears at its
very worst. All the busybodies, as their manner is, rushed to the
front; and hour after hour slipped away in an unseemly,
intricate, and apparently interminable wrangle. Sheil was duly
called upon to give an assurance that the affair should not be
carried beyond the walls of the House. He refused to comply, and
was committed to the charge of the Sergeant at Arms. The Speaker
then turned to Lord Althorp, who promised in Parliamentary
language not to send a challenge. Upon this, as is graphically
enough described in the conventional terms of Hansard, "Mr
O'Connell made some observation to the honourable Member sitting
next him which was not heard in the body of the House. Lord
Althorp immediately rose, and amid loud cheers, and with
considerable warmth, demanded to know what the honourable and
learned gentleman meant by his gesticulation;" and then, after an
explanation from O'Connell, his Lordship went on to use phrases
which very clearly signified that, though he had no cause for
sending a challenge, he had just as little intention of declining
one; upon which he likewise was made over to the Sergeant.
Before, however, honourable Members went to their dinners, they
had the relief of learning that their refractory colleagues had
submitted to the Speaker's authority, and had been discharged
from custody.

There was only one way out of the difficulty. On the 10th of
February a Committee of Investigation was appointed, composed of
Members who enjoyed a special reputation for discretion. Mr. Hill
called his witnesses. The first had nothing relevant to tell.
Macaulay was the second; and he forthwith cut the matter short by
declaring that, on principle, he refused to disclose what had
passed in private conversation; a sentiment which was actually
cheered by the Committee. One sentence of common sense brought
the absurd embroilment to a rational conclusion. Mr. Hill saw his
mistake; begged that no further evidence might be taken; and, at
the next sitting of the House, withdrew his charge in unqualified
terms of self-abasement and remorse. Lord Althorp readily
admitted that he had acted "imprudently as a man, and still more
imprudently as a Minister," and stated that he considered himself
bound to accept Sheil's denial; but he could not manage so to
frame his remarks as to convey to his hearers the idea that his
opinion of that honourable gentleman had been raised by the
transaction. Sheil acknowledged the two apologies with effusion
proportioned to their respective value; and so ended an affair
which, at the worst, had evoked a fresh proof of that ingrained
sincerity of character for the sake of which his party would have
followed Lord Althorp to the death. [In Macaulay's journal for
June 4, 1851, we read: "I went to breakfast with the Bishop of
Oxford, and there learned that Sheil was dead. Poor fellow! We
talked about Sheil, and I related my adventure of February 1834.
Odd that it should have been so little known or so completely
forgotten!"]

Gravesend: February 15, 1834.

Dear Lord Lansdowne,--I had hoped that it would have been in my
power to shake hands with you once more before my departure; but
this deplorably absurd affair in the House of Commons has
prevented me from calling on you. I lost a whole day while the
Committee were deciding whether I should, or should not, be
forced to repeat all the foolish, shabby, things that I had heard
Sheil say at Brooks's. Everybody thought me right, as I certainly
was.

I cannot leave England without sending a few lines to you,--and
yet they are needless. It is unnecessary for me to say with what
feelings I shall always remember our connection, and with what
interest I shall always learn tidings of you and of your family.

Yours most sincerely

T. B. MACAULAY.

CHAPTER VI.

1834-1838.

The outward voyage--Arrival at Madras--Macaulay is summoned to
join Lord William Bentinck in the Neilgherries--His journey up-
country--His native servant--Arcot--Bangalore--Seringapatam--
Ascent of the Neilgherries--First sight of the Governor-General--
Letters to Mr. Ellis, and the Miss Macaulays--A summer on the
Neilgherries--Native Christians--Clarissa--A tragi-comedy--
Macaulay leaves the Neilgherries, travels to Calcutta, and there
sets up house--Letters to Mr. Napier, and Mrs. Cropper--Mr.
Trevelyan--Marriage of Hannah Macaulay--Death of Mrs. Cropper--
Macaulay's work in India--His Minutes for Council--Freedom of the
Press--Literary gratitude--Second Minute on the Freedom of the
Press--The Black Act--A Calcutta public meeting--Macaulay's
defence of the policy of the Indian Government--His Minute on
Education--He becomes President of the Committee of Public
Instruction--His industry in discharging the functions of that
post--Specimens of his official writing--Results of his labours--
He is appointed President of the Law Commission, and recommends
the framing of a Criminal Code--Appearance of the Code--Comments
of Mr. Fitzjames Stephen--Macaulay's private life in India--
Oriental delicacies--Breakfast-parties--Macaulay's longing for
England--Calcutta and Dublin--Departure from India--Letters to
Mr. Ellis, Mr. Sharp, Mr. Napier, and Mr. Z. Macaulay.

FROM the moment that a deputation of Falmouth Whigs, headed by
their Mayor, came on board to wish Macaulay his health in India
and a happy return to England, nothing occurred that broke the
monotony of an easy and rapid voyage. "The catching of a shark;
the shooting of an albatross; a sailor tumbling down the hatchway
and breaking his head; a cadet getting drunk and swearing at the
captain," are incidents to which not even the highest literary
power can impart the charm of novelty in the eyes of the readers
of a seafaring nation. The company on the quarterdeck was much on
a level with the average society of an East Indiaman. "Hannah
will give you the histories of all these good people at length, I
dare say, for she was extremely social; danced with the gentlemen
in the evenings, and read novels and sermons with the ladies in
the mornings. I contented myself with being very civil whenever I
was with the other passengers, and took care to be with them as
little as I could. Except at meals, I hardly exchanged a word
with any human being. I never was left for so long a time so
completely to my own resources; and I am glad to say that I found
them quite sufficient to keep me cheerful and employed. During
the whole voyage I read with keen and increasing enjoyment. I
devoured Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, French, and English;
folios, quartos, octavos, and duodecimos."

On the 10th of June the vessel lay to off Madras; and Macaulay
had his first introduction to the people for whom he was
appointed to legislate in the person of a boatman who pulled
through the surf on his raft. "He came on board with nothing on
him but a pointed yellow cap, and walked among us with a self-
possession and civility which, coupled with his colour and his
nakedness, nearly made me die of laughing." This gentleman was
soon followed by more responsible messengers, who brought tidings
the reverse of welcome. Lord William Bentinck, who was then
Governor-General, was detained by ill-health at Ootacamund in the
Neilgherry Hills; a place which, by name at least, is now as
familiar to Englishmen as Malvern; but which in 1834 was known to
Macaulay, by vague report, as situated somewhere "in the
mountains of Malabar, beyond Mysore." The state of public
business rendered it necessary that the Council should meet; and,
as the Governor-General had left one member of that body in
Bengal as his deputy, he was not able to make a quorum until his
new colleague arrived from England. A pressing summons to attend
his Lordship in the Hills placed Macaulay in some embarrassment
on account of his sister, who could not with safety commence her
Eastern experiences by a journey of four hundred miles up the
country in the middle of June. Happily the second letter which he
opened proved to be from Bishop Wilson, who insisted that the son
and daughter of so eminent an Evangelical as the Editor of the
Christian Observer, themselves part of his old congregation in
Bedford Row, should begin their Indian life nowhere except under
his roof. Hannah, accordingly, continued her voyage, and made her
appearance in Calcutta circles with the Bishop's Palace as a
home, and Lady William Bentinck as a kind, and soon an
affectionate, chaperon; while her brother remained on shore at
Madras, somewhat consoled for the separation by finding himself
in a country where so much was to be seen, and where, as far as
the English residents were concerned, he was regarded with a
curiosity at least equal to his own.

During the first few weeks nothing came amiss to him. "To be on
land after three months at sea is of itself a great change. But
to be in such a land! The dark faces, with white turbans, and
flowing robes; the trees not our trees; the very smell of the
atmosphere that of a hothouse, and the architecture as strange as
the vegetation." Every feature in that marvellous scene delighted
him both in itself, and for the sake of the innumerable
associations and images which it conjured up in his active and
well-stored mind. The salute of fifteen guns that greeted him, as
he set his foot on the beach, reminded him that he was in a
region where his countrymen could exist only on the condition of
their being warriors and rulers. When on a visit of ceremony to a
dispossessed Rajah or Nabob, he pleased himself with the
reflection that he was face to face with a prince who in old days
governed a province as large as a first-class European kingdom,
conceding to his Suzerain, the Mogul, no tribute beyond "a little
outward respect such as the great Dukes of Burgundy used to pay
to the Kings of France; and who now enjoyed the splendid and
luxurious insignificance of an abdicated prince which fell to the
lot of Charles the Fifth or Queen Christina of Sweden," with a
court that preserved the forms of royalty, the right of keeping
as many badly armed and worse paid ragamuffins as he could retain
under his tawdry standard, and the privilege of "occasionally
sending letters of condolence and congratulation to the King of
England, in which he calls himself his Majesty's good brother and
ally."

Macaulay set forth on his journey within a week from his landing,
travelling by night, and resting while the sun was at its
hottest. He has recorded his first impressions of Hindostan in a
series of journal letters addressed to his sister Margaret. The
fresh and vivid character of those impressions--the genuine and
multiform interest excited in him by all that met his ear or eye--
explain the secret of the charm which enabled him in after days
to overcome the distaste for Indian literature entertained by
that personage who, for want of a better, goes by the name of the
general reader. Macaulay reversed in his own case, the experience
of those countless writers on Indian themes who have successively
blunted their pens against the passive indifference of the
British public; for his faithful but brilliant studies of the
history of our Eastern Empire are to this day incomparably the
most popular of his works. [When published in a separate form the
articles on Lord Clive and Warren Hastings have sold nearly
twice as well as the articles on Lord Chatham, nearly thrice as
well as the article on Addison, and nearly five times as well as
the article on Byron. The great Sepoy mutiny, while it something
more than doubled the sale of the essay on Warren Hastings, all
but trebled the sale of the essay on Lord Clive; but, taking the
last twenty years together, there has been little to choose
between the pair. The steadiness and permanence of the favour
with which they are regarded may be estimated by the fact that,
during the five years between 1870 and 1874, as compared with the
five years between 1865 and 1869, the demand for them has been in
the proportion of seven to three; and, as compared with the five
years between 1860 and 1864, in the proportion of three to one.]
It may be possible, without injury to the fame of the author, to
present a few extracts from a correspondence, which is in some
sort the raw material of productions that have already secured
their place among our national classics:

"In the afternoon of the 17th June I left Madras. My train
consisted of thirty-eight persons. I was in one palanquin, and my
servant followed in another. He is a half-caste. On the day on
which we set out he told me he was a Catholic; and added,
crossing himself and turning up the whites of his eyes, that he
had recommended himself to the protection of his patron saint,
and that he was quite confident that we should perform our
journey in safety. I thought of Ambrose Llamela, Gil Blas's
devout valet, who arranges a scheme for robbing his master of his
portmanteau, and, when he comes back from meeting his
accomplices, pretends that he has been to the cathedral to
implore a blessing on their voyage. I did him, however, a great
injustice; for I have found him a very honest man, who knows the
native languages, and who can dispute a charge, bully a negligent
bearer, arrange a bed, and make a curry. But he is so fond of
giving advice that I fear he will some day or other, as the
Scotch say, raise my corruption, and provoke me to send him about
his business. His name, which I never hear without laughing, is
Peter Prim.

"Half my journey was by daylight, and all that I saw during that
time disappointed me grievously. It is amazing how small a part
of the country is under cultivation. Two-thirds at least, as it
seemed to me, was in the state of Wandsworth Common, or, to use
an illustration which you will understand better, of Chatmoss.
The people whom we met were as few as in the Highlands of
Scotland. But I have been told that in India the villages
generally lie at a distance from the roads, and that much of the
land, which when I passed through it looked like parched moor
that had never been cultivated, would after the rains be covered
with rice."

After traversing this landscape for fifteen hours he reached the
town of Arcot, which, under his handling, was to be celebrated
far and wide as the cradle of our greatness in the East.

"I was most hospitably received by Captain Smith, who commanded
the garrison. After dinner the palanquins went forward with my
servant, and the Captain and I took a ride to see the lions of
the neighbourhood. He mounted me on a very quiet Arab, and I had
a pleasant excursion. We passed through a garden which was
attached to the residence of the Nabob of the Carnatic, who
anciently held his court at Arcot. The garden has been suffered
to run to waste, and is only the more beautiful for having been
neglected. Garden, indeed, is hardly a proper word. In England it
would rank as one of our noblest parks, from which it differs
principally in this, that most of the fine trees are fruit trees.
From this we came to a mountain pass which reminded me strongly
of Borradaile, near Derwentwater, and through this defile we
struck into the road, and rejoined the bearers."

And so he went forward on his way, recalling at every step the
reminiscence of some place, or event, or person; and, thereby,
doubling for himself, and perhaps for his correspondent, the
pleasure which the reality was capable of affording. If he put up
at a collector's bungalow, he liked to think that his host ruled
more absolutely and over a larger population than "a Duke of
Saxe-Weimar or a Duke of Lucca;" and, when he came across a
military man with a turn for reading, he pronounced him "as
Dominic Sampson said of another Indian Colonel, 'a man of great
erudition, considering his imperfect opportunities.'"

On the 19th of June he crossed the frontier of Mysore; reached
Bangalore on the morning of the 20th and rested there for three
days in the house of the Commandant.

"On Monday, the 23rd, I took leave of Colonel Cubbon, who told
me, with a warmth which I was vain enough to think sincere, that
he had not passed three such pleasant days for thirty years. I
went on all night, sleeping soundly in my palanquin. At five I
was waked, and found that a carriage was waiting for me. I had
told Colonel Cubbon that I very much wished to see Seringapatam.
He had written to the British authorities at the town of Mysore,
and an officer had come from the Residency to show me all that
was to be seen. I must now digress into Indian politics; and let
me tell you that, if you read the little that I shall say about
them, you will know more on the subject than half the members of
the Cabinet."

After a few pages occupied by a sketch of the history of Mysore
during the preceding century, Macaulay proceeds

"Seringapatam has always been a place of peculiar interest to me.
It was the scene of the greatest events of Indian history. It was
the residence of the greatest of Indian princes. From a child, I
used to hear it talked of every day. Our uncle Colin was
imprisoned there for four years, and he was afterwards
distinguished at the siege. I remember that there was, in a shop-
window at Clapham, a daub of the taking of Seringapatam, which,
as a boy, I often used to stare at with the greatest interest. I
was delighted to have an opportunity of seeing the place; and,
though my expectations were high, they were not disappointed.

"The town is depopulated; but the fortress, which was one of the
strongest in India, remains entire. A river almost as broad as
the Thames at Chelsea breaks into two branches, and surrounds the
walls, above which are seen the white minarets of a mosque. We
entered, and found everything silent and desolate. The mosque,
indeed, is still kept up, and deserves to be so; but the palace
of Tippoo has fallen into utter ruin. I saw, however, with no
small interest, the airholes of the dungeon in which the English
prisoners were confined, and the water-gate leading down to the
river where the body of Tippoo was found still warm by the Duke
of Wellington, then Colonel Wellesley. The exact spot through
which the English soldiers fought their way against desperate
disadvantages into the fort is still perfectly discernible. But,
though only thirty-five years have elapsed since the fall of the
city, the palace is in the condition of Tintern Abbey and Melrose
Abbey. The courts, which bear a great resemblance to those of the
Oxford Colleges, are completely overrun with weeds and flowers.
The Hall of Audience, once considered the finest in India, still
retains some very faint traces of its old magnificence. It is
supported on a great number of light and lofty wooden pillars,
resting on pedestals of black granite. These pillars were
formerly covered with gilding, and here and there the glitter may
still be perceived. In a few more years not the smallest trace of
this superb chamber will remain. I am surprised that more care
was not taken by the English to preserve so splendid a memorial
of the greatness of him whom they had conquered. It was not like
Lord Wellesley's general mode of proceeding; and I soon saw a
proof of his taste and liberality. Tippoo raised a most sumptuous
mausoleum to his father, and attached to it a mosque which he
endowed. The buildings are carefully maintained at the expense of
our Government. You walk up from the fort through a narrow path,
bordered by flower beds and cypresses, to the front of the
mausoleum, which is very beautiful, and in general character
closely resembles the most richly carved of our small Gothic
chapels. Within are three tombs, all covered with magnificent
palls embroidered in gold with verses from the Koran. In the
centre lies Hyder; on his right the mother of Tippoo; and Tippoo
himself on the left."

During his stay at Mysore, Macaulay had an interview with the
deposed Rajah; whose appearance, conversation, palace, furniture,
jewels, soldiers, elephants, courtiers, and idols, he depicts in
a letter, intended for family perusal, with a minuteness that
would qualify him for an Anglo-Indian Richardson. By the evening
of the 24th June he was once more on the road; and, about noon on
the following day, he began to ascend the Neilgherries, through
scenery which, for the benefit of readers who had never seen the
Pyrenees or the Italian slopes of an Alpine pass, he likened to
"the vegetation of Windsor Forest, or Blenheim, spread over the
mountains of Cumberland." After reaching the summit of the table-
land, he passed through a wilderness where for eighteen miles
together he met nothing more human than a monkey, until a turn of
the road disclosed the pleasant surprise of an amphitheatre of
green hills encircling a small lake, whose banks were dotted with
red-tiled cottages surrounding a pretty Gothic church. The whole
station presented "very much the look of a rising English
watering-place. The largest house is occupied by the Governor-
General. It is a spacious and handsome building of stone. To this
I was carried, and immediately ushered into his Lordship's
presence. I found him sitting by a fire in a carpeted library. He
received me with the greatest kindness, frankness, and
hospitality. He is, as far as I can yet judge, all that I have
heard; that is to say, rectitude, openness, and good-nature,
personified." Many months of close friendship and common labours
did but confirm Macaulay in this first view of Lord William
Bentinck. His estimate of that singularly noble character
survives in the closing sentence of the essay on Lord Clive; and
is inscribed on the base of the statue which, standing in front
of the Town Hall may be seen far and wide over the great expanse
of grass that serves as the park, the parade-ground, and the
race-course of Calcutta.

To Thomas Flower Ellis.

Ootacamund: July 1, 1834.

Dear Ellis,--You need not get your map to see where Ootacamund
is; for it has not found its way into the maps. It is a new
discovery; a place to which Europeans resort for their health,
or, as it is called by the Company's servants--blessings on their
learning,--a _sanaterion_. It lies at the height of 7,000 feet
above the sea.

While London is a perfect gridiron, here am I, at 13 degrees North
from the equator, by a blazing wood fire, with my windows closed.
My bed is heaped with blankets, and my black servants are coughing
round me in all directions. One poor fellow in particular looks so
miserably cold that, unless the sun comes out, I am likely soon to
see under my own roof the spectacle which, according to
Shakespeare, is so interesting to the English,--a dead Indian.
[The Tempest, act ii. scene 2.]

I travelled the whole four hundred miles between this and Madras
on men's shoulders. I had an agreeable journey on the whole. I
was honoured by an interview with the Rajah of Mysore, who
insisted on showing me all his wardrobe, and his picture gallery.
He has six or seven coloured English prints, not much inferior to
those which I have seen in the sanded parlour of a country inn;
"Going to Cover," "The Death of the Fox," and so forth. But the
bijou of his gallery, of which he is as vain as the Grand Duke
can be of the Venus, or Lord Carlisle of the Three Maries, is a
head of the Duke of Wellington, which has, most certainly, been
on a sign-post in England.

Yet, after all, the Rajah was by no means the greatest fool whom
I found at Mysore. I alighted at a bungalow appertaining to the
British Residency. There I found an Englishman who, without any
preface, accosted me thus: "Pray, Mr. Macaulay, do not you think
that Buonaparte was the Beast?" "No, Sir, I cannot say that I
do." "Sir, he was the Beast. I can prove it. I have found the
number 666 in his name. Why, Sir, if he was not the Beast, who
was?" This was a puzzling question, and I am not a little vain of
my answer. "Sir," said I, "the House of Commons is the Beast.
There are 658 members of the House; and these, with their chief
officers,--the three clerks, the Sergeant and his deputy, the
Chaplain, the doorkeeper, and the librarian,--make 666." "Well,
Sir, that is strange. But I can assure you that, if you write
Napoleon Buonaparte in Arabic, leaving out only two letters, it
will give 666." "And pray, Sir, what right have you to leave out
two letters? And, as St. John was writing Greek, and to Greeks,
is it not likely that he would use the Greek rather than the
Arabic notation?" "But, Sir," said this learned divine,
"everybody knows that the Greek letters were never used to mark
numbers." I answered with the meekest look and voice possible: "I
do not think that everybody knows that. Indeed I have reason to
believe that a different opinion,--erroneous no doubt,--is
universally embraced by all the small minority who happen to know
any Greek." So ended the controversy. The man looked at me as if
he thought me a very wicked fellow; and, I dare say, has by this
time discovered that, if you write my name in Tamul, leaving out
T in Thomas, B in Babington, and M in Macaulay, it will give the
number of this unfortunate Beast.

