V. I CforttcU lUnioerattg iCibrarg attjaca. 3S?etD $ottt ..CL.-I>..\sl-?uJi... j 'JUL ?P 1945 DATE DUE ■y\2 ^951 fifi^ '- II 1 linn n il OCTlO 196a AT Cornell University Library DA 3.M11T81 Lifei/and letters of Lord Macaula' 3 1924 027 926 363 The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027926363 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF LOED MACAULAY. 7 I f .... Z'J \ , B:cQ3ia,Ricilo|qra,ph-try dajaatl. Engyas-ea.ty' C . Co dk . THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF LOED . MACAULAY BY HIS NEPHEW G: OTTO TREVELYAN MEMBEK OF PARLIAMENT TOR HAWICK DISTRICT OF BURQIIS IN TWO VOLUMES Vol. I. NEW YORK IIAKPEE & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS FRANKLIN SQUARE 18V6 Entered according to Act of Congress, in tlie year 1873, by Haepee & Beothees, In the OfiSce of the Librarian of Congress,; at Washinglbn. Y ■\'\ier, Esq. 50 Great Ormoud Street, London, January 25th, 1830. My deae Snj, — I send off by the mail of to-day an article on Southey — too long, I fear, to meet your M'ishes, 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 tJiat editorial prerogative which I most willingly recognize, but that the omissions seem- YoL. I.— 10 146 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. m. ed to me, and to one or two persons wlio had seen the article in its original state, to be made on a principle which, howev- er 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. IS^ow, for high and gi'ave works, a history, for example, or a system of political or moral philosophy. Dr. 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 ac- cident. Be assured, at all events, that whai I have said is said in perfect good-humor, and indicates no mutinous disposition. The Jews are about to petition Parliament for relief from the absurd restrictions which lie on then! — the last relic 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 Edimhwrgh Review. I would gladly further a cause so good, and you, I think, could have no objection. Ever yours truly, T. B. Macatjlat. Bowood, February 10th, 1830. My deae 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 neigh- borhood, 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 splendor. I never saw any great place so thoroughly desirable for a residence. Lord Kerry tells me that his uncle left every thing in ruin — trees cut down, and rooms unfurnished — and sold the library, which was extremely fine. Every book and picture in Bowood has 1824-'30.] LORD MACAULAY. I47 been bought by the present lord, and certainly the collection does him great honor. I am glad that I staid 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, suc- ceeded in obtaining his promise. Without him, indeed, my return would have been secure ; but both from motives of in- terest and from a sense of gratitude I think it best to leave nothing undone which may tend to keep Lord Lansdowne's in- fluence 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 subsegueut 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 favorite of mine — kind, lively, intelligent, mod- est, with the gentle manners which indicate a long intimacy with the best society, and yet without the least afliectation. 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 novel- ist 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 pub- lic 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 can not keep his anger to himself. I know that he has blamed Lord Lansdowne in the robing-room of the Court of King's Eench. 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. 148 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. iv. CHAPTEK IV. 1830-1832. State of Public Affairs when Macaulay entered Parliament. — His Maiileu Speech. — The French Eevolution of July, 1830. — Macaulay's Letters from Paris. — The Palais Eoyal. — Lafayette. — Lardner's Cabinet "Cy- clopedia." — The New Parliament Meets. — Fall of the Duke of Welling- ton. — Scene with Croker. — The Reform Bill. — Political Success. — House of Commons Life. — Macaulay's Party Spirit. — London Society. — Mr. Thomas Flower Ellis. — "Visit to Cambridge. — Eothley Temple. — Mar- garet Macaulay's Journal. — Lord Brougham.— Hopes of Office. — Mac- aulay as a Politician. — Letters to Lady Trevelyan, Mr. Napier, and Mr. Ellis. THEOTJGHorT 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 these volumes, which only touch politics in order to show to what extent Macaulay was a politician, and for how long, controversies can not 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 pursu- ing their system of repression, were justified by the neces- sities of the long French war. It is enough to assert, what few or none will deny, that, for the space of more than a gen- eration from 1790 onward, our country had, with a short in- terval, 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 1830-'32.] LOED MACAULAY. I4.9 when one and tlie same party almost continuously held not only place, but power, over a period when to an unexampled degree " public life was exasperated by hatred, and the char- ities of private life soured by political aversion." Fear, re- ligion, ambition, and self-interest — every thing that could tempt and every thing that could deter — were enlisted on the side of the dominant opinions. To profess Liberal views was to be hopelessly excluded from all posts of emolument, from all functions of dignity, from the opportunities of business, from the amenities of society. Quiet tradesmen, who vent- ured to maintain that -there was something in Jacobinism be- sides the guillotine, soon found their town or village too hot to hold them, and were glad to place the Atlantic between themselves and their neighbors. Clergymen suspected of thinking that in the " Vindicise Gallicse" Mackintosh had got the better of Burke, were ousted from their college fellow- ships as atheists, or left to starve without a curacy as radicals. Political animosity and political favoritism made themselves felt in departments of life which had hitherto been free from their encroachments. Whig merchants had a diflSculty in getting money for their paper, and Whig barristers in obtain- ing acceptance for their arguments. Whig statesmen, while enjoying that security for life and liberty which even in the worst days of our recent history has been the reward of em- inence, were powerless in the Commons and isolated in the Lords. No motive but disinterested conviction kept a hand- ful of veterans steadfast round a banner which was never raised except to be swept contemptuously down by the disci- plined and overwhelming strength of the ministerial phalanx. Argument and oratory were alike unavailing under a con- stitution 