I am very comfortable here. The Governor-General is the frankest
and best-natured of men. The chief functionaries, who have
attended him hither, are clever people, but not exactly on a par
as to general attainments with the society to which I belonged in
London. I thought, however, even at Madras, that I could have
formed a very agreeable circle of acquaintance; and I am assured
that at Calcutta I shall find things far better. After all, the
best rule in all parts of the world, as in London itself, is to
be independent of other men's minds. My power of finding
amusement without companions was pretty well tried on my voyage.
I read insatiably; the Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil, Horace,
Caesar's Commentaries, Bacon de Augmentis, Dante, Petrarch,
Ariosto, Tasso, Don Quixote, Gibbon's Rome, Mill's India, all the
seventy volumes of Voltaire, Sismondi's History of France, and
the seven thick folios of the Biographia Britannica. I found my
Greek and Latin in good condition enough. I liked the Iliad a
little less, and the Odyssey a great deal more than formerly.
Horace charmed me more than ever; Virgil not quite so much as he
used to do. The want of human character, the poverty of his
supernatural machinery, struck me very strongly. Can anything be
so bad as the living bush which bleeds and talks, or the Harpies
who befoul Aeneas's dinner? It is as extravagant as Ariosto, and
as dull as Wilkie's Epigoniad. The last six books, which Virgil
had not fully corrected, pleased me better than the first six. I
like him best on Italian ground. I like his localities; his
national enthusiasm; his frequent allusions to his country, its
history, its antiquities, and its greatness. In this respect he
often reminded me of Sir Walter Scott, with whom, in the general
character of his mind, he had very little affinity. The Georgics
pleased me better; the Eclogues best,--the second and tenth above
all. But I think the finest lines in the Latin language are those
five which begin,

"Sepibus in nostris parvam te roscida mala--"

[Eclogue viii. 37.]

I cannot tell you how they struck me. I was amused to find that
Voltaire pronounces that passage to be the finest in Virgil.

I liked the Jerusalem better than I used to do. I was enraptured
with Ariosto; and I still think of Dante, as I thought when I
first read him, that he is a superior poet to Milton, that he
runs neck and neck with Homer, and that none but Shakespeare has
gone decidedly beyond him.

As soon as I reach Calcutta I intend to read Herodotus again. By
the bye, why do not you translate him? You would do it
excellently; and a translation of Herodotus, well executed, would
rank with original compositions. A quarter of an hour a day would
finish the work in five years. The notes might be made the most
amusing in the world. I wish you would think of it. At all
events, I hope you will do something which may interest more than
seven or eight people. Your talents are too great, and your
leisure time too small, to be wasted in inquiries so frivolous,
(I must call them,) as those in which you have of late been too
much engaged; whether the Cherokees are of the same race with the
Chickasaws; whether Van Diemen's Land was peopled from New
Holland, or New Holland from Van Diemen's land; what is the
precise anode of appointing a headman in a village in Timbuctoo.
I would not give the worst page in Clarendon or Fra Paolo for all
that ever was, or ever will be, written about the migrations of
the Leleges and the laws of the Oscans.

I have already entered on my public functions, and I hope to do
some good. The very wigs of the judges in the Court of King's
Bench would stand on end if they knew how short a chapter my Law
of Evidence will form. I am not without many advisers. A native
of some fortune in Madras has sent me a paper on legislation.
"Your honour must know," says this judicious person, "that the
great evil is that men swear falsely in this country. No judge
knows what to believe. Surely if your honour can make men to
swear truly, your honour's fame will be great, and the Company
will flourish. Now, I know how men may be made to swear truly;
and I will tell your honour for your fame, and for the profit of
the Company. Let your honour cut off the great toe of the right
foot of every man who swears falsely, whereby your honour's fame
will be extended." Is not this an exquisite specimen of
legislative wisdom?

I must stop. When I begin to write to England, my pen runs as if
it would run on for ever.

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. M.

To Miss Fanny and Miss Selina Macaulay.

Ootacamund: August 10, 1834.

My dear Sisters,--I sent last month a full account of my journey
hither, and of the place, to Margaret, as the most stationary of
our family; desiring her to let you all see what I had written to
her. I think that I shall continue to take the same course. It is
better to write one full and connected narrative than a good many
imperfect fragments.

Money matters seem likely to go on capitally. My expenses, I
find, will be smaller than I anticipated. The Rate of Exchange,
if you know what that means, is very favourable indeed; and, if I
live, I shall get rich fast. I quite enjoy the thought of
appearing in the light of an old hunks who knows on which side
his bread is buttered; a warm man; a fellow who will cut up well.
This is not a character which the Macaulays have been much in the
habit of sustaining; but I can assure you that, after next
Christmas, I expect to lay up, on an average, about seven
thousand pounds a year, while I remain in India.

At Christmas I shall send home a thousand, or twelve hundred,
pounds for my father, and you all. I cannot tell you what a
comfort it is to me to find that I shall be able to do this. It
reconciles me to all the pains--acute enough, sometimes, God
knows,--of banishment. In a few years, if I live--probably in
less than five years from the time at which you will be reading
this letter--we shall be again together in a comfortable, though
a modest, home; certain of a good fire, a good joint of meat, and
a good glass of wine; without owing obligations to anybody; and
perfectly indifferent, at least as far as our pecuniary interest
is concerned, to the changes of the political world. Rely on it,
my dear girls, that there is no chance of my going back with my
heart cooled towards you. I came hither principally to save my
family, and I am not likely while here to forget them.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

The months of July and August Macaulay spent on the Neilgherries,
in a climate equable as Madeira and invigorating as Braemar;
where thickets of rhododendron fill the glades and clothe the
ridges; and where the air is heavy with the scent of rose-trees
of a size more fitted for an orchard than a flower-bed, and
bushes of heliotrope thirty paces round. The glories of the
forests and of the gardens touched him in spite of his profound
botanical ignorance, and he dilates more than once upon his
"cottage buried in laburnums, or something very like them, and
geraniums which grow in the open air." He had the more leisure
for the natural beauties of the place, as there was not much else
to interest even a traveller fresh from England.

"I have as yet seen little of the idolatry of India; and that
little, though excessively absurd, is not characterised by
atrocity or indecency. There is nothing of the sort at
Ootacamund. I have not, during the last six weeks, witnessed a
single circumstance from which you would have inferred that this
was a heathen country. The bulk of the natives here are a colony
from the plains below, who have come up hither to wait on the
European visitors, and who seem to trouble themselves very little
about caste or religion. The Todas, the aboriginal population of
these hills, are a very curious race. They had a grand funeral a
little while ago. I should have gone if it had not been a Council
day; but I found afterwards that I had lost nothing. The whole
ceremony consisted in sacrificing bullocks to the manes of the
defunct. The roaring of the poor victims was horrible. The people
stood talking and laughing till a particular signal was made, and
immediately all the ladies lifted up their voices and wept. I
have not lived three and thirty years in this world without
learning that a bullock roars when he is knocked down, and that a
woman can cry whenever she chooses.

"By all that I can learn, the Catholics are the most respectable
portion of the native Christians. As to Swartz's people in the
Tanjore, they are a perfect scandal to the religion which they
profess. It would have been thought something little short of
blasphemy to say this a year ago; but now it is considered
impious to say otherwise, for they have got into a violent
quarrel with the missionaries and the Bishop. The missionaries
refused to recognise the distinctions of caste in the
administration of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and the
Bishop supported them in the refusal. I do not pretend to judge
whether this was right or wrong. Swartz and Bishop Heber
conceived that the distinction of caste, however objectionable
politically, was still only a distinction of rank; and that, as
in English churches the gentlefolks generally take the Sacrament
apart from the poor of the parish, so the high-caste natives
might be allowed to communicate apart from the Pariahs.

"But, whoever was first in the wrong, the Christians of Tanjore
took care to be most so. They called in the interposition of
Government, and sent up such petitions and memorials as I never
saw before or since; made up of lies, invectives, bragging, cant,
bad grammar of the most ludicrous kind, and texts of Scripture
quoted without the smallest application. I remember one passage
by heart, which is really only a fair specimen of the whole:
'These missionaries, my Lord, loving only filthy lucre, bid us to
eat Lord-supper with Pariahs as lives ugly, handling dead men,
drinking rack and toddy, sweeping the streets, mean fellows
altogether, base persons, contrary to that which Saint Paul
saith: I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ
and Him crucified.'

"Was there ever a more appropriate quotation? I believe that
nobody on either side of the controversy found out a text so much
to the purpose as one which I cited to the Council of India, when
we were discussing this business: 'If this be a question of
words, and names, and of your law, look ye to it; for I will be
no judge of such matters.' But though, like Gallio, I drove them
and their petitions from my judgment seat, I could not help
saying to one of the missionaries, who is here on the Hills, that
I thought it a pity to break up the Church of Tanjore on account
of a matter which such men as Swartz and Heber had not been
inclined to regard as essential. 'Sir,' said the reverend
gentleman, 'the sooner the Church of Tanjore is broken up the
better. You can form no notion of the worthlessness of the native
Christians there.' I could not dispute this point with him; but
neither could I help thinking, though I was too polite to say so,
that it was hardly worth the while of so many good men to come
fifteen thousand miles over sea and land in order to make
proselytes, who, their very instructors being judges, were more
children of hell than before."

Unfortunately Macaulay's stay on the Neilgherries coincided with
the monsoon. "The rain streamed down in floods. It was very
seldom that I could see a hundred yards in front of me. During a
month together I did not get two hours' walking." He began to be
bored, for the first and last time in his life; while his
companions, who had not his resources, were ready to hang
themselves for very dulness. The ordinary amusements with which,
in the more settled parts of India, our countrymen beguile the
rainy season, were wanting in a settlement that had only lately
been reclaimed from the desert; in the immediate vicinity of
which you still ran the chance of being "trod into the shape of
half a crown by a wild elephant, or eaten by the tigers, which
prefer this situation to the plains below for the same reason
that takes so many Europeans to India; they encounter an
uncongenial climate for the sake of what they can get." There
were no books in the place except those that Macaulay had brought
with him, among which, most luckily, was Clarissa Harlowe. Aided
by the rain outside, he soon talked his favourite romance into
general favour. The reader will consent to put up with one or two
slight inaccuracies in order to have the story told by Thackeray.

"I spoke to him once about Clarissa. 'Not read Clarissa!' he
cried out. 'If you have once read Clarissa, and are infected by
it, you can't leave it. When I was in India I passed one hot
season in the Hills; and there were the Governor-General, and the
Secretary of Government, and the Commander-in-Chief, and their
wives. I had Clarissa with me; and, as soon as they began to
read, the whole station was in a passion of excitement about Miss
Harlowe, and her misfortunes, and her scoundrelly Lovelace. The
Governor's wife seized the book; the Secretary waited for it; the
Chief justice could not read it for tears.' He acted the whole
scene; he paced up and down the Athenaeum library. I dare say he
could have spoken pages of the book; of that book, and of what
countless piles of others!"

An old Scotch doctor, a Jacobin and a free-thinker, who could
only be got to attend church by the positive orders of the
Governor-General, cried over the last volume until he was too ill
to appear at dinner. [Degenerate readers of our own day have
actually been provided with an abridgment of Clarissa, itself as
long as an ordinary novel. A wiser course than buying the
abridgment would be to commence the original at the Third volume.
In the same way, if anyone, after obtaining the outline of Lady
Clementina's story from a more adventurous friend, will read Sir
Charles Grandison, skipping all letters from Italians, to
Italians, and about Italians, he will find that he has got hold
of a delightful, and not unmanageable, book.] The Chief
Secretary,--afterwards, as Sir William Macnaghten, the hero and
the victim of the darkest episode in our Indian history,--
declared that reading this copy of Clarissa, under the
inspiration of its owner's enthusiasm, was nothing less than an
epoch in his life. After the lapse of thirty years, when
Ootacamund had long enjoyed the advantage of a book-club and a
circulating library, the tradition of Macaulay and his novel
still lingered on with a tenacity most unusual in the ever-
shifting society of an Indian station.

"At length Lord William gave me leave of absence. My bearers were
posted along the road; my palanquins were packed; and I was to
start next day; when an event took place which may give you some
insight into the state of the laws, morals, and manners among the
natives.

"My new servant, a Christian, but such a Christian as the
missionaries make in this part of the world, had been persecuted
most unmercifully for his religion by the servants of some other
gentlemen on the Hills. At last they contrived to excite against
him (whether justly or unjustly I am quite unable to say) the
jealousy of one of Lord William's under-cooks. We had accordingly
a most glorious tragi-comedy; the part of Othello by the cook
aforesaid; Desdemona by an ugly, impudent Pariah girl, his wife;
Iago by Colonel Casement's servant; and Michael Cassio by my
rascal. The place of the handkerchief was supplied by a small
piece of sugar-candy which Desdemona was detected in the act of
sucking, and which had found its way from my canisters to her
fingers. If I had any part in the piece, it was, I am afraid,
that of Roderigo, whom Shakespeare describes as a 'foolish
gentleman,' and who also appears to have had 'money in his
purse.'

"On the evening before my departure my bungalow was besieged by a
mob of blackguards. The Native judge came with them. After a most
prodigious quantity of jabbering, of which I could not understand
one word, I called the judge, who spoke tolerable English, into
my room, and learned from him the nature of the case. I was, and
still am, in doubt as to the truth of the charge. I have a very
poor opinion of my man's morals, and a very poor opinion also of
the veracity of his accusers. It was, however, so very
inconvenient for me to be just then deprived of my servant that I
offered to settle the business at my own expense. Under ordinary
circumstances this would have been easy enough, for the Hindoos
of the lower castes have no delicacy on these subjects. The
husband would gladly have taken a few rupees, and walked away;
but the persecutors of my servant interfered, and insisted that
he should be brought to trial in order that they might have the
pleasure of smearing him with filth, giving him a flogging,
beating kettles before him, and carrying him round on an ass
with his face to the tail.

"As the matter could not be accommodated, I begged the Judge to
try the case instantly; but the rabble insisted that the trial
should not take place for some days. I argued the matter with
them very mildly, and told them that I must go next day, and
that, if my servant were detained, guilty or innocent, he must
lose his situation. The gentle and reasoning tone of my
expostulations only made them impudent. They are, in truth, a
race so accustomed to be trampled on by the strong that they
always consider humanity as a sign of weakness. The Judge told me
that he never heard a gentleman speak such sweet words to the
people. But I was now at an end of my sweet words. My blood was
beginning to boil at the undisguised display of rancorous hatred
and shameless injustice. I sate down, and wrote a line to the
Commandant of the station, begging him to give orders that the
case might be tried that very evening. The Court assembled, and
continued all night in violent contention. At last the judge
pronounced my servant not guilty. I did not then know, what I
learned some days after, that this respectable magistrate had
received twenty rupees on the occasion.

"The husband would now gladly have taken the money which he
refused the day before; but I would not give him a farthing. The
rascals who had raised the disturbance were furious. My servant
was to set out at eleven in the morning, and I was to follow at
two. He had scarcely left the door when I heard a noise. I looked
forth, and saw that the gang had pulled him out of his palanquin,
torn off his turban, stripped him almost naked, and were, as it
seemed, about to pull him to pieces. I snatched up a sword-stick,
and ran into the middle of them. It was all I could do to force
my way to him, and, for a moment, I thought my own person was in
danger as well as his. I supported the poor wretch in my arms;
for, like most of his countrymen, he is a chickenhearted fellow,
and was almost fainting away. My honest barber, a fine old
soldier in the Company's service, ran off for assistance, and
soon returned with some police officers. I ordered the bearers to
turn round, and proceeded instantly to the house of the
Commandant. I was not long detained here. Nothing can be well
imagined more expeditious than the administration of justice in
this country, when the judge is a Colonel, and the plaintiff a
Councillor. I told my story in three words. In three minutes the
rioters were marched off to prison, and my servant, with a sepoy
to guard him, was fairly on his road and out of danger."

Early next morning Macaulay began to descend the pass.

"After going down for about an hour we emerged from the clouds
and moisture, and the plain of Mysore lay before us--a vast ocean
of foliage on which the sun was shining gloriously. I am very
little given to cant about the beauties of nature, but I was
moved almost to tears. I jumped off the palanquin, and walked in
front of it down the immense declivity. In two hours we descended
about three thousand feet. Every turning in the road showed the
boundless forest below in some new point of view. I was greatly
struck with the resemblance which this prodigious jungle, as old
as the world and planted by nature, bears to the fine works of
the great English landscape gardeners. It was exactly a Wentworth
Park, as large as Devonshire. After reaching the foot of the
hills, we travelled through a succession of scenes which might
have been part of the garden of Eden. Such gigantic trees I never
saw. In a quarter of an hour I passed hundreds the smallest of
which would bear a comparison with any of those oaks which are
shown as prodigious in England. The grass, the weeds, and the
wild flowers grew as high as my head. The sun, almost a stranger
to me, was now shining brightly; and, when late in the afternoon
I again got out of my palanquin and looked back, I saw the large
mountain ridge from which I had descended twenty miles behind me,
still buried in the same mass of fog and rain in which I had been
living for weeks.

"On Tuesday, the 16th" (of September), "I went on board at
Madras. I amused myself on the voyage to Calcutta with learning
Portuguese, and made myself almost as well acquainted with it as
I care to be. I read the Lusiad, and am now reading it a second
time. I own that I am disappointed in Camoens; but I have so
often found my first impressions wrong on such subjects that I
still hope to be able to join my voice to that of the great body
of critics. I never read any famous foreign book, which did not,
in the first perusal, fall short of my expectations; except
Dante's poem, and Don Quixote, which were prodigiously superior
to what I had imagined. Yet in these cases I had not pitched my
expectations low."

He had not much time for his Portuguese studies. The run was
unusually fast, and the ship only spent a week in the Bay of
Bengal, and forty-eight hours in the Hooghly. He found his sister
comfortably installed in Government House, where he himself took
up his quarters during the next six weeks; Lady William Bentinck
having been prepared to welcome him as her guest by her
husband's letters, more than one of which ended with the words "e
un miracolo." Towards the middle of November, Macaulay began
housekeeping for himself; living, as he always loved to live,
rather more generously than the strict necessities of his
position demanded. His residence, then the best in Calcutta, has
long since been converted into the Bengal Club.

To Macvey Napier, Esq.

Calcutta: December 10, 1834.

Dear Napier,--First to business. At length I send you the article
on Mackintosh; an article which has the merit of length, whatever
it may be deficient in. As I wished to transmit it to England in
duplicate, if not in triplicate, I thought it best to have two or
three copies coarsely printed here under the seal of strict
secresy. The printers at Edinburgh will, therefore, have no
trouble in deciphering my manuscript, and the corrector of the
press will find his work done to his hands.

The disgraceful imbecility, and the still more disgraceful
malevolence, of the editor have, as you will see, moved my
indignation not a little. I hope that Longman's connection with
the Review will not prevent you from inserting what I have said
on this subject. Murray's copy writers are unsparingly abused by
Southey and Lockhart in the Quarterly; and it would be hard
indeed if we might not in the Edinburgh strike hard at an
assailant of Mackintosh.

I shall now begin another article. The subject I have not yet
fixed upon; perhaps the romantic poetry of Italy, for which there
is an excellent opportunity; Panizzi's reprint of Boiardo;
perhaps the little volume of Burnet's Characters edited by Bishop
Jebb. This reminds me that I have to acknowledge the receipt of a
box from Longman, containing this little book; and other books of
much greater value, Grimm's Correspondence, Jacquemont's Letters,
and several foreign works on jurisprudence. All that you have yet
sent have been excellently chosen. I will mention, while I am on
this subject, a few books which I want, and which I am not likely
to pick up here--Daru's Histoire de Venise; St. Real's
Conjuration de Venise; Fra Paolo's works; Monstrelet's Chronicle;
and Coxe's book on the Pelhams. I should also like to have a
really good edition of Lucian.

My sister desires me to send you her kind regards. She remembers
her visit to Edinburgh, and your hospitality, with the greatest
pleasure. Calcutta is called, and not without some reason, the
city of palaces; but I have seen nothing in the East like the
view from the Castle Rock, nor expect to see anything like it
till we stand there together again.

Kindest regards to Lord Jeffrey.

Yours most truly

T. B. MACAULAY.

To Mrs. Cropper.

Calcutta: December 7, 1834.

Dearest Margaret,--I rather suppose that some late letters from
Nancy may have prepared you to learn what I am now about to
communicate. She is going to be married, and with my fullest and
warmest approbation. I can truly say that, if I had to search
India for a husband for her, I could have found no man to whom I
could with equal confidence have entrusted her happiness.
Trevelyan is about eight and twenty. He was educated at the
Charter-house, and then went to Haileybury, and came out hither.
In this country he has distinguished himself beyond any man of
his standing by his great talent for business; by his liberal and
enlarged views of policy; and by literary merit, which, for his
opportunities, is considerable. He was at first placed at Delhi
under ---, a very powerful and a very popular man, but extremely
corrupt. This man tried to initiate Trevelyan in his own infamous
practices. But the young fellow's spirit was too noble for such
things. When only twenty-one years of age he publicly accused ---,
then almost at the head of the service, of receiving bribes
from the natives. A perfect storm was raised against the accuser.
He was almost everywhere abused, and very generally cut. But with
a firmness and ability scarcely ever seen in any man so young, he
brought his proofs forward, and, after an inquiry of some weeks,
fully made out his case. --- was dismissed in disgrace, and is
now living obscurely in England. The Government here and the
Directors at home applauded Trevelyan in the highest terms; and
from that tithe he has been considered as a man likely to rise to
the very top of the service. Lord William told him to ask for
anything that he wished for. Trevelyan begged that something
might be done for his elder brother, who is in the Company's
army. Lord William told him that he had richly earned that or
anything else, and gave Lieutenant Trevelyan a very good
diplomatic employment. Indeed Lord William, a man who makes no
favourites, has always given to Trevelyan the strongest marks,
not of a blind partiality, but of a thoroughly well-grounded and
discriminating esteem.

Not long ago Trevelyan was appointed by him to the Under
Secretaryship for foreign affairs, an office of a very important
and confidential nature. While holding the place he was
commissioned to report to Government on the operation of the
Internal Transit duties of India. About a year ago his Report was
completed. I shall send to England a copy or two of it by the
first safe conveyance; for nothing that I can say of his
abilities, or of his public spirit, will be half so satisfactory.
I have no hesitation in affirming that it is a perfect
masterpiece in its kind. Accustomed as I have been to public
affairs, I never read an abler State paper; and I do not believe
that there is, I will not say in India, but in England, another
man of twenty-seven who could have written it. Trevelyan is a
most stormy reformer. Lord William said to me, before anyone had
observed Trevelyan's attentions to Nancy: "That man is almost
always on the right side in every question; and it is well that
he is so, for he gives a most confounded deal of trouble when he
happens to take the wrong one." [Macaulay used to apply to his
future brother-in-law the remark which Julius Caesar made with
regard to his young friend Brutus: "Magni refert hic quid velit;
sed quidquid volet, valde volet."] He is quite at the head of
that active party among the younger servants of the Company who
take the side of improvement. In particular, he is the soul of
every scheme for diffusing education among the natives of this
country. His reading has been very confined; but to the little
that he has read he has brought a mind as active and restless as
Lord Brougham's, and much more judicious and honest.

As to his person, he always looks like a gentleman, particularly
on horseback. He is very active and athletic, and is renowned as
a great master in the most exciting and perilous of field sports,
the spearing of wild boars. His face has a most characteristic
expression of ardour and impetuosity, which makes his countenance
very interesting to me. Birth is a thing that I care nothing
about; but his family is one of the oldest and best in England.

During the important years of his life, from twenty to twenty-
five, or thereabouts, Trevelyan was in a remote province of
India, where his whole time was divided between public business
and field sports, and where he seldom saw a European gentleman
and never a European lady. He has no small talk. His mind is full
of schemes of moral and political improvement, and his zeal boils
over in his talk. His topics, even in courtship, are steam
navigation, the education of the natives, the equalisation of the
sugar duties, the substitution of the Roman for the Arabic
alphabet in the Oriental languages.

I saw the feeling growing from the first; for, though I generally
pay not the smallest attention to those matters, I had far too
deep an interest in Nancy's happiness not to watch her behaviour
to everybody who saw much of her. I knew it, I believe, before
she knew it herself; and I could most easily have prevented it by
merely treating Trevelyan with a little coldness, for he is a man
whom the smallest rebuff would completely discourage. But you
will believe, my dearest Margaret, that no thought of such base
selfishness ever passed through my mind. I would as soon have
locked my dear Nancy up in a nunnery as have put the smallest
obstacle in the way of her having a good husband. I therefore
gave every facility and encouragement to both of them. What I
have myself felt it is unnecessary to say. My parting from you
almost broke my heart. But when I parted from you I had Nancy; I
had all my other relations; I had my friends; I had my country.
Now I have nothing except the resources of my own mind, and the
consciousness of having acted not ungenerously. But I do not
repine. Whatever I suffer I have brought on myself. I have
neglected the plainest lessons of reason and experience. I have
staked my happiness without calculating the chances of the dice.
I have hewn out broken cisterns; I have leant on a reed; I have
built on the sand; and I have fared accordingly. I must bear my
punishment as I can; and, above all, I must take care that the
punishment does not extend beyond myself.

Nothing can be kinder than Nancy's conduct has been. She proposes
that we should form one family; and Trevelyan, (though, like most
lovers, he would, I imagine, prefer having his goddess to
himself,) consented with strong expressions of pleasure. The
arrangement is not so strange as it might seem at home. The thing
is often done here; and those quarrels between servants, which
would inevitably mar any such plan in England, are not to be
apprehended in an Indian establishment. One advantage there will
be in our living together of a most incontestable sort; we shall
both be able to save more money. Trevelyan will soon be entitled
to his furlough; but he proposes not to take it till I go home.

I shall write in a very different style from this to my father.
To him I shall represent the marriage as what it is, in every
respect except its effect on my own dreams of happiness--a most
honourable and happy event; prudent in a worldly point of view;
and promising all the felicity which strong mutual affection,
excellent principles on both sides, good temper, youth, health,
and the general approbation of friends can afford. As for myself,
it is a tragical denouement of an absurd plot. I remember quoting
some nursery rhymes, years ago, when you left me in London to
join Nancy at Rothley Temple or Leamington, I forget which. Those
foolish lines contain the history of my life.

 "There were two birds that sat on a stone;
  One flew away, and there was but one.
  The other flew away, and then there was none;
  And the poor stone was left all alone."

Ever, my dearest Margaret, yours

T. B. MACAULAY.

A passage from a second letter to the same person deserves to be
quoted, as an instance of how a good man may be unable to read
aright his own nature, and a wise man to forecast his own future.
"I feel a growing tendency to cynicism and suspicion. My
intellect remains; and is likely, I sometimes think, to absorb
the whole man. I still retain, (not only undiminished, but
strengthened by the very events which have deprived me of
everything else,) my thirst for knowledge; my passion for holding
converse with the greatest minds of all ages and nations; any
power of forgetting what surrounds me, and of living with the
past, the future, the distant, and the unreal. Books are
becoming everything to me. If I had at this moment my choice of
life, I would bury myself in one of those immense libraries that
we saw together at the universities, and never pass a waking hour
without a book before me." So little was Macaulay aware that,
during the years which were to come, his thoughts and cares would
be less than ever for himself, and more for others, and that his
existence would be passed amidst a bright atmosphere of
affectionate domestic happiness, which, until his own death
came, no accident was thenceforward destined to overcloud.

But, before his life assumed the equable and prosperous tenor in
which it continued to the end, one more trouble was in store for
him. Long before the last letters to his sister Margaret had been
written, the eyes which were to have read them had been closed
for ever. The fate of so young a wife and mother touched deeply
all who had known her, and some who knew her only by name.
[Moultrie made Mrs. Cropper's death the subject of some verses on
which her relatives set a high value. He acknowledges his little
poem to be the tribute of one who had been a stranger to her whom
it was written to commemorate:

 "And yet methinks we are not strange: so many claims there be
  Which seem to weave a viewless band between my soul and thee.
  Sweet sister of my early friend, the kind, the singlehearted,
  Than whose remembrance none more bright still gilds the days departed!
  Beloved, with more than sister's love, by some whose love to me
  Is now almost my brightest gem in this world's treasury."]

When the melancholy news arrived in India, the young couple were
spending their honeymoon in a lodge in the Governor-General's
park at Barrackpore. They immediately returned to Calcutta, and,
under the shadow of a great sorrow, began their sojourn in their
brother's house, who, for his part, did what he might to drown
his grief in floods of official work. ["April 8. Lichfield.
Easter Sunday. After the service was ended we went over the
Cathedral. When I stood before the famous children by Chantrey, I
could think only of one thing; that, when last I was there, in
1832, my dear sister Margaret was with me and that she was
greatly affected. I could not command my tears and was forced to
leave our party, and walk about by myself."--Macaulay's Journal
for the year 1849.]

The narrative of that work may well be the despair of Macaulay's
biographer. It would be inexcusable to slur over what in many
important respects was the most honourable chapter of his life;
while, on the other hand, the task of interesting Englishmen in
the details of Indian administration is an undertaking which has
baffled every pen except his own. In such a dilemma the safest
course is to allow that pen to tell the story for itself; or
rather so much of the story as, by concentrating the attention of
the reader upon matters akin to those which are in frequent
debate at home, may enable him to judge whether Macaulay, at the
council-board and the bureau, was the equal of Macaulay in the
senate and the library.

Examples of his Minute-writing may with some confidence be
submitted to the criticism of those whose experience of public
business has taught them in what a Minute should differ from a
Despatch, a Memorial, a Report, and a Decision. His method of
applying general principles to the circumstances of a special
case, and of illustrating those principles with just as much
literary ornament as would place his views in a pictorial form
before the minds of those whom it was his business to convince,
is strikingly exhibited in the series of papers by means of which
he reconciled his colleagues in the Council, and his masters in
Leadenhall Street, to the removal of the modified Censorship
which existed in India previously to the year 1835.

"It is difficult," he writes, "to conceive that any measures can
be more indefensible than those which I propose to repeal. It has
always been the practice of politic rulers to disguise their
arbitrary measures under popular forms and names. The conduct of
the Indian Government with respect to the Press has been
altogether at variance with this trite and obvious maxim. The
newspapers have for years been allowed as ample a measure of
practical liberty as that which they enjoy in England. If any
inconveniences arise from the liberty of political discussion, to
those inconveniences we are already subject. Yet while our policy
is thus liberal and indulgent, we are daily reproached and
taunted with the bondage in which we keep the Press. A strong
feeling on this subject appears to exist throughout the European
community here; and the loud complaints which have lately been
uttered are likely to produce a considerable effect on the
English people, who will see at a glance that the law is
oppressive, and who will not know how completely it is
inoperative.

"To impose strong restraints on political discussion is an
intelligible policy, and may possibly--though I greatly doubt it--
be in some countries a wise policy. But this is not the point at
issue. The question before us is not whether the Press shall be
free, but whether, being free, it shall be called free. It is
surely mere madness in a Government to make itself unpopular for
nothing; to be indulgent, and yet to disguise its indulgence
under such outward forms as bring on it the reproach of tyranny.
Yet this is now our policy. We are exposed to all the dangers--
dangers, I conceive, greatly over-rated--of a free Press; and at
the same time we contrive to incur all the opprobrium of a
censorship. It is universally allowed that the licensing system,
as at present administered, does not keep any man who can buy a
press from publishing the bitterest and most sarcastic
reflections on any public measure, or any public functionary. Yet
the very words 'license to print' have a sound hateful to the
ears of Englishmen in every part of the globe. It is unnecessary
to inquire whether this feeling be reasonable; whether the
petitioners who have so strongly pressed this matter on our
consideration would not have shown a better judgment if they had
been content with their practical liberty, and had reserved their
murmurs for practical grievances. The question for us is not what
they ought to do, but what we ought to do; not whether it be wise
in them to complain when they suffer no injury, but whether it be
wise in us to incur odium unaccompanied by the smallest accession
of security or of power.

"One argument only has been urged in defence of the present
system. It is admitted that the Press of Bengal has long been
suffered to enjoy practical liberty, and that nothing but an
extreme emergency could justify the Government in curtailing that
liberty. But, it is said, such an emergency may arise, and the
Government ought to retain in its hands the power of adopting,
in that event, the sharp, prompt, and decisive measures which may
be necessary for the preservation of the Empire. But when we
consider with what vast powers, extending over all classes of
people, Parliament has armed the Governor-General in Council,
and, in extreme cases, the Governor-General alone, we shall
probably be inclined to allow little weight to this argument. No
Government in the world is better provided with the means of
meeting extraordinary dangers by extraordinary precautions. Five
persons, who may be brought together in half an hour, whose
deliberations are secret, who are not shackled by any of those
forms which elsewhere delay legislative measures, can, in a
single sitting, make a law for stopping every press in India.
Possessing as we do the unquestionable power to interfere,
whenever the safety of the State array require it, with
overwhelming rapidity and energy, we surely ought not, in quiet
times, to be constantly keeping the offensive form and ceremonial
of despotism before the eyes of those whom, nevertheless, we
permit to enjoy the substance of freedom."

Eighteen months elapsed; during which the Calcutta Press found
occasion to attack Macaulay with a breadth and ferocity of
calumny such as few public men, in any age or country, have ever
endured, and none, perhaps, have ever forgiven. There were many
mornings when it was impossible for him to allow the newspapers
to lie about his sister's drawing-room.

The Editor of the Periodical which called itself, and had a right
to call itself, the "Friend of India," undertook to shame his
brethren by publishing a collection of their invectives; but it
was very soon evident that no decent journal could venture to
foul its pages by reprinting the epithets, and the anecdotes,
which constituted the daily greeting of the literary men of
Calcutta to their fellow-craftsman of the Edinburgh Review. But
Macaulay's cheery and robust common sense carried him safe and
sound through an ordeal which has broken down sterner natures
than his, and embittered as stainless lives. The allusions in his
correspondence, all the more surely because they are brief and
rare, indicate that the torrent of obloquy to which he was
exposed interfered neither with his temper nor with his
happiness; and how little he allowed it to disturb his judgment
or distort his public spirit is proved by the tone of a State
paper, addressed to the Court of Directors in September 1836, in
which he eagerly vindicates the freedom of the Calcutta Press, at
a time when the writers of that Press, on the days when they were
pleased to be decent, could find for him no milder appellations
than those of cheat, swindler, and charlatan.

"I regret that on this, or on any subject, my opinion should
differ from that of the Honourable Court. But I still
conscientiously think that we acted wisely when we passed the law
on the subject of the Press; and I am quite certain that we
should act most unwisely if we were now to repeal that law.

"I must, in the first place, venture to express an opinion that
the importance of that question is greatly over-rated by persons,
even the best informed and the most discerning, who are not
actually on the spot. It is most justly observed by the
Honourable Court that many of the arguments which may be urged in
favour of a free Press at home do not apply to this country. But
it is, I conceive, no less true that scarcely any of those
arguments which have been employed in Europe to defend
restrictions on the Press apply to a Press such as that of India.

"In Europe, and especially in England, the Press is an engine of
tremendous power, both for good and for evil. The most
enlightened men, after long experience both of its salutary and
of its pernicious operation, have come to the conclusion that the
good on the whole preponderates. But that there is no
inconsiderable amount of evil to be set off against the good has
never been disputed by the warmest friend to freedom of
discussion.

"In India the Press is comparatively a very feeble engine. It
does far less good and far less harm than in Europe. It sometimes
renders useful services to the public. It sometimes brings to the
notice of the Government evils the existence of which would
otherwise have been unknown. It operates, to some extent, as a
salutary check on public functionaries. It does something towards
keeping the administration pure. On the other hand, by
misrepresenting public measures, and by flattering the prejudices
of those who support it, it sometimes produces a slight degree of
excitement in a very small portion of the community.

"How slight that excitement is, even when it reaches its greatest
height, and how little the Government has to fear from it, no
person whose observation has been confined to European societies
will readily believe. In this country the number of English
residents is very small, and, of that small number, a great
proportion are engaged in the service of the State, and are most
deeply interested in the maintenance of existing institutions.
Even those English settlers who are not in the service of the
Government have a strong interest in its stability. They are few;
they are thinly scattered among a vast population, with whom they
have neither language, nor religion, nor morals, nor manners, nor
colour in common; they feel that any convulsion which should
overthrow the existing order of things would be ruinous to
themselves. Particular acts of the Government--especially acts
which are mortifying to the pride of caste naturally felt by an
Englishman in India--are often angrily condemned by these persons.
But every indigo-planter in Tirhoot, and every shopkeeper in
Calcutta, is perfectly aware that the downfall of the Government
would be attended with the destruction of his fortune, and with
imminent hazard to his life.

"Thus, among the English inhabitants of India, there are no fit
subjects for that species of excitement which the Press sometimes
produces at home. There is no class among them analogous to that
vast body of English labourers and artisans whose minds are
rendered irritable by frequent distress and privation, and on
whom, therefore, the sophistry and rhetoric of bad men often
produce a tremendous effect. The English papers here might be
infinitely more seditious than the most seditious that were ever
printed in London without doing harm to anything but their own
circulation. The fire goes out for want of some combustible
material on which to seize. How little reason would there be to
apprehend danger to order and property in England from the most
inflammatory writings, if those writings were read only by
Ministers of State, Commissioners of the Customs and Excise,
Judges and Masters in Chancery, upper clerks in Government
offices, officers in the army, bankers, landed proprietors,
barristers, and master manufacturers! The most timid politician
would not anticipate the smallest evil from the most seditious
libels, if the circulation of those libels were confined to such
a class of readers; and it is to such a class of readers that the
circulation of the English newspapers in India is almost entirely
confined."

The motive for the scurrility with which Macaulay was assailed by
a handful of sorry scribblers was his advocacy of the Act
familiarly known as the Black Act, which withdrew from British
subjects resident in the provinces their so-called privilege of
bringing civil appeals before the Supreme Court at Calcutta. Such
appeals were thenceforward to be tried by the Sudder Court, which
was manned by the Company's judges, "all of them English
gentlemen of liberal education; as free as even the judges of the
Supreme Court from any imputation of personal corruption, and
selected by the Government from a body which abounds in men as
honourable and as intelligent as ever were employed in the
service of any state." The change embodied in the Act was one of
little practical moment; but it excited an opposition based upon
arguments and assertions of such a nature that the success or
failure of the proposed measure became a question of high and
undeniable importance.

"In my opinion," writes Macaulay, "the chief reason for
preferring the Sudder Court is this--that it is the court which
we have provided to administer justice, in the last resort, to
the great body of the people. If it is not fit for that purpose,
it ought to be made so. If it is fit to administer justice to the
great body of the people, why should we exempt a mere handful of
settlers from its jurisdiction? There certainly is, I will not
say the reality, but the semblance of partiality and tyranny in
the distinction made by the Charter Act of 1813. That distinction
seems to indicate a notion that the natives of India may well put
up with something less than justice, or that Englishmen in India
have a title to something more than justice. If we give our own
countrymen an appeal to the King's Courts, in cases in which all
others are forced to be contented with the Company's Courts, we
do in fact cry down the Company's Courts. We proclaim to the
Indian people that there are two sorts of justice--a coarse one,
which we think good enough for then, and another of superior
quality, which we keep for ourselves. If we take pains to show
that we distrust our highest courts, how can we expect that the
natives of the country will place confidence in them?

"The draft of the Act was published, and was, as I fully
expected, not unfavourably received by the British in the
Mofussil. [The term "Mofussil" is used to denote the provinces of
the Bengal Presidency, as opposed to the Capital.] Seven weeks
have elapsed since the notification took place. Time has been
allowed for petitions from the furthest corners of the
territories subject to this Presidency. But I have heard of only
one attempt in the Mofussil to get up a remonstrance; and the
Mofussil newspapers which I have seen, though generally disposed
to cavil at all the acts of the Government, have spoken
favourably of this measure.

"In Calcutta the case has been somewhat different; and this is a
remarkable fact. The British inhabitants of Calcutta are the only
British-born subjects in Bengal who will not be affected by the
proposed Act; and they are the only British subjects in Bengal
who have expressed the smallest objection to it. The clamour,
indeed, has proceeded from a very small portion of the society of
Calcutta. The objectors have not ventured to call a public
meeting, and their memorial has obtained very few signatures. But
they have attempted to make up by noise and virulence for what
has been wanting in strength. It may at first sight appear
strange that a law, which is not unwelcome to those who are to
live under it, should excite such acrimonious feelings among
people who are wholly exempted from its operation. But the
explanation is simple. Though nobody who resides at Calcutta will
be sued in the Mofussil courts, many people who reside at
Calcutta have, or wish to have, practice in the Supreme Court.
Great exertions have accordingly been made, though with little
success, to excite a feeling against this measure among the
English inhabitants of Calcutta.

"The political phraseology of the English in India is the same
with the political phraseology of our countrymen at home; but it
is never to be forgotten that the same words stand for very
different things at London and at Calcutta. We hear much about
public opinion, the love of liberty, the influence of the Press.
But we must remember that public opinion means the opinion of
five hundred persons who have no interest, feeling, or taste in
common with the fifty millions among whom they live; that the
love of liberty means the strong objection which the five hundred
feel to every measure which can prevent them from acting as they
choose towards the fifty millions, that the Press is altogether
supported by the five hundred, and has no motive to plead the
cause of the fifty millions.

"We know that India cannot have a free Government. But she may
have the next best thing--a firm and impartial despotism. The
worst state in which she can possibly be placed is that in which
the memorialists would place her. They call on us to recognise
them as a privileged order of freemen in the midst of slaves. it
was for the purpose of averting this great evil that Parliament,
at the same time at which it suffered Englishmen to settle in
India, armed us with those large powers which, in my opinion, we
ill deserve to possess, if we have, not the spirit to use them
now."

Macaulay had made two mistakes. He had yielded to the temptation
of imputing motives, a habit which the Spectator newspaper has
pronounced to be his one intellectual vice, finely adding that it
is "the vice of rectitude;" and he had done worse still, for he
had challenged his opponents to a course of agitation. They
responded to the call. After preparing the way by a string of
communications to the public journals, in to which their
objections to the Act were set forth at enormous length, and with
as much point and dignity as can be obtained by a copious use of
italics and capital letters, they called a public meeting, the
proceedings at which were almost too ludicrous for description.
"I have seen," said one of the speakers, "at a Hindoo festival, a
naked dishevelled figure, his face painted with grotesque
colours, and his long hair besmeared with dirt and ashes. His
tongue was pierced with an iron bar, and his breast was scorched
by the fire from the burning altar which rested on his stomach.
This revolting figure, covered with ashes, dirt, and bleeding
voluntary wounds, may the next moment ascend the Sudder bench,
and in a suit between a Hindoo and an Englishman think it an act
of sanctity to decide against law in favour of the professor of
the true faith." Another gentleman, Mr. Longueville Clarke,
reminded "the tyrant" that

 There yawns the sack, and yonder rolls the sea.