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 con- stituencies of Scotland, with so much else that of right be- longed 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 150 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. iv. than are now on the register of Eoxbnrghshire. So small a band of electors was easily manipulated by a party leader who had the patronage of India at his command. The three pres- idencies were flooded with the sons and nephews of men who were lucky enough to have a seat in a town-council or a su- periority in a rural district ; and fortunate it was for our em- pire that the responsibilities of that noblest of all careers soon educated young civil servants into something higher than mere adherents of a political party. While the will of the nation was paralyzed within the sen- ate, 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 sub- stance of which a crown lawyer could torture into a sem- blance of sedition, sent its author to the jail, the hulks, or the -pillory. In any place of resort where an informer could pene- trate, 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 endeavored 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 tribu- nals, made attendance at an open meeting summoned for the consideration of Parliamentary Kef orm 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 griev- ances liable at any moment to find himself in the position of a crijninal — 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 populatipn which had once known freedom, and was still fit to be intrusted with it, such a state of matters 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAY. 151 could not last forever. Justly proud of the immense success that they had bought by their resolution, their energy, and their perseverance, the ministers regarded the fall of Napo- leon 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, 1815, was in truth the death-knell of the Golden Age of Toryism. When the passion and ardor of the war gave place to the discontent engendered by a protracted pe- riod of commercial distress, the opponents of progress began to perceive that they had to reckon, not with a small and dis- heartened 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 coimtry is in earnest ; and states- men 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 imbittered by unpopularity, at length reaped their re- ward. Earl Grey, who forty years before had been hooted through the streets of ]N"orth Shields with cries of " No Po- pery," lived to bear the most respected name in England; and Brougham, whose opinions differed little from those for expressing which Dr. Priestley, in 1Y91, 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 piirpose, 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 them- selves. 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 * Maoaulay was fond of repeating an answer made to him \>j Lord Clar- endon in the year 1829. The young men were talking over the situa- tion, and Maoaulay expressed curiosity as to the terms in which the Duke of Wellington wonld recommend the Catholic Relief Bill to the Peers. " Oh," said the other, " it will be easy enough. He'll say, ' My lords, at- tention ! Eiffht about face ! March !' " 152 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.iv. the Tory party from which it never recovered until the old order of things had finally passed away. It was his fortune to enter into other men's labors after the burden and heat of the day had already been borne, and to be summoned into the iield just as the season was at hand for gathering in a ripe and long-expected harvest of beneiicent legislation. On the 5th of April, 1830, he addressed the House of Com- mons on the second reading of Mr. Robert Grant's biU 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 Parlia- ment — a privilege which, by a stretch of generosity, is now ex- tended 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 de- fects in the speech of his honorable 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 good- will of the House toward a maiden speech, put clear- ly and concisely enough the arguments in favor of the bill — arguments which, obvious and almost commonplace as they appear under this straightforward treatment, had yet to be re- peated during a space of six-and-thirty years before they com- mended 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 p^i^cipal over clerk, of master over serv- ant, 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, acknowl- 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAY. 153 edged, 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 can not 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 ware- houses 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 po- litical power." Pie 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 brill- iant 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 influ- ence 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 Libei'alism and even of in- dependence, and who at last stood so completely alone that he was generally supposed to be in more intimate communica- tion 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 car- ry, or even visibly to improve their prospect of carrying, the measures on which their hearts were set. The Eeformers 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 Eevolution. But the outward aspect of the situation was very far from answering to the reality. While the leaders of the popular 154 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chai'. iv. party had been spending tliemselves in efforts that seemed each more abortive than the last — dividing only to be enor^ mously outvoted, and vindicating with calmness and modera- tion the first principles of constitutional government only to be stigmatized 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 dif- ferent was the England of 1830 from the England of 1Y90. The king died; Parliament was dissolved on the 24:th of July ; and in the first excitement and bustle of the elections, while the candidates were still on the road and the writs in the mail - bag, came the news that Paris was in arms. The troops fought as well as Frenchmen ever can be got to fight against the tricolor ; 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 neigh- bors for once created sympathy, and not repulsion, on this side the Channel. One French revolution had condemned En- glish Liberalism to forty years of subjection, and another was to be the signal which launched it on as long a Career of su- premacy. 