"Mr. Macaulay may treat this as an idle threat; but his knowledge
of history will supply him with many examples of what has
occurred when resistance has been provoked by milder instances of
despotism than the decimation of a people." This pretty explicit
recommendation to lynch a Member of Council was received with
rapturous applause.

At length arose a Captain Biden, who spoke as follows:
"Gentlemen, I come before you in the character of a British
seaman, and on that ground claim your attention for a few
moments. Gentlemen, there has been much talk during the evening
of laws, and regulations, and rights, and liberties; but you all
seem to have forgotten that this is the anniversary of the
glorious Battle of Waterloo. I beg to propose, and I call on the
statue of Lord Cornwallis and yourselves to join me in three
cheers for the Duke of Wellington and the Battle of Waterloo."
The audience, who by this time were pretty well convinced that no
grievance which could possibly result under the Black Act could
equal the horrors of a crowd in the Town Hall of Calcutta during
the latter half of June, gladly caught at the diversion, and made
noise enough to satisfy even the gallant orator. The business was
brought to a hurried close, and the meeting was adjourned till
the following week.

But the luck of Macaulay's adversaries pursued them still. One of
the leading speakers at the adjourned meeting, himself a
barrister, gave another barrister the lie, and a tumult ensued
which Captain Biden in vain endeavoured to calm by his favourite
remedy. "The opinion at Madras, Bombay, and Canton," said he,--
and in so saying he uttered the only sentence of wisdom which
either evening had produced,--"is that there is no public opinion
at Calcutta but the lawyers. And now,--who has the presumption to
call it a burlesque?--let's give three cheers for the Battle of
Waterloo, and then I'll propose an amendment which shall go into
the whole question." The Chairman, who certainly had earned the
vote of thanks for "his very extraordinary patience," which
Captain Biden was appropriately selected to move, contrived to
get resolutions passed in favour of petitioning Parliament and
the Home Government against the obnoxious Act.

The next few weeks were spent by the leaders of the movement in
squabbling over the preliminaries of duels that never came off,
and applying for criminal informations for libel against each
other, which their beloved Supreme Court very judiciously refused
to grant; but in the course of time the petitions were signed,
and an agent was selected, who undertook to convey them to
England. On the 22nd of March, 1838, a Committee of inquiry into
the operation of the Act was moved for in the House of Commons;
but there was nothing in the question which tempted Honourable
Members to lay aside their customary indifference with regard to
Indian controversies, and the motion fell through without a
division. The House allowed the Government to have its own way in
the matter; and any possible hesitation on the part of the
Ministers was borne down by the emphasis with which Macaulay
claimed their support. "I conceive," he wrote, "that the Act is
good in itself, and that the time for passing it has been well
chosen. The strongest reason, however, for passing it is the
nature of the opposition which it has experienced. The organs of
that opposition repeated every day that the English were the
conquerors, and the lords of the country, the dominant race; the
electors of the House of Commons, whose power extends both over
the Company at home, and over the Governor-General in Council
here. The constituents of the British Legislature, they told us,
were not to be bound by laws made by any inferior authority. The
firmness with which the Government withstood the idle outcry of
two or three hundred people, about a matter with which they had
nothing to do, was designated as insolent defiance of public
opinion. We were enemies of freedom, because we would not suffer
a small white aristocracy to domineer over millions. How utterly
at variance these principles are with reason, with justice, with
the honour of the British Government, and with the dearest
interests of the Indian people, it is unnecessary for me to point
out. For myself, I can only say that, if the Government is to be
conducted on such principles, I am utterly disqualified, by all
my feelings and opinions, from bearing any part in it, and cannot
too soon resign my place to some person better fitted to hold
it."

It is fortunate for India that a man with the tastes, and the
training, of Macaulay came to her shores as one vested with
authority, and that he came at the moment when he did; for that
moment was the very turning-point of her intellectual progress.
All educational action had been at a stand for some time back, on
account of an irreconcilable difference of opinion in the
Committee of Public Instruction; which was divided, five against
five, on either side of a controversy,--vital, inevitable,
admitting of neither postponement nor compromise, and conducted
by both parties with a pertinacity and a warmth that was nothing
but honourable to those concerned. Half of the members were for
maintaining and extending the old scheme of encouraging Oriental
learning by stipends paid to students in Sanscrit, Persian, and
Arabic; and by liberal grants for the publication of works in
those languages. The other half were in favour of teaching the
elements of knowledge in the vernacular tongues, and the higher
branches in English. On his arrival, Macaulay was appointed
President of the Committee; but he declined to take any active
part in its proceedings until the Government had finally
pronounced on the question at issue. Later in January 1835 the
advocates of the two systems, than whom ten abler men could not
be found in the service, laid their opinions before the Supreme
Council; and, on the and of February, Macaulay, as a member of
that Council, produced a minute in which he adopted and defended
the views of the English section in the Committee.

"How stands the case? We have to educate a people who cannot at
present be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must
teach them some foreign language. The claims of our own language
it is hardly necessary to recapitulate. It stands preeminent even
among the languages of the West. It abounds with works of
imagination not inferior to the noblest which Greece has
bequeathed to us; with models of every species of eloquence; with
historical compositions, which, considered merely as narratives,
have seldom been surpassed, and which, considered as vehicles of
ethical and political instruction, have never been equalled; with
just and lively representations of human life and human nature;
with the most profound speculations on metaphysics, morals,
government, jurisprudence, and trade; with full and correct
information respecting every experimental science which tends to
preserve the health, to increase the comfort, or to expand the
intellect of man. Whoever knows that language has ready access to
all the vast intellectual wealth which the the wisest nations of
the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety
generations. It may safely be said that the literature now extant
in that language is of far greater value than all the literature
which three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of
the world together. Nor is this all. In India, English is the
language spoken by the ruling class. It is spoken by the higher
class of natives at the seats of government. It is likely to
become the language of commerce throughout the seas of the East.
It is the language of two great European communities which are
rising, the one in the south of Africa, the other in Australasia;
communities which are every year becoming more important, and
more closely connected with our Indian Empire. Whether we look at
the intrinsic value of our literature or at the particular
situation of this country, we shall see the strongest reason to
think that, of all foreign tongues, the English tongue is that
which would be the most useful to our native subjects.

"The question now before us is simply whether, when it is in our
power to teach this language, we shall teach languages in which,
by universal confession, there are no books on any subject which
deserve to be compared to our own; whether, when we can teach
European science, we shall teach systems which, by universal
confession, whenever they differ from those of Europe, differ for
the worse; and whether, when we can patronise sound philosophy
and true history, we shall countenance, at the public expense,
medical doctrines, which would disgrace an English furrier--
astronomy, which would move laughter in the girls at an English
boarding-school--history, abounding with kings thirty feet high,
and reigns thirty thousand years long--and geography made up of
seas of treacle and seas of butter.

"We are not without experience to guide us. History furnishes
several analogous cases, and they all teach the same lesson.
There are in modern times, to go no further, two memorable
instances of a great impulse given to the mind of a whole
society--of prejudice overthrown--of knowledge diffused--of taste
purified--of arts and sciences planted in countries which had
recently been ignorant and barbarous.

"The first instance to which I refer is the great revival of
letters among the western nations at the close of the fifteenth
and the beginning of the sixteenth century. At that time almost
everything that was worth reading was contained in the writings
of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Had our ancestors acted as the
Committee of Public Instruction has hitherto acted; had they
neglected the language of Cicero and Tacitus; had they confined
their attention to the old dialects of our own island; had they
printed nothing, and taught nothing at the universities, but
chronicles in Anglo-Saxon, and romances in Norman French, would
England have been what she now is? What the Greek and Latin were
to the contemporaries of More and Ascham, our tongue is to the
people of India. The literature of England is now more valuable
than that of classical antiquity. I doubt whether the Sanscrit
literature be as valuable as that of our Saxon and Norman
progenitors. In some departments--in history, for example--I am
certain that it is much less so.

"Another instance may be said to be still before our eyes. Within
the last hundred and twenty years a nation which had previously
been in a state as barbarous as that in which our ancestors were
before the Crusades has gradually emerged from the ignorance in
which it was sunk, and has taken its place among civilised
communities. I speak of Russia. There is now in that country a
large educated class, abounding with persons fit to serve the
state in the highest functions, and in no way inferior to the
most accomplished men who adorn the best circles of Paris and
London. There is reason to hope that this vast Empire, which in
the time of our grandfathers was probably behind the Punjab, may,
in the time of our grandchildren, be pressing close on France and
Britain in the career of improvement. And how was this change
effected? Not by flattering national prejudices; not by feeding
the mind of the young Muscovite with the old woman's stories
which his rude fathers had believed; not by filling his head with
lying legends about St. Nicholas; not by encouraging him to study
the great question, whether the world was or was not created on
the 13th of September; not by calling him 'a learned native,'
when he has mastered all these points of knowledge; but by
teaching him those foreign languages in which the greatest mass
of information had been laid up, and thus putting all that
information within his reach. The languages of western Europe
civilised Russia. I cannot doubt that they will do for the Hindoo
what they have done for the Tartar."

This Minute, which in its original shape is long enough for an
article in a quarterly review, and as businesslike as a Report of
a Royal Commission, set the question at rest at once and for
ever. On the 7th of March, 1835, Lord William Bentinck decided
that "the great object of the British Government ought to be the
promotion of European literature and science among the natives of
India;" two of the Orientalists retired from the Committee of
Public Instruction; several new members, both English and native,
were appointed; and Macaulay entered upon the functions of
President with an energy and assiduity which in his case was an
infallible proof that his work was to his mind.

The post was no sinecure. It was an arduous task to plan, found,
and construct, in all its grades, the education of such a country
as India. The means at Macaulay's disposal were utterly inadequate
for the undertaking on which he was engaged. Nothing resembling an
organised staff was as yet in existence. There were no Inspectors
of Schools. There were no training colleges for masters. There
were no boards of experienced managers. The machinery consisted of
voluntary committees acting on the spot, and corresponding
directly with the superintending body at Calcutta. Macaulay rose
to the occasion, and threw himself into the routine of
administration and control with zeal sustained by diligence and
tempered by tact. "We were hardly prepared," said a competent
critic, "for the amount of conciliation which he evinces in
dealing with irritable colleagues and subordinates, and for the
strong, sterling, practical common sense with which he sweeps away
rubbish, or cuts the knots of local and departmental problems."
The mastery which a man exercises over himself, and the patience
and forbearance displayed in his dealings with others, are
generally in proportion to the value which he sets upon the
objects of his pursuit. If we judge Macaulay by this standard, it
is plain that he cared a great deal more for providing our Eastern
Empire with an educational outfit that would work and wear than he
ever cared for keeping his own seat in Parliament or pushing his
own fortunes in Downing Street. Throughout his innumerable
Minutes, on all subjects from the broadest principle to the
narrowest detail, he is everywhere free from crotchets and
susceptibilities; and everywhere ready to humour any person who
will make himself useful, and to adopt any appliance which can be
turned to account.

"I think it highly probable that Mr. Nicholls may be to blame,
because I have seldom known a quarrel in which both parties were
not to blame. But I see no evidence that he is so. Nor do I see
any evidence which tends to prove that Mr. Nicholls leads the
Local Committee by the nose. The Local Committee appear to have
acted with perfect propriety, and I cannot consent to treat them
in the manner recommended by Mr. Sutherland. If we appoint the
Colonel to be a member of their body, we shall in effect pass a
most severe censure on their proceedings. I dislike the
suggestion of putting military men on the Committee as a check on
the civilians. Hitherto we have never, to the best of my belief,
been troubled by any such idle jealousies. I would appoint the
fittest men without caring to what branch of the service they
belonged, or whether they belonged to the service at all."
[This, and the following extracts, are taken from a volume of
Macaulay's Minutes, "now first collected from Records in the
Department of Public instruction, by H. Woodrow, Esq., M.A.,
Inspector of Schools at Calcutta, and formerly Fellow of Caius
College, Cambridge." The collection was published in India.]

Exception had been taken to an applicant for a mastership, on the
ground that he had been a preacher with a strong turn for
proselytising.

"Mr. --- seems to be so little concerned about proselytising,
that he does not even know how to spell the word; a circumstance
which, if I did not suppose it to be a slip of the pen, I should
think a more serious objection than the 'Reverend' which formerly
stood before his name. I am quite content with his assurances."

In default of better, Macaulay was always for employing the tools
which came to hand. A warm and consistent advocate of appointment
by competitive examination, wherever a field for competition
existed, he was no pedantic slave to a theory. In the dearth of
schoolmasters, which is a feature in every infant educational
system, he refused to reject a candidate who mistook "Argos for
Corinth," and backed the claims of aspirants of respectable
character who could "read, write, and work a sum."

"By all means accept the King of Oude's present; though, to be
sure, more detestable maps were never seen. One would think that
the revenues of Oude, and the treasures of Saadut Ali, might have
borne the expense of producing something better than a map in
which Sicily is joined on to the toe of Italy, and in which so
important an eastern island as Java does not appear at all."

"As to the corrupting influence of the zenana, of which Mr.
Trevelyan speaks, I may regret it; but I own that I cannot help
thinking that the dissolution of the tie between parent and child
is as great a moral evil as can be found in any zenana. In
whatever degree infant schools relax that tie they do mischief.
For my own part, I would rather hear a boy of three years old
lisp all the bad words in the language than that he should have
no feelings of family affection--that his character should be that
which must be expected in one who has had the misfortune of
having a schoolmaster in place of a mother."

"I do not see the reason for establishing any limit as to the age
of scholars. The phenomena are exactly the same which have always
been found to exist when a new mode of education has been rising
into fashion. No man of fifty now learns Greek with boys; but in
the sixteenth century it was not at all unusual to see old
Doctors of Divinity attending lectures side by side with young
students."

"With respect to making our College libraries circulating
libraries, there is much to be said on both sides. If a proper
subscription is demanded from those who have access to them, and
if all that is raised by this subscription is laid out in adding
to the libraries, the students will be no losers by the plan. Our
libraries, the best of them at least, would be better than any
which would be readily accessible at an up-country station; and I
do not know why we should grudge a young officer the pleasure of
reading our copy of Boswell's Life of Johnson or Marmontel's
Memoirs, if he is willing to pay a few rupees for the
privilege."

These utterances of cultured wisdom or homely mother-wit are
sometimes expressed in phrases almost as amusing, though not so
characteristic, as those which Frederic the Great used to scrawl
on the margin of reports and despatches for the information of
his secretaries.

"We are a little too indulgent to the whims of the people in our
employ. We pay a large sum to send a master to a distant station.
He dislikes the place. The collector is uncivil; the surgeon
quarrels with him; and he must be moved. The expenses of the
journey have to be defrayed. Another man is to be transferred
from a place where he is comfortable and useful. Our masters run
from station to station at our cost, as vapourised ladies at home
run about from spa to spa. All situations have their discomforts;
and there are times when we all wish that our lot had been cast
in some other line of life, or in some other place."

With regard to a proposed coat of arms for Hooghly College, he
says

"I do not see why the mummeries of European heraldry should be
introduced into any part of our Indian system. Heraldry is not a
science which has any eternal rules. It is a system of arbitrary
canons, originating in pure caprice. Nothing can be more absurd
and grotesque than armorial bearings, considered in themselves.
Certain recollections, certain associations, make them
interesting in many cases to an Englishman; but in those
recollections and associations the natives of India do not
participate. A lion, rampant, with a folio in his paw, with a man
standing on each side of him, with a telescope over his head, and
with a Persian motto under his feet, must seem to them either
very mysterious, or very absurd."

In a discussion on the propriety of printing some books of
Oriental science, Macaulay writes

"I should be sorry to say anything disrespectful of that liberal
and generous enthusiasm for Oriental literature which appears in
Mr. Sutherland's minute; but I own that I cannot think that we
ought to be guided in the distribution of the small sum, which
the Government has allotted for the purpose of education, by
considerations which seem a little romantic. That the Saracens a
thousand years ago cultivated mathematical science is hardly, I
think, a reason for our spending any money in translating English
treatises on mathematics into Arabic. Mr. Sutherland would
probably think it very strange if we were to urge the destruction
of the Alexandrian Library as a reason against patronising Arabic
literature in the nineteenth century. The undertaking may be, as
Mr. Sutherland conceives, a great national work. So is the
breakwater at Madras. But under the orders which we have received
from the Government, we have just as little to do with one as
with the other."

Now and then a stroke, aimed at Hooghly College, hits nearer home.
That men of thirty should be bribed to continue their education
into mature life "seems very absurd. Moghal Jan has been paid to
learn something during twelve years. We are told that he is lazy
and stupid; but there are hopes that in four years more he will
have completed his course of study. We have had quite enough of
these lazy, stupid schoolboys of thirty."

"I must frankly own that I do not like the list of books. Grammars
of rhetoric and grammars of logic are among the most useless
furniture of a shelf. Give a boy Robinson Crusoe. That is worth
all the grammars of rhetoric and logic in the world. We ought to
procure such books as are likely to give the children a taste for
the literature of the West; not books filled with idle
distinctions and definitions, which every man who has learned them
makes haste to forget. Who ever reasoned better for having been
taught the difference between a syllogism and an enthymeme? Who
ever composed with greater spirit and elegance because he could
define an oxymoron or an aposiopesis? I am not joking, but writing
quite seriously, when I say that I would much rather order a
hundred copies of Jack the Giant-killer for our schools than a
hundred copies of any grammar of rhetoric or logic that ever was
written."

"Goldsmith's Histories of Greece and Rome are miserable
performances, and I do not at all like to lay out 50 pounds on
them, even after they have received all Mr. Pinnock's
improvements. I must own too, that I think the order for globes
and other instruments unnecessarily large. To lay out 324 pounds
at once on globes alone, useful as I acknowledge those articles to
be, seems exceedingly profuse, when we have only about 3,000
pounds a year for all purposes of English education. One 12-inch
or 18-inch globe for each school is quite enough; and we ought
not, I think, to order sixteen such globes when we are about to
establish only seven schools. Useful as the telescopes, the
theodolites, and the other scientific instruments mentioned in the
indent undoubtedly are, we must consider that four or five such
instruments run away with a year's salary of a schoolmaster, and
that, if we purchase them, it will be necessary to defer the
establishment of schools."

At one of the colleges at Calcutta the distribution of prizes was
accompanied by some histrionic performances on the part of the
pupils.

"I have no partiality," writes Macaulay, "for such ceremonies. I
think it a very questionable thing whether, even at home, public
spouting and acting ought to form part of the system of a place
of education. But in this country such exhibitions are peculiarly
out of place. I can conceive nothing more grotesque than the
scene from the Merchant of Venice, with Portia represented by a
little black boy. Then, too, the subjects of recitation were ill
chosen. We are attempting to introduce a great nation to a
knowledge of the richest and noblest literature in the world. The
society of Calcutta assemble to see what progress we are making;
and we produce as a sample a boy who repeats some blackguard
doggerel of George Colman's, about a fat gentleman who was put to
bed over an oven, and about a man-midwife who was called out of
his bed by a drunken man at night. Our disciple tries to hiccup,
and tumbles and staggers about in imitation of the tipsy English
sailors whom he has seen at the punch houses. Really, if we can
find nothing better worth reciting than this trash, we had better
give up English instruction altogether."

"As to the list of prize books, I am not much better satisfied.
It is absolutely unintelligible to me why Pope's Works and my old
friend Moore's Lalla Rookh should be selected from the whole mass
of English poetry to be prize books. I will engage to frame,
currente calamo, a better list. Bacon's Essays, Hume's England,
Gibbon's Rome, Robertson's Charles V., Robertson's Scotland,
Robertson's America, Swift's Gulliver, Robinson Crusoe,
Shakespeare's Works, Paradise Lost, Milton's smaller poems,
Arabian Nights, Park's Travels, Anson's Voyage, the Vicar of
Wakefield, Johnson's Lives, Gil Blas, Voltaire's Charles XII.,
Southey's Nelson, Middleton's Life of Cicero.

"This may serve as a specimen. These are books which will amuse
and interest those who obtain them. To give a boy Abercrombie on
the Intellectual Powers, Dick's Moral Improvement, Young's
Intellectual Philosophy, Chalmers's Poetical Economy!!! (in
passing I may be allowed to ask what that means?) is quite
absurd. I would not give orders at random for books about which
we know nothing. We are under no necessity of ordering at
haphazard. We know Robinson Crusoe, and Gulliver, and the Arabian
Nights, and Anson's Voyage, and many other delightful works which
interest even the very young, and which do not lose their
interest to the end of our lives. Why should we order blindfold
such books as Markham's New Children's Friend, the juvenile Scrap
Book, the Child's Own Book, Niggens's Earth, Mudie's Sea, and
somebody else's Fire and Air?--books which, I will be bound for
it, none of us ever opened.

"The list ought in all its parts to be thoroughly recast. If Sir
Benjamin Malkin will furnish the names of ten or twelve works of
a scientific kind, which he thinks suited for prizes, the task
will not be difficult; and, with his help, I will gladly
undertake it. There is a marked distinction between a prize book
and a school book. A prize book ought to be a book which a boy
receives with pleasure, and turns over and over, not as a task,
but spontaneously. I have not forgotten my own school-boy
feelings on this subject. My pleasure at obtaining a prize was
greatly enhanced by the knowledge that my little library would
receive a very agreeable addition. I never was better pleased
than when at fourteen I was master of Boswell's Life of Johnson,
which I had long been wishing to read. If my master had given me,
instead of Boswell, a Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, or a
Geographical Class book, I should have been much less gratified
by my success."

The idea had been started of paying authors to write books in the
languages of the country. On this Macaulay remarks

"To hire four or five people to make a literature is a course
which never answered and never will answer, in any part of the
world. Languages grow. They cannot be built. We are now following
the slow but sure course on which alone we can depend for a
supply of good books in the vernacular languages of India. We are
attempting to raise up a large class of enlightened natives. I
hope that, twenty years hence, there will be hundreds, nay
thousands, of natives familiar with the best models of
composition, and well acquainted with Western science. Among them
some persons will be found who will have the inclination and the
ability to exhibit European knowledge in the vernacular dialects.
This I believe to be the only way in which we can raise up a good
vernacular literature in this country."

These hopeful anticipations have been more than fulfilled. Twice
twenty years have brought into existence, not hundreds or
thousands, but hundreds of thousands, of natives who can
appreciate European knowledge when laid before them in the
English language, and can reproduce it in their own. Taking one
year with another, upwards of a thousand works of literature and
science are published annually in Bengal alone, and at least four
times that number throughout the entire continent. Our colleges
have more than six thousand students on their books, and two
hundred thousand boys are receiving a liberal education in
schools of the higher order. For the improvement of the mass of
the people, nearly seven thousand young men are in training as
Certificated Masters. The amount allotted in the budget to the
item of Public Instruction has increased more than seventy-fold
since 1835; and is largely supplemented by the fees which parents
of all classes willingly contribute when once they have been
taught the value of a commodity the demand for which is created
by the supply. During many years past the generosity of wealthy
natives has to a great extent been diverted from the idle
extravagance of pageants and festivals, to promote the
intellectual advancement of their fellow-countrymen. On several
different occasions, at a single stroke of the pen, our Indian
universities have been endowed with twice, three times, four
times the amount of the slender sum which Macaulay had at his
command. But none the less was he the master-engineer, whose
skill and foresight determined the direction of the channels,
along which this stream of public and private munificence was to
flow for the regeneration of our Eastern Empire.

It may add something to the merit of Macaulay's labours in the
cause of Education that those labours were voluntary and unpaid;
and voluntary and unpaid likewise was another service which he
rendered to India, not less durable than the first, and hardly
less important. A clause in the Act of 1833 gave rise to the
appointment of a Commission to inquire into the jurisprudence and
jurisdiction of our Eastern Empire. Macaulay, at his own
instigation, was appointed President of that Commission. He had
not been many months engaged in his new duties before he
submitted a proposal, by the adoption of which his own industry
and the high talents of his colleagues, Mr. Cameron and Sir John
Macleod, might be turned to the best account by being employed in
framing a Criminal Code for the whole Indian Empire. "This Code,"
writes Macaulay, "should not be a mere digest of existing usages
and regulations, but should comprise all the reforms which the
Commission may think desirable. It should be framed on two great
principles, the principle of suppressing crime with the smallest
possible amount of suffering, and the principle of ascertaining
truth at the smallest possible cost of time and money. The
Commissioners should be particularly charged to study
conciseness, as far as it is consistent with perspicuity. In
general, I believe, it will be found that perspicuous and concise
expressions are not only compatible, but identical."

The offer was eagerly accepted, and the Commission fell to work.
The results of that work did not show themselves quickly enough
to satisfy the most practical, and, (to its credit be it spoken,)
the most exacting of Governments; and Macaulay was under the
necessity of explaining and excusing a procrastination, which was
celerity itself as compared with any codifying that had been done
since the days of Justinian.

"During the last rainy season,--a season, I believe, peculiarly
unhealthy,--every member of the Commission, except myself, was
wholly incapacitated for exertion. Mr. Anderson has been twice
under the necessity of leaving Calcutta, and has not, till very
lately, been able to labour with his accustomed activity. Mr.
Macleod has been, till within the last week or ten days, in so
feeble a state that the smallest effort seriously disordered him;
and his health is so delicate that, admirably qualified as he is,
by very rare talents, for the discharge of his functions, it
would be imprudent, in forming any prospective calculation, to
reckon on much service from him. Mr. Cameron, of the importance
of whose assistance I need not speak, has been, during more than
four months, utterly unable to do any work, and has at length
been compelled to ask leave of absence, in order to visit the
Cape for the recovery of his health. Thus, as the Governor-
General has stated, Mr. Millett and myself have, during a
considerable time, constituted the whole effective strength of
the Commission. Nor has Mr. Millett been able to devote to the
business of the Commission his whole undivided attention.

"I must say that, even if no allowance be made for the untoward
occurrences which have retarded our progress, that progress
cannot be called slow. People who have never considered the
importance and difficulty of the task in which we are employed
are surprised to find that a Code cannot be spoken of extempore,
or written like an article in a magazine. I am not ashamed to
acknowledge that there are several chapters in the Code on which
I have been employed for months; of which I have changed the
whole plan ten or twelve times; which contain not a single word
as it originally stood; and with which I am still very far
indeed from being satisfied. I certainly shall not hurry on my
share of the work to gratify the childish impatience of the
ignorant. Their censure ought to be a matter of perfect
indifference to men engaged in a task, on the right performance
of which the welfare of millions may, during a long series of
years, depend. The cost of the Commission is as nothing when
compared with the importance of such a work. The time during
which the Commission has sat is as nothing compared with the time
during which that work will produce good, or evil, to India.

"Indeed, if we compare the progress of the Indian Code with the
progress of Codes under circumstances far more favourable, we
shall find little reason to accuse the Law Commission of
tardiness. Buonaparte had at his command the services of
experienced jurists to any extent to which he chose to call for
them; yet his legislation proceeded at a far slower rate than
ours. The French Criminal Code was begun, under the Consulate, in
March 1801; and yet the Code of Criminal Procedure was not
completed till 1808, and the Penal Code not till 1810. The
Criminal Code of Louisiana was commenced in February 1821. After
it had been in preparation during three years and a half, an
accident happened to the papers which compelled Mr. Livingstone
to request indulgence for another year. Indeed, when I remember
the slow progress of law reforms at home, and when I consider
that our Code decides hundreds of questions, every one of which,
if stirred in England, would give occasion to voluminous
controversy and to many animated debates, I must acknowledge that
I am inclined to fear that we have been guilty rather of
precipitation than of delay."

This Minute was dated the end of January, 1837; and in the course
of the same year the Code appeared, headed by an Introductory
Report in the shape of a letter to the Governor-General, and
followed by an Appendix containing eighteen notes, each in itself
an essay. The most readable of all Digests, its pages are alive
with illustrations drawn from history, from literature, and from
the habits and occurrences of everyday life. The offence of
fabricating evidence is exemplified by a case which may easily be
recognised as that of Lady Macbeth and the grooms; ["A, after
wounding a person with a knife, goes into the room where Z is
sleeping, smears Z's clothes with blood, and lays the knife under
Z's pillow; intending not only that suspicion may thereby be
turned away front himself, but also that Z may be convicted of
voluntarily causing grievous hurt. A is liable to punishment as a
fabricator of false evidence."] and the offence of voluntary
culpable homicide by an imaginary incident of a pit covered with
sticks and turf, which irresistibly recalls a reminiscence of
Jack the Giant-killer. The chapters on theft and trespass
establish the rights of book owners as against book stealers,
book borrowers, and book defacers, with an affectionate precision
which would have gladdened the heart of Charles Lamb or Sir
Walter Scott. ["A, being on friendly terms with Z, goes into Z's
library, in Z's absence, and takes a book without Z's express
consent. Here, it is probable that A may have conceived that he
had Z's implied consent to use Z's books. If this was A's
impression, A has not committed theft."

"A takes up a book belonging to Z, and reads it, not having any
right over the book, and not having the consent of any person
entitled to authorise A so to do. A trespasses.

"A, being exasperated at a passage in a book which is lying on
the counter of Z, snatches it up, and tears it to pieces. A has
not committed theft, as he has not acted fraudulently, though he
may have committed criminal trespass and mischief."] In the
chapter on manslaughter, the judge is enjoined to treat with
lenity an act done in the first anger of a husband or father,
provoked by the intolerable outrage of a certain kind of criminal
assault. "Such an assault produced the Sicilian Vespers. Such an
assault called forth the memorable blow of Wat Tyler." And, on
the question whether the severity of a hurt should be considered
in apportioning the punishment, we are reminded of "examples
which are universally known. Harley was laid up more than twenty
days by the wound which he received from Guiscard;" while "the
scratch which Damien gave to Louis the Fifteenth was so slight
that it was followed by no feverish symptoms." Such a sanguine
estimate of the diffusion of knowledge with regard to the details
of ancient crimes could proceed from no pen but that of the
writer who endowed schoolboys with the erudition of professors,
and the talker who, when he poured forth the stores of his
memory, began each of his disquisitions with the phrase, "don't
you remember?"

If it be asked whether or not the Penal Code fulfils the ends for
which it was framed, the answer may safely be left to the
gratitude of Indian civilians, the younger of whom carry it about
in their saddle-bags, and the older in their heads. The value
which it possesses in the eyes of a trained English lawyer may be
gathered from the testimony of Macaulay's eminent successor, Mr.
Fitzjames Stephen, who writes of it thus:

"In order to appreciate the importance of the Penal Code, it must
be borne in mind what crime in India is. Here, in England, order
is so thoroughly well established that the crime of the country is
hardly more than an annoyance. In India, if crime is allowed to
let to a head, it is capable of destroying the peace and
prosperity of whole tracts of country. The mass of the people in
their common moods are gentle, submissive, and disposed to be
innocent; but, for that very reason, bold and successful
criminals are dangerous in the extreme. In old days, when they
joined in gangs or organised bodies, they soon acquired political
importance. Now, in many parts of India, crime is quite as
uncommon as in the least criminal parts of England; and the old
high-handed systematised crime has almost entirely disappeared.
This great revolution (for it is nothing less) in the state of
society of a whole continent has been brought about by the
regular administration of a rational body of criminal law.

"The administration of criminal justice is entrusted to a very
small number of English magistrates, organised according to a
carefully-devised system of appeal and supervision which
represents the experience of a century. This system is not
unattended by evils; but it is absolutely necessary to enable a
few hundred civilians to govern a continent. Persons in such a
position must be provided with the plainest instructions as to
the nature of their duties. These instructions, in so far as the
administration of criminal justice is concerned, are contained in
the Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure. The
Code of Criminal Procedure contains 541 sections, and forms a
pamphlet of 210 widely printed octavo pages. The Penal Code
consists of 510 sections. Pocket editions of these Codes are
published, which may be carried about as easily as a pocket
Bible; and I doubt whether, even in Scotland, you would find many
people who know their Bibles as Indian civilians know their
Codes."

After describing the confusion and complication of the criminal
law of our Indian Empire before it was taken in hand by the
Commission of 1834, Mr. Stephen proceeds to say:

"Lord Macaulay's great work was far too daring and original to be
accepted at once. It was a draft when he left India in 1838. His
successors made remarks on it for twenty-two years. Those years
were filled with wars and rumours of wars. The Afghan disasters
and triumphs, the war in Central India, the wars with the Sikhs,
Lord Dalhousie's annexations, threw law reform into the
background, and produced a state of mind not very favourable to
it. Then came the Mutiny, which in its essence was the breakdown
of an old system; the renunciation of an attempt to effect an
impossible compromise between the Asiatic and the European view
of things, legal, military, and administrative. The effect of the
Mutiny on the Statute-book was unmistakable. The Code of Civil
Procedure was enacted in 1859. The Penal Code was enacted in
1860, and came into operation on the 1st of January 1862. The
credit of passing the Penal Code into law, and of giving to every
part of it the improvements which practical skill and technical
knowledge could bestow, is due to Sir Barnes Peacock, who held
Lord Macaulay's place during the most anxious years through which
the Indian Empire has passed. The Draft and the Revision are both
eminently creditable to their authors; and the result of their
successive efforts has been to reproduce in a concise, and even
beautiful, form the spirit of the law of England; the most
technical, the most clumsy, and the most bewildering of all
systems of criminal law; though I think, if its principles are
fully understood, it is the most rational. If anyone doubts this
assertion, let him compare the Indian Penal Code with such a book
as Mr. Greaves's edition of Russell on Crimes. The one subject of
homicide, as treated by Mr. Greaves and Russell, is, I should
think, twice as long as the whole Penal Code; and it does not
contain a tenth part of the matter."

"The point which always has surprised me most in connection with
the Penal Code is, that it proves that Lord Macaulay must have
had a knowledge of English criminal law which, considering how
little he had practised it, may fairly be called extraordinary.
[Macaulay's practice at the bar had been less than little,
according to an account which he gave of it at a public dinner:
"My own forensic experience, gentlemen, has been extremely small;
for my only recollection of an achievement that way is that at
quarter sessions I once convicted a boy of stealing a parcel of
cocks and hens."] He must have possessed the gift of going at
once to the very root of the matter, and of sifting the corn from
the chaff to a most unusual degree; for his Draft gives the
substance of the criminal law of England, down to its minute
working details, in a compass which, by comparison with the
original, may be regarded as almost absurdly small. The Indian
Penal Code is to the English criminal law what a manufactured
article ready for use is to the materials out of which it is
made. It is to the French 'Code Penal,' and, I may add, to the
North German Code of 1871, what a finished picture is to a
sketch. It is far simpler, and much better expressed, than
Livingstone's Code for Louisiana; and its practical success has
been complete. The clearest proof of this is that hardly any
questions have arisen upon it which have had to be determined by
the courts; and that few and slight amendments have had to be
made in it by the Legislature."

Without troubling himself unduly about the matter, Macaulay was
conscious that the world's estimate of his public services would
be injuriously affected by the popular notion, which he has
described as "so flattering to mediocrity," that a great writer
cannot be a great administrator; and it is possible that this
consciousness had something to do with the heartiness and fervour
which he threw into his defence of the author of "Cato" against
the charge of having been an inefficient Secretary of State.
There was much in common between his own lot and that of the
other famous essayist who had been likewise a Whig statesman; and
this similarity in their fortunes may account in part for the
indulgence, and almost tenderness, with which he reviewed the
career and character of Addison. Addison himself, at his villa in
Chelsea, and still more amidst the gilded slavery of Holland
House, might have envied the literary seclusion, ample for so
rapid a reader, which the usages of Indian life permitted
Macaulay to enjoy. "I have a very pretty garden," he writes, "not
unlike our little grass-plot at Clapham, but larger. It consists
of a fine sheet of turf, with a gravel walk round it, and flower-
beds scattered over it. It looks beautiful just now after the
rains, and I hear that it keeps its verdure during a great part
of the year. A flight of steps leads down from my library into
the garden, and it is so well shaded that you may walk there till
ten o'clock in the morning."

Here, book in hand, and in dressing-gown and slippers, he would
spend those two hours after sun-rise which Anglo-Indian gentlemen
devote to riding, and Anglo-Indian ladies to sleeping off the
arrears of the sultry night. Regularly, every morning, his
studies were broken in upon by the arrival of his baby niece, who
came to feed the crows with the toast which accompanied his early
cup of tea; a ceremony during which he had much ado to protect
the child from the advances of a multitude of birds, each almost
as big as herself, which hopped and fluttered round her as she
stood on the steps of the verandah. When the sun drove him
indoors, (which happened sooner than he had promised himself,
before he had learned by experience what the hot season was,) he
went to his bath and toilette, and then to breakfast; "at which
we support nature under the exhausting effects of the climate by
means of plenty of eggs, mango-fish, snipe-pies, and frequently a
hot beefsteak. My cook is renowned through Calcutta for his
skill. He brought me attestations of a long succession of
gourmands, and among them one from Lord Dalhousie, who pronounced
him decidedly the first artist in Bengal. [Lord Dalhousie, the
father of the Governor-General, was Commander-In-Chief in India
during the years 1830 and 1831.] This great man, and his two
assistants, I am to have for thirty rupees a month. While I am on
the subject of the cuisine, I may as well say all that I have to
say about it at once. The tropical fruits are wretched. The best
of them is inferior to our apricot or gooseberry. When I was a
child, I had a notion of its being the most exquisite of treats
to eat plantains and yams, and to drink palm-wine. How I envied
my father for having enjoyed these luxuries! I have now enjoyed
them all, and I have found like much greater men on much more
important occasions, that all is vanity. A plantain is very like
a rotten pear,--so like that I would lay twenty to one that a
person blindfolded would not discover the difference. A yam is
better. It is like an indifferent potato. I tried palm-wine at a
pretty village near Madras, where I slept one night. I told
Captain Barron that I had been curious to taste that liquor ever
since I first saw, eight or nine and twenty years ago, the
picture of the negro climbing the tree in Sierra Leone. The next
morning I was roused by a servant, with a large bowl of juice
fresh from the tree. I drank it, and found it very like ginger-
beer in which the ginger has been sparingly used."

Macaulay necessarily spent away from home the days on which the
Supreme Council, or the Law Commission, held their meetings; but
the rest of his work, legal, literary, and educational, he
carried on in the quiet of his library. Now and again, a morning
was consumed in returning calls, an expenditure of time which it
is needless to say that he sorely grudged. "Happily, the good
people here are too busy to be at home. Except the parsons, they
are all usefully occupied somewhere or other, so that I have only
to leave cards; but the reverend gentlemen are always within
doors in the heat of the day, lying on their backs, regretting
breakfast, longing for tiffin, and crying out for lemonade."
After lunch he sate with Mrs. Trevelyan, translating Greek or
reading French for her benefit; and Scribe's comedies and Saint
Simon's Memoirs beguiled the long languid leisure of the Calcutta
afternoon, while the punkah swung overhead, and the air came
heavy and scented through the moistened grass-matting which
shrouded the windows. At the approach of sunset, with its
attendant breeze, he joined his sister in her drive along the
banks of the Hooghly; and they returned by starlight,--too often
to take part in a vast banquet of forty guests, dressed as
fashionably as people can dress at ninety degrees East from
Paris; who, one and all, had far rather have been eating their
curry, and drinking their bitter beer, at home, in all the
comfort of muslin and nankeen. Macaulay is vehement in his
dislike of "those great formal dinners, which unite all the
stiffness of a levee to all the disorder and discomfort of a two-
shilling ordinary. Nothing can be duller. Nobody speaks except to
the person next him. The conversation is the most deplorable
twaddle, and, as I always sit next to the lady of the highest
rank, or, in other words, to the oldest, ugliest, and proudest
woman in the company, I am worse off than my neighbours."

Nevertheless he was far too acute a judge of men to undervalue
the special type of mind which is produced and fostered by the
influences of an Indian career. He was always ready to admit that
there is no better company in the world than a young and rising
civilian; no one who has more to say that is worth hearing, and
who can say it in a manner better adapted to interest those who
know good talk from bad. He delighted in that freedom from
pedantry, affectation, and pretension which is one of the most
agreeable characteristics of a service, to belong to which is in
itself so effectual an education, that a bore is a phenomenon
notorious everywhere within a hundred miles of the station which
has the honour to possess him, and a fool is quoted by name
throughout all the three Presidencies. Macaulay writes to his
sisters at home: "The best way of seeing society here is to have
very small parties. There is a little circle of people whose
friendship I value, and in whose conversation I take pleasure:
the Chief Justice, Sir Edward Ryan; my old friend, Malkin;
Cameron and Macleod, the Law Commissioners; Macnaghten, among the
older servants of the Company, and Mangles, Colvin, and John
Peter Grant among the younger. [It cannot be said that all the
claims made upon Macaulay's friendship were acknowledged as
readily as those of Sir Benjamin Malkin. "I am dunned
unmercifully by place-hunters. The oddest application that I have
received is from that rascal --, who is somewhere in the
interior. He tells me he is sure that prosperity has not changed
me; that I am still the same John Macaulay who was his dearest
friend, his more than brother; and that he means to come up, and
live with me at Calcutta. If he fulfils his intention, I will
have him taken before the police-magistrates."] These, in my
opinion, are the flower of Calcutta society, and I often ask some
of them to a quiet dinner." On the Friday of every week, these
chosen few met round Macaulay's breakfast table to discuss the
progress which the Law Commission had made in its labours; and
each successive point which was started opened the way to such a
flood of talk,--legal, historical, political, and personal,--that
the company would sit far on towards noon over the empty teacups,
until an uneasy sense of accumulating despatch-boxes drove them,
one by one, to their respective offices.