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 mon- arch 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 assidu- ously as Jew brokers attend upon the movements of an invad- 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAY. I55 ing army. Macaulay, whose re-election for Calne had been a thing of course, posted off to Paris at the end of August, jour- neying by Dieppe and Eouen, 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 sis- ters who expected never to go abroad at all. He describes in minute detail manners and institutions that to us are no long- er novelties, and monuments which an educated Englishman of our time knows as well as "Westminster Abbey, and a great deal better than the Tower. Every thing that he saw, heard, eat, drank, paid, and suffered, was noted down in his exuber- ant diction to be read aloud and commented on over the breakfast-table in Great Ormond Street. "At Eouen I was struck by the union of venerable antiq- uity with extreme liveliness and gayety. 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 nat- ural progress of demolition and rebuilding, I doubt whether there are fifty houses that date from the Eeformation. But in Eouen you have street after street of lofty, stern-looking masses of stone, with Gothic cai-vings. 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 Eegent Street or the Burlington Arcade. Eugged and dark above, below they are a blaze of ribbons, gowns, watches, trinkets, artificial flowers ; grapes, melons, and peaches such as Covent Garden does not furnish, filling the windo\vs of the fruiterers ; showy women swim- ming smoothly over the uneasy stones, and stared at by na- tional 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 156 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. iv. specially — the Palais Eoyal, 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 Eoyal if the hours that he spent in it bore any relation to the number of pages which it occu- pies 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 colors in the " Grand Homme de Provence " of Balzac — still the paradise of such ineffable rascals as Diderot has drawn, with terrible fidelity, in his " Neveu de Eameau." " If I were to select the spot in all the earth in which the good and evil of civilization 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 Eoyal. It is the Covent Garden Piazza, the Pater- noster Eow, the Yauxhall, the Albion Tavern, the Burlington Arcade, the Crockford's, the Finish, the Athenseum of Paris, all in one. Even now, when the first dazzling effect has pass- ed off, I never traverse it without feeling bewildered by its magnificent variety. As a great capital is a country in minia- ture, so the Palais Eoyal 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. Every thing is there, and every body. Statesmen, wits, philosophers, beauties, dandies, blacklegs, ad- venturers, artists, idlers, the king and his court, beggars with matches crying for charity, wretched creatures dying of dis- ease and want in garrets. There is no condition of life which is not to be found in this gorgeous and fantastic fairy-land." He 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 Due de Broglie, then prime minister, treated him with marked atten- 1830-'32.] LOED MACAULAY. 157 tion both as an EDglishman of distinction and as his father's son. He was much in the Chamber of Deputies, and witness- ed that strange and pathetic historical revival when, after an interval of forty such years as mankind had never known be- fore, the aged La Fayette again stood forth in the character of a disinterested dictator between the hostile classes of his fel- low-countrymen. " De La Fayette is so overwhelmed with work that I scarce- ly 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 deliv- er them both. I accepted his offer, for if I had left them with the porter, ten to one they would never have been open- ed. 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 any body who wishes to speak with him ; but about ten thousand people attend on these oc- casions, and fill not only the house, but all the court-yard and half the street. La Fayette is commander-in-chief of the Na- tional Guard of France. The number of these troops in Paris alone is upward of forty thousand. The Government finds a musket and bayonet ; but the uniform, which costs about ten napoleons, the soldiers provide themselves. All the shop- keepers are enrolled, and I can not sufiiciently admire their patriotism. My landlord, Meurice, a man who, I suppose, has realized 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 humili- ation 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 158 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.iv. as may naturally alarm people of property. Workmen have struck. Machinery has been attacked. Inflammatory hand- bills have appeared upon the walls. At present all is quiet; but the thing may happen, particularly if Polignac and Pey- romiet 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 wicked- ness 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 d6port^s ; mais ne m'en parle pas. Non ! non ! Cou- pez leur le cou. Sacr^ ! Qa, ne passera pas comme §a.' "This long political digression will explain to you why Monsieur de La Fayette is so busy. He has more to do than aU the ministers together. However, my letters were pre- sented, 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 com- mon Pai'isians take in politics you may judge by this : I. told my driver to wait for me, and asked his number. 'Ah ! mon- sieur, c'est un beau num6ro. C'est un brave num^ro. C'est 221.' You may remember that the number of Deputies who voted the intrepid address to Charles the Tenth which irrita- ted him into his absurd coup cPitat was 221. I walked into the hotel through a crowd of uniforms, and found the re- ception-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 pui-pose 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 Eroglie 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 1830-'32.] LOED MACAULAY. I59 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 sui'prise and annoyance vented themselves in a burst of indignant rhetoric* strong enough to have upset a government. 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 Eestoration of the Bourbons to the Accession of Louis Philippe." Ten years ago, proofs of the first eighty -eight pages were found in Messrs. Spottis- woode'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 per- formed ; but the author soon arrived at the conclusion that he might find a more profitable investment for his labor. "With his liead f uU of Eef orm, Macaulay was loath to spend in epito- mizing history the time and energy that would be better em- ployed 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, Eeform 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 enor- mous 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 Emancipa- tion, 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 ut- tered his famous declaration that the Legislature possessed, * See, on page 183 the letter to Mr. Napier, of September Itith, 1831. 