There are scattered passages in these letters which prove that
Macaulay's feelings, during his protracted absence from his
native country, were at times almost as keen as those which
racked the breast of Cicero, when he was forced to exchange the
triumphs of the Forum, and the cozy suppers with his brother
augurs, for his hateful place of banishment at Thessalonica, or
his hardly less hateful seat of government at Tarsus. The
complaints of the English statesman do not, however, amount in
volume to a fiftieth part of those reiterated out pourings of
lachrymose eloquence with which the Roman philosopher bewailed an
expatriation that was hardly one-third as long. "I have no
words," writes Macaulay, very much under-estimating the wealth of
his own vocabulary, "to tell you how I pine for England, or how
intensely bitter exile has been to me, though I hope that I have
borne it well. I feel as if I had no other wish than to see my
country again and die. Let me assure you that banishment is no
light matter. No person can judge of it who has not experienced
it. A complete revolution in all the habits of life; an
estrangement from almost every old friend and acquaintance;
fifteen thousand miles of ocean between the exile and everything
that he cares for; all this is, to me at least, very trying.
There is no temptation of wealth, or power, which would induce
me to go through it again. But many people do not feel as I do.
Indeed, the servants of the Company rarely have such a feeling;
and it is natural that they should not have it, for they are sent
out while still schoolboys, and when they know little of the
world. The moment of emigration is to them also the moment of
emancipation; and the pleasures of liberty and affluence to a
great degree compensate them for the loss of their home. In a few
years they become orientalised, and, by the time that they are of
my age, they would generally prefer India, as a residence, to
England. But it is a very different matter when a man is
transplanted at thirty-three."

Making, as always, the best of everything, he was quite ready to
allow that he might have been placed in a still less agreeable
situation. In the following extract from a letter to his friend,
Mrs. Drummond, there is much which will come home to those who
are old enough to remember how vastly the Dublin of 1837
differed, for the worse, from the Dublin of 1875, "It now seems
likely that you may remain in Ireland for years. I cannot
conceive what has induced you to submit to such an exile. I
declare, for my own part, that, little as I love Calcutta, I
would rather stay here than be settled in the Phoenix Park. The
last residence which I would choose would be a place with all the
plagues, and none of the attractions, of a capital; a provincial
city on fire with factions political and religious, peopled by
raving Orangemen and raving Repealers, and distracted by a
contest between Protestantism as fanatical as that of Knot and
Catholicism as fanatical as that of Bonner. We have our share of
the miseries of life in this country. We are annually baked four
months, boiled four more, and allowed the remaining four to
become cool if we can. At this moment, the sun is blazing like a
furnace. The earth, soaked with oceans of rain, is steaming like
a wet blanket. Vegetation is rotting all round us. Insects and
undertakers are the only living creatures which seem to enjoy the
climate. But, though our atmosphere is hot, our factions are
lukewarm. A bad epigram in a newspaper, or a public meeting
attended by a tailor, a pastry-cook, a reporter, two or three
barristers, and eight or ten attorneys, are our most formidable
annoyances. We have agitators in our own small way, Tritons of
the minnows, bearing the same sort of resemblance to O'Connell
that a lizard bears to an alligator. Therefore Calcutta for me,
in preference to Dublin."

He had good reason for being grateful to Calcutta, and still
better for not showing his gratitude by prolonging his stay there
over a fourth summer and autumn. "That tremendous crash of the
great commercial houses which took place a few years ago has
produced a revolution in fashions. It ruined one half of the
English society in Bengal, and seriously injured the other half.
A large proportion of the most important functionaries here are
deeply in debt, and accordingly, the mode of living is now
exceedingly quiet and modest. Those immense subscriptions, those
public tables, those costly equipages and entertainments of which
Heber, and others who saw Calcutta a few years back, say so much,
are never heard of. Speaking for myself, it was a great piece of
good fortune that I came hither just at the time when the general
distress had forced everybody to adopt a moderate way of living.
Owing very much to that circumstance, (while keeping house, I
think, more handsomely than any other member of Council,) I have
saved what will enable me to do my part towards making my family
comfortable; and I shall have a competency for myself, small
indeed, but quite sufficient to render me as perfectly
independent as if I were the possessor of Burleigh or
Chatsworth." [Macaulay writes to Lord Mahon on the last day of
December 1836: "In another year I hope to leave this country,
with a fortune which you would think ridiculously small, but
which will make me as independent as if I had all that Lord
Westminster has above the ground, and Lord Durham below it. I
have no intention of again taking part in politics; but I cannot
tell what effect the sight of the old Hall and Abbey may produce
on me."]

"The rainy season of 1837 has been exceedingly unhealthy. Our
house has escaped as well as any; yet Hannah is the only one of
us who has come off untouched. The baby has been repeatedly
unwell. Trevelyan has suffered a good deal, and is kept right
only by occasional trips in a steamer down to the mouth of the
Hooghly. I had a smart touch of fever, which happily stayed but
an hour or two, and I took such vigorous measures that it never
came again; but I remained unnerved and exhausted for nearly a
fortnight. This was my first, and I hope my last, taste of Indian
maladies. It is a happy thing for us all that we are not to pass
another year in the reek of this deadly marsh." Macaulay wisely
declined to set the hope of making another lac of rupees against
the risk, to himself and others of such a fate as subsequently
befell Lord Canning and Mr. James Wilson. He put the finishing
stroke to his various labours; resigned his seat in the Council,
and his Presidentships of the Law Commission and the Committee of
Public Instruction; and, in company with the Trevelyans, sailed
for England in the first fortnight of the year 1838.

To Mr Thomas Flower Ellis.

Calcutta: December 16, 1834.

Dear Ellis,--Many thanks for your letter. It is delightful in
this strange land to see the handwriting of such a friend. We
must keep up our spirits. We shall meet, I trust, in little more
than four years, with feelings of regard only strengthened by
our separation. My spirits are not bad; and they ought not to be
bad. I have health; affluence; consideration; great power to do
good; functions which, while they are honourable and useful, are
not painfully burdensome; leisure for study; good books; an
unclouded and active mind; warm affections; and a very dear
sister. There will soon be a change in my domestic arrangements.
My sister is to be married next week. Her lover, who is lover
enough to be a knight of the Round Table, is one of the most
distinguished of our young Civilians.

I have the very highest opinion of his talents both for action
and for discussion. Indeed, I should call him a man of real
genius. He is also, what is even more important, a man of the
utmost purity of honour, of a sweet temper, and of strong
principle. His public virtue has gone through very severe trials,
and has come out resplendent. Lord William, in congratulating me
the other day, said that he thought my destined brother-in-law
the ablest young man in the service. His name is Trevelyan. He is
a nephew of Sir John Trevelyan, a baronet; in Cornwall I suppose,
by the name; for I never took the trouble to ask.

He and my sister will live with me during my stay here. I have a
house about as large as Lord Dudley's in Park Lane, or rather
larger, so that I shall accommodate them without the smallest
difficulty. This arrangement is acceptable to me, because it
saves me from the misery of parting with my sister in this
strange land; and is, I believe, equally gratifying to Trevelyan,
whose education, like that of other Indian servants, was huddled
up hastily at home; who has an insatiable thirst for knowledge of
every sort; and who looks on me as little less than an oracle of
wisdom. He came to me the other morning to know whether I
would advise him to keep up his Greek, which he feared he had
nearly lost. I gave him Homer, and asked him to read a page; and
I found that, like most boys of any talent who had been at the
Charterhouse, he was very well grounded in that language. He read
with perfect rapture, and has marched off with the book,
declaring that he shall never be content till he has finished the
whole. This, you will think, is not a bad brother-in-law for a
man to pick up in 22 degrees of North latitude, and l00 degrees
of East longitude.

I read much, and particularly Greek; and I find that I am, in all
essentials, still not a bad scholar. I could, I think, with a
year's hard study, qualify myself to fight a good battle for a
Craven's scholarship. I read, however, not as I read at College,
but like a man of the world. If I do not know a word, I pass it
by unless it is important to the sense. If I find, as I have of
late often found, a passage which refuses to give up its meaning
at the second reading, I let it alone. I have read during the
last fortnight, before breakfast, three books of Herodotus, and
four plays of Aeschylus. My admiration of Aeschylus has been
prodigiously increased by this reperusal. I cannot conceive how
any person of the smallest pretension to taste should doubt about
his immeasurable superiority to every poet of antiquity, Homer
only excepted. Even Milton, I think, must yield to him. It is
quite unintelligible to me that the ancient critics should have
placed him so low. Horace's notice of him in the Ars Poetica is
quite ridiculous. There is, to be sure, the "magnum loqui;" but
the great topic insisted on is the skill of Aeschylus as a
manager, as a property-man; the judicious way in which he boarded
the stage; the masks, the buskins, and the dresses.

 ["Post hunc personae pallaeque repertor honestae
   Aeschylus et modicis instravit pulpita tignis,
   Et docuit magnumnque loqui, nitique cothuruo."]

And, after all, the "magnum loqui," though the most obvious
characteristic of Aeschylus, is by no means his highest or his
best. Nor can I explain this by saying that Horace had too tame
and unimaginative a mind to appreciate Aeschylus. Horace knew
what he could himself do, and, with admirable wisdom, he confined
himself to that; but he seems to have had a perfectly clear
comprehension of the merit of those great masters whom he never
attempted to rival. He praised Pindar most enthusiastically. It
seems incomprehensible to me that a critic, who admired Pindar,
should not admire Aeschylus far more.

Greek reminds me of Cambridge and of Thirlwall. When you see
Thirlwall, tell him that I congratulate him from the bottom of my
soul on having suffered in so good a cause; and that I would
rather have been treated as he has been treated, on such an
account, than have the Mastership of Trinity. [The subjoined
extract from the letter of a leading member of Trinity College
explains Macaulay's indignation. "Thirlwall published a pamphlet
in 1834, on the admission of Dissenters to the University. The
result was that he was either deprived of his Assistant
Tutorship or had to give it up. Thirlwall left Cambridge soon
afterwards. I suppose that, if he had remained, he would have
been very possibly Wordsworth's successor in the Mastership."]
There would be some chance for the Church, if we had more
Churchmen of the same breed, worthy successors of Leighton and
Tillotson.

From one Trinity Fellow I pass to another. (This letter is quite
a study to a metaphysician who wishes to illustrate the Law of
Association.) We have no official tidings yet of Malkin's
appointment to the vacant seat on the Bench at Calcutta. I cannot
tell you how delighted I am at the prospect of having him here.
An honest enlightened Judge, without professional narrowness, is
the very man whom we want on public grounds. And, as to my
private feelings, nothing could be more agreeable to me than to
have an old friend, and so estimable a friend, brought so near to
me in this distant country.

Ever, dear Ellis,

Yours very affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

Calcutta: February 8, 1835.

Dear Ellis,--The last month has been the most painful that I ever
went through. Indeed, I never knew before what it was to be
miserable. Early in January, letters from England brought me news
of the death of my youngest sister. What she was to me no words
can express. I will not say that she was dearer to me than
anything in the world; for my sister who was with me was equally
dear; but she was as dear to me as one human being can be to
another. Even now, when time has begun to do its healing office,
I cannot write about her without being altogether unmanned. That
I have not utterly sunk under this blow I owe chiefly to
literature. What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;--
to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the
unreal! Many times during the last few weeks I have repeated to
myself those fine lines of old Hesiod:

 ei gar tis kai penthos egon neokedei thumo
 aksetai kradien akakhemenos, autar aoidos
 mousaon therapon kleia proteron anthropon
 umnese, makaras te theous oi Olumpon ekhousi,
 aips oge dusphroneon epilethetai oude ti kedeon
 memnetai takheos de paretrape dora theaon.

["For if to one whose grief is fresh as he sits silent with
sorrow-stricken heart, a minstrel, the henchman of the Muses,
celebrates the men of old and the gods who possess Olympus;
straightway he forgets his melancholy, and remembers not at all
his grief, beguiled by the blessed gift of the goddesses of
song." In Macaulay's Hesiod this passage is scored with three
lines in pencil.]

I have gone back to Greek literature with a passion quite
astonishing to myself. I have never felt anything like it. I was
enraptured with Italian during the six months which I gave up to
it; and I was little less pleased with Spanish. But, when I went
back to the Greek, I felt as if I had never known before what
intellectual enjoyment was. Oh that wonderful people! There is
not one art, not one science, about which we may not use the same
expression which Lucretius has employed about the victory over
superstition, "Primum Graius homo--."

I think myself very fortunate in having been able to return to
these great masters while still in the full vigour of life, and
when my taste and judgment are mature. Most people read all the
Greek that they ever read before they are five and twenty. They
never find time for such studies afterwards till they are in the
decline of life; and then their knowledge of the language is in a
great measure lost, and cannot easily be recovered. Accordingly,
almost all the ideas that people have of Greek literature, are
ideas formed while they were still very young. A young man,
whatever his genius may be, is no judge of such a writer as
Thucydides. I had no high opinion of him ten years ago. I have
now been reading him with a mind accustomed to historical
researches, and to political affairs; and I am astonished at my
own former blindness, and at his greatness. I could not bear
Euripides at college. I now read my recantation. He has faults
undoubtedly. But what a poet! The Medea, the Alcestis, the
Troades, the Bacchae, are alone sufficient to place him in the
very first rank. Instead of depreciating him, as I have done, I
may, for aught I know, end by editing him.

I have read Pindar,--with less pleasure than I feel in reading the
great Attic poets, but still with admiration. An idea occurred to
me which may very likely have been noticed by a hundred people
before. I was always puzzled to understand the reason for the
extremely abrupt transitions in those Odes of Horace which are
meant to be particularly fine. The "justum et tenacem" is an
instance. All at once you find yourself in heaven, Heaven knows
how. What the firmness of just men in times of tyranny, or of
tumult, has to do with Juno's oration about Troy it is hardly
possible to conceive. Then, again, how strangely the fight between
the Gods and the Giants is tacked on to the fine hymn to the Muses
in that noble ode, "Descende coelo et die age tibia"! This always
struck me as a great fault, and an inexplicable one; for it is
peculiarly alien from the calm good sense, and good taste, which
distinguish Horace.

My explanation of it is this. The Odes of Pindar were the
acknowledged models of lyric poetry. Lyric poets imitated his
manner as closely as they could; and nothing was more remarkable
in his compositions than the extreme violence and abruptness of
the transitions. This in Pindar was quite natural and defensible.
He had to write an immense number of poems on subjects extremely
barren, and extremely monotonous. There could be little
difference between one boxing-match and another. Accordingly, he
made all possible haste to escape from the immediate subject, and
to bring in, by hook or by crook, some local description; some
old legend; something or other, in short, which might be more
susceptible of poetical embellishment, and less utterly
threadbare, than the circumstances of a race or a wrestling-
match. This was not the practice of Pindar alone. There is an old
story which proves that Simonides did the same, and that
sometimes the hero of the day was nettled at finding how little
was said about him in the Ode for which he was to pay. This
abruptness of transition was, therefore, in the Greek lyric
poets, a fault rendered inevitable by the peculiarly barren and
uniform nature of the subjects which they had to treat. But, like
many other faults of great masters, it appeared to their
imitators a beauty; and a beauty almost essential to the grander
Ode. Horace was perfectly at liberty to choose his own subjects,
and to treat them after his own fashion. But he confounded what
was merely accidental in Pindar's manner with what was essential;
and because Pindar, when he had to celebrate a foolish lad from
Aegina who had tripped up another's heels at the Isthmus, made
all possible haste to get away from so paltry a topic to the
ancient heroes of the race of Aeacus, Horace took it into his
head that he ought always to begin as far from the subject as
possible, and then arrive at it by some strange and sudden bound.
This is my solution. At least I can find no better. The most
obscure passage,--at least the strangest passage,--in all Horace
may be explained by supposing that he was misled by Pindar's
example: I mean that odd parenthesis in the "Qualem Ministrum:"

                      quibus
 Mos unde deductus per omne--.

This passage, taken by itself, always struck me as the harshest,
queerest, and most preposterous digression in the world. But
there are several things in Pindar very like it. [Orelli makes an
observation, much to the same effect, in his note on this passage
in his edition of 1850.]

You must excuse all this, for I labour at present under a
suppression of Greek, and am likely to do so for at least three
years to come. Malkin may be some relief; but I am quite unable
to guess whether he means to come to Calcutta. I am in excellent
bodily health, and I am recovering my mental health; but I have
been sorely tried. Money matters look well. My new brother-in-law
and I are brothers in more than law. I am more comfortable than I
expected to be in this country; and, as to the climate, I think
it, beyond all comparison, better than that of the House of
Commons.

Yours affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

Writing three days after the date of the foregoing letter,
Macaulay says to his old friend Mr. Sharp: "You see that my mind
is not in great danger of rusting. The danger is that I may
become a mere pedant. I feel a habit of quotation growing on me;
but I resist that devil, for such it is, and it flees from me. It
is all that I can do to keep Greek and Latin out of all my
letters. Wise sayings of Euripides are even now at my fingers'
ends. If I did not maintain a constant struggle against this
propensity, my correspondence would resemble the notes to the
'Pursuits of Literature.' It is a dangerous thing for a man with a
very strong memory to read very much. I could give you three or
four quotations this moment in support of that proposition; but I
will bring the vicious propensity under subjection, if I can."
[Many years later Macaulay wrote to my mother: "Dr. -- came, and
I found him a very clever man; a little of a coxcomb, but, I dare
say, not the worse physician for that. He must have quoted Horace
and Virgil six times at least a propos of his medical inquiries.
Horace says, in a poem in which he jeers the Stoics, that even a
wise man is out of sort when 'pituita molesta est;' which is,
being interpreted, 'when, his phlegm is troublesome.' The Doctor
thought it necessary to quote this passage in order to prove that
phlegm is troublesome;--a proposition, of the truth of which, I
will venture to say, no man on earth is better convinced than
myself."]

Calcutta, May 29, 1835.

Dear Ellis,--I am in great want of news. We know that the Tories
dissolved at the end of December, and we also know that they were
beaten towards the end of February. [In November 1834 the King
called Sir Robert Peel to power; after having of his own accord
dismissed the Whig Ministry. Parliament was dissolved, but the
Tories did not succeed in obtaining a majority. After three
months of constant and angry fighting, Peel was driven from
office in April 1835.] As to what passed in the interval, we are
quite in the dark. I will not plague you with comments on events
which will have been driven out of your mind by other events
before this reaches you, or with prophecies which may be
falsified before you receive them. About the final issue I am
certain. The language of the first great reformer is that which I
should use in reply to the exultation of our Tories here, if
there were any of them who could understand it

 sebou, proseukhou thopte ton kratount aei
 emoi d'elasson Zeuos e meden melei.
 drato krateito tonde ton brakhun khronon
 opes thelei daron gar ouk arksei theois

["Worship thou, adore, and flatter the monarch of the hour. To me
Jove is of less account than nothing. Let him have his will, and
his sceptre, for this brief season; for he will not long be the
ruler of the Gods." It is needless to say that poor William the
Fourth was the Jove of the Whig Prometheus.]

As for myself, I rejoice that I am out of the present storm.
"Suave mari magno;" or, as your new Premier, if he be still
Premier, construes. "It is a source of melancholy satisfaction."
I may, indeed, feel the effects of the changes here, but more on
public than private grounds. A Tory Governor-General is not very
likely to agree with me about the very important law reforms
which I am about to bring before the Council. But he is not
likely to treat me ill personally; or, if he does,

 all ou ti khairon, en tod orthothe Belos,

["It shall be to his cost, so long as this bow carries true."]

as Philoctetes says. In a few months I shall have enough to
enable me to live, after my very moderate fashion, in perfect
independence at home; and whatever debts any Governor-General may
choose to lay on me at Calcutta shall be paid off, he may rely on
it, with compound interest, at Westminster.

My time is divided between public business and books. I mix with
society as little as I can. My spirits have not yet recovered,--I
sometimes think that they will never wholly recover,--the shock
which they received five months ago. I find that nothing soothes
them so much as the contemplation of those miracles of art which
Athens has bequeathed to us. I am really becoming, I hope not a
pedant, but certainly an enthusiast about classical literature. I
have just finished a second reading of Sophocles. I am now deep
in Plato, and intend to go right through all his works. His
genius is above praise. Even where he is most absurd,--as, for
example, in the Cratylus,--he shows an acuteness, and an expanse
of intellect, which is quite a phenomenon by itself. The
character of Socrates does not rise upon me. The more I read
about him, the less I wonder that they poisoned him. If he had
treated me as he is said to have treated Protagoras, Hippias, and
Gorgias, I could never have forgiven him.

Nothing has struck me so much in Plato's dialogues as the
raillery. At college, somehow or other, I did not understand or
appreciate it. I cannot describe to you the way in which it now
tickles me. I often sink forward on my huge old Marsilius Ficinus
in a fit of laughter. I should say that there never was a vein of
ridicule so rich, at the same time so delicate. It is superior to
Voltaire's; nay, to Pascal's. Perhaps there are one or two
passages in Cervantes, and one or two in Fielding, that might
give a modern reader a notion of it.

I have very nearly finished Livy. I never read him through
before. I admire him greatly, and would give a quarter's salary
to recover the lost Decades. While I was reading the earlier
books I went again through Niebuhr. And I am sorry to say that,
having always been a little sceptical about his merits, I am now
a confirmed unbeliever. I do not of course mean that he has no
merit. He was a man of immense learning, and of great ingenuity.
But his mind was utterly wanting in the faculty by which a
demonstrated truth is distinguished from a plausible supposition.
He is not content with suggesting that an event may have
happened. He is certain that it happened, and calls on the reader
to be certain too, (though not a trace of it exists in any record
whatever,) because it would solve the phenomena so neatly. Just
read over again, if you have forgotten it, the conjectural
restoration of the Inscription in page 126 of the second volume;
and then, on your honour as a scholar and a man of sense, tell me
whether in Bentley's edition of Milton there is anything which
approaches to the audacity of that emendation. Niebuhr requires
you to believe that some of the greatest men in Rome were burned
alive in the Circus; that this event was commemorated by an
inscription on a monument, one half of which is sill in
existence; but that no Roman historian knew anything about it;
and that all tradition of the event was lost, though the memory
of anterior events much less important has reached our time. When
you ask for a reason, he tells you plainly that such a thing
cannot be established by reason; that he is sure of it; and that
you must take his word. This sort of intellectual despotism
always moves me to mutiny, and generates a disposition to pull
down the reputation of the dogmatist. Niebuhr's learning was
immeasurably superior to mine; but I think myself quite as good a
judge of evidence as he was. I might easily believe him if he
told me that there were proofs which I had never seen; but, when
he produces all his proofs, I conceive that I am perfectly
competent to pronounce on their value.

As I turned over his leaves just now, I lighted on another
instance of what I cannot but call ridiculous presumption. He
says that Martial committed a blunder in making the penultimate
of Porsena short. Strange that so great a scholar should not know
that Horace had done so too!

Minacis aut Etrusca Porsenae manus.

There is something extremely nauseous to me in a German
Professor telling the world, on his own authority, and without
giving the smallest reason, that two of the best Latin poets were
ignorant of the quantity of a word which they must have used in
their exercises at school a hundred times.

As to the general capacity of Niebuhr for political speculations,
let him be judged by the Preface to the Second Volume. He there
says, referring to the French Revolution of July 1830, that
"unless God send us some miraculous help, we have to look forward
to a period of destruction similar to that which the Roman world
experienced about the middle of the third century." Now, when I
see a man scribble such abject nonsense about events which are
passing under our eyes, what confidence can I put in his judgment
as to the connection of causes and effects in times very
imperfectly known to us.

But I must bring my letter, or review, to a close. Remember me
most kindly to your wife. Tell Frank that I mean to be a better
scholar than he when I come back, and that he must work hard if
he means to overtake me.

Ever, dear Ellis,

Your affectionate friend

T. B. MACAULAY.

Calcutta: August 25, 1835.

Dear Ellis,--Cameron arrived here about a fortnight ago, and we
are most actively engaged in preparing a complete Criminal Code
for India. He and I agree excellently. Ryan, the most liberal of
Judges, lends us his best assistance. I heartily hope, and fully
believe, that we shall put the whole Penal law, and the whole law
of Criminal Procedure, into a moderately sized volume. I begin to
take a very warm interest in this work. It is, indeed, one of the
finest employments of the intellect that it is easy to conceive.
I ought, however, to tell you that, the more progress I make as a
legislator, the more intense my contempt for the mere technical
study of law becomes.

I am deep in the examination of the political theories of the old
philosophers. I have read Plato's Republic, and his laws; and I
am now reading Aristotle's Politics; after which I shall go
through Plato's two treatises again. I every now and then read
one of Plutarch's Lives on an idle afternoon; and in this way I
have got through a dozen of them. I like him prodigiously. He is
inaccurate, to be sure, and a romancer; but he tells a story
delightfully, and his illustrations and sketches of character are
as good as anything in ancient eloquence. I have never, till now,
rated him fairly.

As to Latin, I am just finishing Lucan, who remains pretty much
where he was in my opinion; and I am busily engaged with Cicero,
whose character, moral and intellectual, interests me
prodigiously. I think that I see the whole man through and
through. But this is too vast a subject for a letter. I have gone
through all Ovid's poems. I admire him; but I was tired to death
before I got to the end. I amused myself one evening with turning
over the Metamorphoses, to see if I could find any passage of ten
lines which could, by possibility, have been written by Virgil.
Whether I was in ill luck or no I cannot tell; but I hunted for
half an hour without the smallest success. At last I chanced to
light on a little passage more Virgilian, to my thinking, than
Virgil himself. Tell me what you say to my criticism. It is part
of Apollo's speech to the laurel

                        Semper habebunt
 Te coma, te citharae, te nostrae, laure, pharetrae
 Tu ducibus Latiis aderis, cum laeta triumphum
 Vox canet, et longas visent Capitolia pompas.
 Portibus Augustis cadem fidissima custos
 Ante fores stabis, mediamque tuebere quercum.

As to other Latin writers, Sallust has gone sadly down in my
opinion. Caesar has risen wonderfully. I think him fully entitled
to Cicero's praise. [In the dialogue "De Claris Oratoribus"
Cicero makes Atticus say that 'A consummate judge of style (who
is evidently intended for Cicero himself,) pronounces Caesar's
Latin to be the most elegant, with one implied exception, that
had ever been heard in the Senate or the Forum'. Atticus then goes
on to detail at full length a compliment which Caesar had paid to
Cicero's powers of expression; and Brutus declares with
enthusiasm that such praise, coming from such a quarter, is worth
more than a Triumph, as Triumphs were then given; and inferior in
value only to the honours which were voted to the statesman who
had baffled Catiline. The whole passage is a model of self-
glorification, exquisite in skill and finish.] He has won the
honour of an excellent historian while attempting merely to give
hints for history. But what are they all to the great Athenian? I
do assure you that there is no prose composition in the world,
not even the De Corona, which I place so high as the seventh book
of Thucydides. It is the ne plus ultra of human art. I was
delighted to find in Gray's letters the other day this query to
Wharton: "The retreat from Syracuse--Is it or is it not the
finest thing you ever read in your life?"

Did you ever read Athenaeus through? I never did; but I am
meditating an attack on him. The multitude of quotations looks
very tempting; and I never open him for a minute without being
paid for my trouble.

Yours very affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

Calcutta: December 30, 1835,

Dear Ellis,--What the end of the Municipal Reform Bill is to be I
cannot conjecture. Our latest English intelligence is of the 15th
of August. The Lords were then busy in rendering the only great
service that I expect them ever to render to the nation; that is
to say, in hastening the day of reckoning. [In the middle of
August the Irish Tithe Bill went up to the House of Lords, where
it was destined to undergo a mutilation which was fatal to its
existence.] But I will not fill my paper with English politics.

I am in excellent health. So are my sister and brother-in-law,
and their little girl, whom I am always nursing; and of whom I am
becoming fonder than a wise man, with half my experience, would
choose to be of anything except himself. I have but very lately
begun to recover my spirits. The tremendous blow which fell on me
at the beginning of this year has left marks behind it which I
shall carry to my grave. Literature has saved my life and my
reason. Even now, I dare not, in the intervals of business,
remain alone for a minute without a book in my hand. What my
course of life will be, when I return to England, is very
doubtful. But I am more than half determined to abandon politics,
and to give myself wholly to letters; to undertake some great
historical work, which may be at once the business and the
amusement of my life; and to leave the pleasures of pestiferous
rooms, sleepless nights, aching heads, and diseased stomachs to
Roebuck and to Praed.

In England I might probably be of a very different opinion. But,
in the quiet of my own little grass-plot,--when the moon, at its
rising, finds me with the Philoctetes or the De Finibus in my
hand,--I often wonder what strange infatuation leads men who can
do something better to squander their intellect, their health,
their energy, on such subjects as those which most statesmen are
engaged in pursuing. I comprehend perfectly how a man who can
debate, but who would make a very indifferent figure as a
contributor to an annual or a magazine,--such a man as Stanley,
for example,--should take the only line by which he can attain
distinction. But that a man before whom the two paths of
literature and politics lie open, and who might hope for eminence
in either, should choose politics, and quit literature, seems to
me madness. On the one side is health, leisure, peace of mind,
the search after truth, and all the enjoyments of friendship and
conversation. On the other side is almost certain ruin to the
constitution, constant labour, constant anxiety. Every friendship
which a man may have, becomes precarious as soon as he engages in
politics. As to abuse, men soon become callous to it, but the
discipline which makes them callous is very severe. And for what
is it that a man who might, if he chose, rise and lie down at his
own hour, engage in any study, enjoy any amusement, and visit any
place, consents to make himself as much a prisoner as if he were
within the rules of the Fleet; to be tethered during eleven
months of the year within the circle of half a mile round Charing
Cross; to sit, or stand, night after night for ten or twelve
hours, inhaling a noisome atmosphere, and listening to harangues
of which nine-tenths are far below the level of a leading article
in a newspaper? For what is it that he submits, day after day, to
see the morning break over the Thames, and then totters home,
with bursting temples, to his bed? Is it for fame? Who would
compare the fame of Charles Townshend to that of Hume, that of
Lord North to that of Gibbon, that of Lord Chatham to that of
Johnson? Who can look back on the life of Burke and not regret
that the years which he passed in ruining his health and temper
by political exertions were not passed in the composition of some
great and durable work? Who can read the letters to Atticus, and
not feel that Cicero would have been an infinitely happier and
better man, and a not less celebrated man, if he had left us
fewer speeches, and more Academic Questions and Tusculan
Disputations; if he had passed the time which he spent in
brawling with Vatinius and Clodius in producing a history of Rome
superior even to that of Livy? But these, as I said, are
meditations in a quiet garden, situated far beyond the contagious
influence of English action. What I might feel if I again saw
Downing Street and Palace Yard is another question. I tell you
sincerely my present feelings.

I have cast up my reading account, and brought it to the end of
the year 1835. It includes December 1834; for I came into my
house and unpacked my books at the end of November 1834. During
the last thirteen months I have read Aeschylus twice; Sophocles
twice; Euripides once; Pindar twice; Callimachus; Apollonius
Rhodius; Quintus Calaber; Theocritus twice; Herodotus;
Thucydides; almost all Xenophon's works; almost all Plato;
Aristotle's Politics, and a good deal of his Organon, besides
dipping elsewhere in him; the whole of Plutarch's Lives; about
half of Lucian; two or three books of Athenaeus; Plautus twice;
Terence twice; Lucretius twice; Catullus; Tibullus; Propertius;
Lucan; Statius; Silius Italicus; Livy; Velleius Paterculus;
Sallust; Caesar; and, lastly, Cicero. I have, indeed, still a
little of Cicero left; but I shall finish him in a few days. I am
now deep in Aristophanes and Lucian. Of Aristophanes I think as I
always thought; but Lucian has agreeably surprised me. At school
I read some of his Dialogues of the Dead when I was thirteen;
and, to my shame, I never, to the best of my belief, read a line
of him since. I am charmed with him. His style seems to me to be
superior to that of any extant writer who lived later than the
age of Demosthenes and Theophrastus. He has a most peculiar and
delicious vein of humour. It is not the humour of Aristophanes;
it is not that of Plato; and yet it is akin to both; not quite
equal, I admit, to either, but still exceedingly charming. I
hardly know where to find an instance of a writer, in the decline
of a literature, who has shown an invention so rich, and a taste
so pure. But, if I get on these matters, I shall fill sheet after
sheet. They must wait till we take another long walk, or another
tavern dinner, together; that is, till the summer of 1838.

I had a long story to tell you about a classical examination
here; but I have not time. I can only say that some of the
competitors tried to read the Greek with the papers upside down;
and that the great man of the examination, the Thirlwall of
Calcutta, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, translated the
words of Theophrastus, osas leitourgias leleitroupgeke "how many
times he has performed divine service." ["How many public
services he had discharged at his own expense." Macaulay used to
say that a lady who dips into Mr. Grote's history, and learns
that Alcibiades won the heart of his fellow-citizens by the
novelty of his theories and the splendour of his liturgies, may
get a very false notion of that statesman's relations with the
Athenian public.]

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

That the enormous list of classical works recorded in the
foregoing letter was not only read through, but read with care,
is proved by the pencil marks, single, double, and treble, which
meander down the margin of such passages as excited the
admiration of the student; and by the remarks, literary,
historical, and grammatical, with which the critic has
interspersed every volume, and sometimes every page. In the case
of a favourite writer, Macaulay frequently corrects the errors of
the press, and even the punctuation, as minutely as if he were
preparing the book for another edition. He read Plautus, Terence,
and Aristophanes four times through at Calcutta; and Euripides
thrice. [See the Appendix at the end.]  In his copy of Quintus
Calaber, (a versifier who is less unknown by the title of Quintus
Smyrnaeus,) appear the entries,

"September 22, 1833."
"Turned over, July 13, 1837."

It may be doubted whether the Pandects would have attained the
celebrity which they enjoy, if, in the course of the three years
during which Justinian's Law Commission was at work, the
president Tribonian had read Quintus Smyrnaeus twice.

Calcutta; May 30, 1836.

Dear Ellis,--I have just received your letter dated December,
28; How time flies! Another hot season has almost passed away,
and we are daily expecting the beginning of the rains. Cold
season, hot season, and rainy season are all much the same to me.
I shall have been two years on Indian ground in less than a
fortnight, and I have not taken ten grains of solid, or a pint of
liquid, medicine during the whole of that time. If I judged only
from my own sensations, I should say that this climate is
absurdly maligned; but the yellow, spectral, figures which
surround me serve to correct the conclusions which I should be
inclined to draw from the state of my own health.

One execrable effect the climate produces. It destroys all the
works of man with scarcely one exception. Steel rusts; razors
lose their edge; thread decays; clothes fall to pieces; books
moulder away, and drop out of their bindings; plaster cracks;
timber rots; matting is in shreds. The sun, the steam of this
vast alluvial tract, and the infinite armies of white ants, make
such havoc with buildings that a house requires a complete repair
every three years. Ours was in this situation about three months
ago; and, if we had determined to brave the rains without any
precautions, we should, in all probability, have had the roof
down on our heads. Accordingly we were forced to migrate for six
weeks from our stately apartments and our flower-beds, to a
dungeon where we were stifled with the stench of native cookery,
and deafened by the noise of native music. At last we have
returned to our house. We found it all snow-white and pea-green;
and we rejoice to think that we shall not again be under the
necessity of quitting it, till we quit it for a ship bound on a
voyage to London.

We have been for some months in the middle of what the people
here think a political storm. To a person accustomed to the
hurricanes of English faction this sort of tempest in a horsepond
is merely ridiculous. We have put the English settlers up the
country under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Company's Courts
in civil actions in which they are concerned with natives. The
English settlers are perfectly contented; but the lawyers of the
Supreme Court have set up a yelp which they think terrible, and
which has infinitely diverted me. They have selected me as the
object of their invectives, and I am generally the theme of five
or six columns of prose and verse daily. I have not patience to
read a tenth part of what they put forth. The last ode in my
praise which I perused began,

 "Soon we hope they will recall ye,
  Tom Macaulay, Tom Macaulay."

The last prose which I read was a parallel between me and Lord
Strafford.

My mornings, from five to nine, are quite my own. I still give
them to ancient literature. I have read Aristophanes twice
through since Christmas; and have also read Herodotus, and
Thucydides again. I got into a way last year of reading a Greek
play every Sunday. I began on Sunday the 18th of October with the
Prometheus, and next Sunday I shall finish with the Cyclops of
Euripides. Euripides has made a complete conquest of me. It has
been unfortunate for him that we have so many of his pieces. It
has, on the other hand, I suspect, been fortunate for Sophocles
that so few of his have come down to us. Almost every play of
Sophocles, which is now extant, was one of his masterpieces.
There is hardly one of them which is not mentioned with high
praise by some ancient writer. Yet one of them, the Trachiniae,
is, to my thinking, very poor and insipid. Now, if we had
nineteen plays of Sophocles, of which twelve or thirteen should
be no better than the Trachiniae,--and if, on the other hand,
only seven pieces of Euripides had come down to us, and if those
seven had been the Medea, the Bacchae, the Iphigenia in Aulis,
the Orestes, the Phoenissae, the Hippolytus, and the Alcestis, I
am not sure that the relative position which the two poets now
hold in our estimation would not be greatly altered.

I have not done much in Latin. I have been employed in turning
over several third-rate and fourth-rate writers. After finishing
Cicero, I read through the works of both the Senecas, father and
son. There is a great deal in the Controversiae both of curious
information, and of judicious criticism. As to the son, I cannot
bear him. His style affects me in something the same way with
that of Gibbon. But Lucius Seneca's affectation is even more rank
than Gibbon's. His works are made up of mottoes. There is hardly
a sentence which might not be quoted; but to read him
straightforward is like dining on nothing but anchovy sauce. I
have read, as one does read such stuff, Valerius Maximus, Annaeus
Florus, Lucius Ampelius, and Aurelius Victor. I have also gone
through Phaedrus. I am now better employed. I am deep in the
Annals of Tacitus, and I am at the same time reading Suetonius.

You are so rich in domestic comforts that I am inclined to envy
you. I am not, however, without my share. I am as fond of my
little niece as her father. I pass an hour or more every day in
nursing her, and teaching her to talk. She has got as far as Ba,
Pa, and Ma; which, as she is not eight months old, we consider as
proofs of a genius little inferior to that of Shakespeare or Sir
Isaac Newton.

The municipal elections have put me in good spirits as to
English politics. I was rather inclined to despondency.

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

Calcutta: July 25, 1836.

My dear Ellis,--I have heard from you again, and glad I always am
to hear from you. There are few things to which I look forward
with more pleasure than to our meeting. It is really worth while
to go into banishment for a few years for the pleasure of going
home again. Yet that home will in some things be a different
home--oh how different a home!--from that to which I expected to
return. But I will not stir up the bitterness of sorrow which has
at last subsided.

You take interest, I see, in my Greek and Latin studies. I
continue to pursue them steadily and actively. I am now reading
Demosthenes with interest and admiration indescribable. I am
slowly, at odd minutes, getting through the stupid trash of
Diodorus. I have read through Seneca, and an affected empty
scribbler he is. I have read Tacitus again, and, by the bye, I
will tell you a curious circumstance relating to that matter. In
my younger days I always thought the Annals a prodigiously
superior work to the History. I was surprised to find that the
Annals seemed cold and poor to me on the last reading. I began to
think that I had overrated Tacitus. But, when I began the
History, I was enchanted, and thought more highly of him than
ever. I went back to the Annals, and liked them even better than
the History. All at once the explanation of this occurred to me.
While I was reading the Annals I was reading Thucydides. When I
began the History, I began the Hellenics. What made the Annals
appear cold and poor to me was the intense interest which
Thucydides inspired. Indeed, what colouring is there which would
not look tame when placed side by side with the magnificent
light, and the terrible shade, of Thucydides? Tacitus was a great
man, but he was not up to the Sicilian expedition. When I
finished Thucydides, and took up Xenophon, the case was reversed.
Tacitus had been a foil to Thucydides. Xenophon was a foil to
Tacitus.

I have read Pliny the Younger. Some of the Epistles are
interesting. Nothing more stupid than the Panegyric was ever
preached in the University church. I am reading the Augustan
History, and Aulus Gellius. Aulus is a favourite of mine. I think
him one of the best writers of his class.

I read in the evenings a great deal of English, French, and
Italian; and a little Spanish. I have picked up Portuguese enough
to read Camoens with care; and I want no more. I have adopted an
opinion about the Italian historians quite different from that
which I formerly held, and which, I believe, is generally
considered as orthodox. I place Fra Paolo decidedly at the head
of them, and next to him Davila, whom I take to be the best
modern military historian except Colonel Napier. Davila's battle
of Ivry is worthy of Thucydides himself. Next to Davila I put
Guicciardini, and last of all Machiavelli. But I do not think
that you ever read much Italian.

The English poetry of the day has very few attractions for me.
Van Artevelde is far the best specimen that I have lately seen. I
do not much like Talfourd's Ion; but I mean to read it again. It
contains pretty lines; but, to my thinking, it is neither fish
nor flesh. There is too much, and too little, of the antique
about it. Nothing but the most strictly classical costume can
reconcile me to a mythological plot; and Ion is a modern
philanthropist, whose politics and morals have been learned from
the publications of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge.

I do not know whether the noise which the lawyers of the Supreme
Court have been raising against our legislative authority has
reached, or will reach, England. They held a public meeting,
which ended,--or rather began, continued, and ended,--in a riot;
and ever since then the leading agitators have been challenging
each other, refusing each other's challenges, libelling each
other, swearing the peace against each other, and blackballing
each other. Mr. Longueville Clarke, who aspires to be the
O'Connell of Calcutta, called another lawyer a liar. The last-
mentioned lawyer challenged Mr. Longueville Clarke. Mr.
Longueville Clarke refused to fight, on the ground that his
opponent had been guilty of hugging attorneys. The Bengal Club
accordingly blackballed Longueville. This, and some other similar
occurrences, have made the opposition here thoroughly ridiculous
and contemptible. They will probably send a petition home; but,
unless the House of Commons has undergone a great change since
1833, they have no chance there.

I have almost brought my letter to a close without mentioning the
most important matter about which I had to write. I dare say you
have heard that my uncle General Macaulay, who died last
February, has left me L10,000 This legacy, together with what I
shall have saved by the end of 1837, will make me quite a rich
man; richer than I even wish to be as a single man; and every day
renders it more unlikely that I should marry.

We have had a very unhealthy season; but sickness has not come
near our house. My sister, my brother-in-law, and their little
child, are as well as possible. As to me, I think that, as
Buonaparte said of himself after the Russian campaign, J'ai le
diable au corps.

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

To Macvey Napier, Esq.

Calcutta: November 26, 1836.

Dear Napier,--At last I send you an article of interminable
length about Lord Bacon. I hardly know whether it is not too long
for an article in a Review; but the subject is of such vast
extent that I could easily have made the paper twice as long as
it is.

About the historical and political part there is no great
probability that we shall differ in opinion; but what I have said
about Bacon's philosophy is widely at variance with what Dugald
Stuart, and Mackintosh, have said on the same subject. I have not
your essay; nor have I read it since I read it at Cambridge, with
very great pleasure, but without any knowledge of the subject. I
have at present only a very faint and general recollection of its
contents, and have in vain tried to procure a copy of it here. I
fear, however, that, differing widely as I do from Stewart and
Mackintosh, I shall hardly agree with you. My opinion is formed,
not at second hand, like those of nine-tenths of the people who
talk about Bacon; but after several very attentive perusals of
his greatest works, and after a good deal of thought. If I am in
the wrong, my errors may set the minds of others at work, and may
be the means of bringing both them, and me, to a knowledge of the
truth. I never bestowed so much care on anything that I have
written. There is not a sentence in the latter half of the
article which has not been repeatedly recast. I have no
expectation that the popularity of the article will bear any
proportion to the trouble which I have expended on it. But the
trouble has been so great a pleasure to me that I have already
been greatly overpaid. Pray look carefully to the printing.

In little more than a year I shall be embarking for England, and
I have determined to employ the four months of my voyage in
mastering the German language. I should be much obliged to you to
send me out, as early as you can, so that they may be certain to
arrive in time, the best grammar, and the best dictionary, that
can be procured; a German Bible; Schiller's works; Goethe's
works; and Niebuhr's History, both in the original, and in the
translation. My way of learning a language is always to begin
with the Bible, which I can read without a dictionary. After a
few days passed in this way, I am master of all the common
particles, the common rules of syntax, and a pretty large
vocabulary. Then I fall on some good classical work. It was in
this way that I learned both Spanish and Portuguese, and I shall
try the same course with German.

I have little or nothing to tell you about myself. My life has
flowed away here with strange rapidity. It seems but yesterday
that I left my country; and I am writing to beg you to hasten
preparations for my return. I continue to enjoy perfect health,
and the little political squalls which I have had to weather here
are mere capfuls of wind to a man who has gone through the great
hurricanes of English faction.

I shall send another copy of the article on Bacon by another
ship.

Yours very truly

T. B. MACAULAY.

Calcutta: November 28, 1836.

Dear Napier,--There is an oversight in the article on Bacon which
I shall be much obliged to you to correct. I have said that Bacon
did not deal at all in idle rants "like those in which Cicero and
Mr. Shandy sought consolation for the loss of Tullia and of
Bobby." Nothing can, as a general remark, be more true, but it
escaped my recollection that two or three of Mr. Shandy's
consolatory sentences are quoted from Bacon's Essays. The
illustration, therefore, is singularly unfortunate. Pray alter it
thus; "in which Cicero vainly sought consolation for the loss of
Tullia." To be sure, it is idle to correct such trifles at a
distance of fifteen thousand miles.

Yours ever

T. B. MACAULAY.

From Lord Jeffrey to Macvey Napier, Esq.

May 2, 1837.

My dear N.,--What mortal could ever dream of cutting out the
least particle of this precious work, to make it fit better into
your Review? It would be worse than paring down the Pitt Diamond
to fit the old setting of a Dowager's ring. Since Bacon himself,
I do not know that there has been anything so fine. The first
five or six pages are in a lower tone, but still magnificent, and
not to be deprived of a word.

Still, I do not object to consider whether it might not be best
to serve up the rich repast in two courses; and on the whole I
incline to that partition. 120 pages might cloy even epicures,
and would be sure to surfeit the vulgar; and the biography and
philosophy are so entirely distinct, and of not very unequal
length, that the division would not look like a fracture.

FRANCIS JEFFREY.

In the end, the article appeared entire; occupying 104 pages of
the Review; and accompanied by an apology for its length in the
shape of one of those editorial appeals to "the intelligent
scholar," and "the best class of our readers," which never fail
of success.

The letters addressed to Zachary Macaulay are half filled with
anecdotes of the nursery; pretty enough, but such as only a
grandfather could be expected to read. In other respects, the
correspondence is chiefly remarkable for the affectionate
ingenuity with which the son selects such topics as would
interest the father.

Calcutta: October 12 1836.

My dear Father, We were extremely gratified by receiving, a few
days ago, a letter from you which, on the whole, gave a good
account of your health and spirits. The day after tomorrow is the
first anniversary of your little grand-daughter's birthday. The
occasion is to be celebrated with a sort of droll puppet-show,
much in fashion among the natives; an exhibition much in the
style of Punch in England, but more dramatic and more showy. All
the little boys and girls from the houses of our friends are
invited, and the party will, I have no doubt, be a great deal
more amusing than the stupid dinners and routs with which the
grown-up people here kill the time.

In a few months,--I hope, indeed, in a few weeks,--we shall send
up the Penal Code to Government. We have got rid of the
punishment of death, except in the case of aggravated treason and
wilful murder. We shall also get rid indirectly of everything
that can properly be called slavery in India. There will remain
civil claims on particular people for particular services, which
claims may be enforced by civil action; but no person will be
entitled, on the plea of being the master of another, to do
anything to that other which it would be an offence to do to a
free-man.

Our English schools are flourishing wonderfully. We find it
difficult,--indeed, in some places impossible,--to provide
instruction for all who want it. At the single town of Hoogly
fourteen hundred boys are learning English. The effect of this
education on the Hindoos is prodigious. No Hindoo, who has
received an English education, ever remains sincerely attached to
his religion. Some continue to profess it as matter of policy;
but many profess themselves pure Deists, and some embrace
Christianity. It is my firm belief that, if our plans of
education are followed up, there will not be a single idolater
among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence. And
this will be effected without any efforts to proselytise; without
the smallest interference with religious liberty; merely by the
natural operation of knowledge and reflection. I heartily rejoice
in the prospect.

I have been a sincere mourner for Mill. He and I were on the best
terms, and his services at the India House were never so much
needed as at this time. I had a most kind letter from him a few
weeks before I heard of his death. He has a son just come out, to
whom I have shown such little attentions as are in my power.

Within half a year after the time when you read this we shall be
making arrangements for our return. The feelings with which I
look forward to that return I cannot express. Perhaps I should be
wise to continue here longer, in order to enjoy during a greater
number of months the delusion,--for I know that it will prove a
delusion,--of this delightful hope. I feel as if I never could be
unhappy in my own country; as if to exist on English ground and
among English people, seeing the old familiar sights and hearing
the sound of my mother tongue, would be enough for me. This
cannot be; yet some days of intense happiness I shall surely
have; and one of those will be the day when I again see my dear
father and sisters.

Ever yours most affectionately
T. B. MACAULAY.

Calcutta: November 30, 1836.

Dear Ellis,--How the months run away! Here is another cold
season; morning fogs, cloth coats, green peas, new potatoes, and
all the accompaniments of a Bengal winter. As to my private life,
it has glided on, since I wrote to you last, in the most peaceful
monotony. If it were not for the books which I read, and for the
bodily and mental growth of my dear little niece, I should have
no mark to distinguish one part of the year from another. Greek
and Latin, breakfast; business, an evening walk with a book, a
drive after sunset, dinner, coffee, my bed,--there you have the
history of a day. My classical studies go on vigorously. I have
read Demosthenes twice,--I need not say with what delight and
admiration. I am now deep in Isocrates and from him I shall pass
to Lysias. I have finished Diodorus Siculus at last, after
dawdling over him at odd times ever since last March. He is a
stupid, credulous, prosing old ass; yet I heartily wish that we
had a good deal more of him. I have read Arrian's expedition of
Alexander, together with Quintus Curtius. I have at stray hours
read Longus's Romance and Xenophon's Ephesiaca; and I mean to go
through Heliodorus, and Achilles Tatius, in the same way. Longus
is prodigiously absurd; but there is often an exquisite
prettiness in the style. Xenophon's Novel is the basest thing to
be found in Greek. [Xenophon the Ephesian lived in the third or
fourth century of the Christian era. At the end of his work
Macaulay has written: "A most stupid worthless performance, below
the lowest trash of an English circulating library." Achilles
Tatius he disposes of with the words "Detestable trash;" and the
Aethiopics of Heliodorus, which he appears to have finished on
Easter-day, 1837, he pronounces "The best of the Greek Romances,
which is not saying much for it."] It was discovered at Florence,
little more than a hundred years ago, by an English envoy.
Nothing so detestable ever came from the Minerva Press. I have
read Theocritus again, and like him better than ever.

As to Latin, I made a heroic attempt on Pliny's Natural History;
but I stuck after getting through about a quarter of it. I have
read Ammianus Marcellinus, the worst written book in ancient
Latin. The style would disgrace a monk of the tenth century; but
Marcellinus has many of the substantial qualities of a good
historian. I have gone through the Augustan history, and much
other trash relating to the lower empire; curious as illustrating
the state of society, but utterly worthless as composition. I
have read Statius again and thought him as bad as ever. I really
found only two lines worthy of a great poet in all the Thebais.
They are these. What do you think of my taste?

 "Clamorem, bello qualis supremus apertis
  Urbibus, aut pelago jam descendente carina."

I am now busy with Quintilian and Lucan, both excellent writers.
The dream of Pompey in the seventh book of the Pharsalia is a
very noble piece of writing. I hardly know an instance in poetry
of so great an effect produced by means so simple. There is
something irresistibly pathetic in the lines

 "Qualis erat populi facies, clamorque faventum
  Olim cum juvenis--"

and something unspeakably solemn in the sudden turn which follows

 "Crastina dira quies--"

There are two passages in Lucan which surpass in eloquence
anything that I know in the Latin language. One is the
enumeration of Pompey's exploits

 "Quod si tam sacro dignaris nomine saxum--"

The other is the character which Cato gives of Pompey,

 "Civis obit, inquit--"

a pure gem of rhetoric, without one flaw, and, in my opinion, not
very far from historical truth. When I consider that Lucan died
at twenty-six, I cannot help ranking him among the most
extraordinary men that ever lived.

[The following remarks occur at the end of Macaulay's copy of the
Pharsalia

August 30, 1835.

"When Lucan's age is considered, it is impossible not to allow
that the poem is a very extraordinary one; more extraordinary,
perhaps, than if it had been of a higher kind; for it is more
common for the imagination to be in full vigour at an early time
of life than for a young man to obtain a complete mastery of
political and philosophical rhetoric. I know no declamation in
the world, not even Cicero's best, which equals some passages in
the Pharsalia. As to what were meant for bold poetical flights,--
the sea-fight at Marseilles, the Centurion who is covered with
wounds, the snakes in the Libyan desert, it is all as detestable
as Cibber's Birthday Odes. The furious partiality of Lucan takes
away much of the pleasure which his talents would otherwise
afford. A poet who is, as has often been said, less a poet than a
historian, should to a certain degree conform to the laws of
history. The manner in which he represents the two parties is not
to be reconciled with the laws even of fiction. The senators are
demigods; Pompey, a pure lover of his country; Cato, the abstract
idea of virtue; while Caesar, the finest gentleman, the most
humane conqueror, and the most popular politician that Rome ever
produced, is a bloodthirsty ogre. If Lucan had lived, he would
probably have improved greatly." "Again, December 9, 1836,"]

I am glad that you have so much business, and sorry that you have
so little leisure. In a few years you will be a Baron of the
Exchequer; and then we shall have ample time to talk over our
favourite classics. Then I will show you a most superb emendation
of Bentley's in Ampelius, and I will give you unanswerable
reasons for pronouncing that Gibbon was mistaken in supposing
that Quintus Curtius wrote under Gordian.

Remember me most kindly to Mrs. Ellis. I hope that I shall find
Frank writing as good Alcaics as his father.

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

Calcutta: March 8, 1837.

Dear Ellis,--I am at present very much worked, and have been so
for a long time past. Cameron, after being laid up for some
months, sailed at Christmas for the Cape, where I hope his health
will be repaired; for this country can very ill spare him.
However, we have almost brought our great work to a conclusion.
In about a month we shall lay before the Government a complete
penal Code for a hundred millions of people, with a commentary
explaining and defending the provisions of the text. Whether it
is well, or ill, done heaven knows. I only know that it seems to
me to be very ill done when I look at it by itself; and well done
when I compare it with Livingstone's Code, with the French Code,
or with the English statutes which have been passed for the
purpose of consolidating and amending the Criminal Law. In health
I am as well as ever I was in my life. Time glides fast. One day
is so like another that, but for a habit which I acquired soon
after I reached India of pencilling in my books the date of my
reading them, I should have hardly any way of estimating the
lapse of time. If I want to know when an event took place, I call
to mind which of Calderon's plays, or of Plutarch's Lives, I was
reading on that day. I turn to the book; find the date; and am
generally astonished to see that, what seems removed from me by
only two or three months, really happened nearly a year ago.

I intend to learn German on my voyage home, and I have indented
largely, (to use our Indian official term), for the requisite
books. People tell me that it is a hard language; but I cannot
easily believe that there is a language which I cannot master in
four months, by working ten hours a day. I promise myself very
great delight and information from German literature; and, over
and above, I feel a soft of presentiment, a kind of admonition of
the Deity, which assures me that the final cause of my existence,
--the end for which I was sent into this vale of tears,--was to
make game of certain Germans. The first thing to be done in
obedience to this heavenly call is to learn German; and then
I may perhaps try, as Milton says,

 "Frangere Saxonicas Britonum sub Marte phalanges."

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

The years which Macaulay spent in India formed a transition
period between the time when he kept no journal at all, and the
time when the daily portion of his journal was completed as
regularly as the daily portion of his History. Between 1834 and
1838, he contented himself with jotting down any circumstance
that struck his fancy in the book which he happened to have in
hand. The records of his Calcutta life, written in half a dozen
different languages, are scattered throughout the whole range of
classical literature from Hesiod to Macrobius. At the end of the
eighty-ninth Epistle of Seneca we read: "April 11, 1836. Hodie
praemia distribui tois en to mouseio Sanskritiko neaniskois. [To-
day I distributed the prizes to the students of the Sanscrit
College."]

On the last page of the Birds of Aristophanes: "Jan. 16, 1836. Oi
presbeis of papa ton Basileos ton Nepauliton eisegonto khthes es
Kalkouttan." ["The ambassadors from the King of Nepaul entered
Calcutta yesterday." It may be observed that Macaulay wrote Greek
with or without accents, according to the humour, or hurry, of
the moment.]

On the first page of Theocrats: "March 20, 1835. Lord W. Bentinck
sailed this morning."

On the last page of the "De Amicitia:" "March 5, 1836. Yesterday
Lord Auckland arrived at Government House, and was sworn in."

Beneath an idyl of Moschus, of all places in the world, Macaulay
notes the fact of Peel being First Lord of the Treasury; and he
finds space, between two quotations in Athenaeus, to commemorate
a Ministerial majority of 29 on the Second Reading of the Irish
Church Bill.

A somewhat nearer approach to a formal diary may be found in his
Catullus, which contains a catalogue of the English books that he
read in the cold season of 1835-36; as for instance

 Gibbon's Answer to Davis.        November 6 and 7
 Gibbon on Virgil's VI Aeneid     November 7
 Whately's Logic                  November 15
 Thirlwall's Greece               November 22
 Edinburgh Review                 November 29

And all this was in addition to his Greek and Latin studies, to
his official work, to the French that he read with his sister, and
the unrecorded novels that he read to himself; which last would
alone have afforded occupation for two ordinary men, unless this
month of November was different from every other month of his
existence since the day that he left Mr. Preston's schoolroom.
There is something refreshing, amidst the long list of graver
treatises, to light upon a periodical entry of "Pikwikina"; the
immortal work of a Classic who has had more readers in a single
year than Statius and Seneca in all their eighteen centuries
together. Macaulay turned over with indifference, and something of
distaste, the earlier chapters of that modern Odyssey. The first
touch which came home to him was Jingle's "Handsome Englishman?"
In that phrase he recognised a master; and, by the time that he
landed in England, he knew his Pickwick almost as intimately as
his Grandison.

Calcutta: June 15, 1837

Dear Napier,--Your letter about my review of Mackintosh
miscarried, vexatiously enough. I should have been glad to know
what was thought of my performance among friends and foes; for
here we have no information on such subjects. The literary
correspondents of the Calcutta newspapers seem to be penny-a-line
risen, whose whole stock of literature comes from the
conversations in the Green Room.

My long article on Bacon has, no doubt, been in your hands some
time. I never, to the best of my recollection, proposed to review
Hannah More's Life or Works. If I did, it must have been in jest.
She was exactly the very last person in the world about whom I
should choose to write a critique. She was a very kind friend to
me from childhood. Her notice first called out my literary
tastes. Her presents laid the foundation of my library. She was
to me what Ninon was to Voltaire,--begging her pardon for
comparing her to a bad woman, and yours for comparing myself to a
great man. She really was a second mother to me. I have a real
affection for her memory. I therefore could not possibly write
about her unless I wrote in her praise; and all the praise which
I could give to her writings, even after straining my conscience
in her favour, would be far indeed from satisfying any of her
admirers.

I will try my hand on Temple, and on Lord Clive. Shaftesbury I
shall let alone. Indeed, his political life is so much connected
with Temple's that, without endless repetition, it would be
impossible for me to furnish a separate article on each. Temple's
Life and Works, the part which he took in the controversy about
the ancients and moderns; the Oxford confederacy against Bentley;
and the memorable victory which Bentley obtained, will be good
subjects. I am in training for this part of the subject, as I
have twice read through the Phalaris controversy since I arrived
in India.

I have been almost incessantly engaged in public business since I
sent off the paper on Bacon; but I expect to have comparative
leisure during the short remainder of my stay here. The Penal
Code of India is finished, and is in the press. The illness of
two of my colleagues threw the work almost entirely on me. It is
done, however; and I am not likely to be called upon for vigorous
exertion during the rest of my Indian career.

Yours ever

T. B. MACAULAY.

If you should have assigned Temple, or Clive, to anybody else,
pray do not be uneasy on that account. The pleasure of writing
pays itself.

Calcutta: December 18, 1837.

Dear Ellis,--My last letter was on a deeply melancholy subject,
the death of our poor friend Malkin. I have felt very much for
his widow. The intensity of her affliction, and the fortitude and
good feeling which she showed as soon as the first agony was
over, have interested me greatly in her. Six or seven of Malkin's
most intimate friends here have joined with Ryan and me, in
subscribing to put up a plain marble tablet in the cathedral, for
which I have written an inscription. [This inscription appears in
Lord Macaulay's Miscellaneous Works.]

My departure is now near at hand. This is the last letter which I
shall write to you from India. Our passage is taken in the Lord
Hungerford; the most celebrated of the huge floating hotels which
run between London and Calcutta. She is more renowned for the
comfort and luxury of her internal arrangements than for her
speed. As we are to stop at the Cape for a short time, I hardly
expect to be with you till the end of May, or the beginning of
June. I intend to make myself a good German scholar by the time
of my arrival in England. I have already, at leisure moments
broken the ice. I have read about half of the New Testament in
Luther's translation, and am now getting rapidly, for a beginner,
through Schiller's History of the Thirty Years' War. My German
library consists of all Goethe's works, all Schiller's works,
Muller's History of Switzerland, some of Tieck, some of Lessing,
and other works of less fame. I hope to despatch them all on my
way home. I like Schiller's style exceedingly. His history
contains a great deal of very just and deep thought, conveyed in
language so popular and agreeable that dunces would think him
superficial.

I lately took it into my head to obtain some knowledge of the
Fathers, and I read therefore a good deal of Athanasius, which by
no means raised him in my opinion. I procured the magnificent
edition of Chrysostom, by Montfaucon, from a public library here,
and turned over the eleven huge folios, reading wherever the
subject was of peculiar interest. As to reading him through, the
thing is impossible. These volumes contain matter at least equal
to the whole extant literature of the best times of Greece, from
Homer to Aristotle inclusive. There are certainly some very
brilliant passages in his homilies. It seems curious that, though
the Greek literature began to flourish so much earlier than the
Latin, it continued to flourish so much later. Indeed, if you
except the century which elapsed between Cicero's first public
appearance and Livy's death, I am not sure that there was any
time at which Greece had not writers equal or superior to their
Roman contemporaries. I am sure that no Latin writer of the age
of Lucian is to be named with Lucian; that no Latin writer of the
age of Longinus is to be named with Longinus; that no Latin prose
of the age of Chrysostom can be named with Chrysostom's
compositions. I have read Augustin's Confessions. The book is not
without interest; but he expresses himself in the style of a
field-preacher.

Our Penal Code is to be published next week. It has cost me very
intense labour; and, whatever its faults may be, it is certainly
not a slovenly performance. Whether the work proves useful to
India or not, it has been of great use, I feel and know, to my
own mind.

[In October 1854, Macaulay writes to my mother: "I cannot but be
pleased to find that, at last, the Code on which I bestowed the
labour of two of the best years of my life has had justice done
to it. Had this justice been done sixteen years ago, I should
probably have given much more attention to legislation, and much
less to literature than I have done. I do not know that I should
have been either happier or more useful than I have been."]

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.






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