160 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. iv. and deserved to possess, the full and entire confidence of the country ; that its existing constitution was not only practical- ly 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 every body else had been deaf too. The second ministerial feat was of a piece with the first. Their majesties had accepted an in- vitation 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 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 inev- itable result. Consols, which the duke's speech on the Ad- dress had brought from 84 to 80, fell to 77 in an hour and a haK : jewelers 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 pubhc with the chief mag- istrate 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 Ee- f orm 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 de- feated on a motion for a committee on the civil list, their re- lief at having obtained an excuse for retiring at least equaled that which the country felt at getting rid of them. Earl Grey came in, saying (and meaning what he said) that 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAY. 161 the principles on whicli he stood were " amelioration of abuses, promotion of economy, and the endeavor to preserve peace consistently with the honor 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 sharp- ened 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 po- sition in which the chancellor was placed, and remarked that he had often heard Brougham declare that " the characters of public men f onned part of the wealth of England " — a remi- niscence which was delivered with as much gravity and unc- tion as if it had been Mackintosh discoursing on Eomilly. Unfortimately for himself, Croker ruined his case by refer- ring 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 ab- sent 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 can not banish from my memory the extraordinary eloquence of that noble person within these walls — ah eloquence which has left nothing equal to it behind : and when I behold the departure of the great man from among us, and when I see the place YOL. I.— 11 162 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. iv. in whicli he sat, and from which he has so often astonished us by the mighty powers of his mind, occupied this evening by the honorable member who has commenced this debate, I can not express the feelings and emotions to which such circum- stances give rise." Parliament adjourned over Christmas, and on the 1st of March, 1831, Lord John Eussell introduced the Eeform 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 Eobert Inglis led the attack upon a measure that he characterized as revolution in the guise of a statute. Next morning, as Sir Eobert 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 Ee- form speeches. When he sat down, the Speaker sent for him, and told him that, in all his prolonged experience, he had nev- er 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. Sir Thomas Denman, who rose later on in the discussion, said, with universal accept- ance, 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 proprietor- ship 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 Eobert Peel, "were as beautiful as any thing I have ever hfeard or read. It remind- ed one of the old times." The names of Fox, Burke, and Canning were during that evening in every body's mouth; 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAY. 163 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 mem- orable debate had come to its close amidst a tempest of ap- plause, one or two veterans of the lobby, forgetting Macau- lay on Eeform — 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, rivaling Stanley in debate, and Hume in the regularity of his attendance. He entered with zest into the animated and many-sided life of the Plouse of Commons, of which so few traces can ordinarily be detected in what goes by the name of political literature. The biogra- phers of a distinguished statesman too often seem to have for- gotten that the subject of their labors 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 nation- al senate ; and how entirely he recognized 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 ji 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 WheweU : " I am impatient for Praed's d^but. The House of Commons is a place in which I would not promise success to any man. I have great 164 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. iv. doubts even about Jeffrey. It is the most peculiar audience in tbe 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 Com- mons. 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 Scar- lett 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 in- clined 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 practiced that studied respect for political oppo- nents 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 that honorable sentiment was the growth of later days ; and, at an epoch when the sys- tem of the past and the system of the future were night after night in deadly wrestle on the floor of St. Stephen's, the com- batants were apt to keep their kindliness, and even their court- esies, 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 imagina- tion 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 Eeform, and will ex- cuse him for having borne himself in that battle of giants as a detennined and a fiery partisan. If to live intensely be to live happily, Macaulay had an en- 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAY. 165 viable lot during those stirring years ; and if the old song- writers 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 bank- I'uptcy jurisdiction, in the course of which his commissioner- ship was swept away without leaving him a penny of compen- sation. " 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 any thing 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 cir- cumstances of the time were all in his favor. 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 honorable 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, dur- 166 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. iv. ing its long period of depression, had been di'awn together by the bonds of common hopes, and endeavors, and disappoint- ments ; 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 distin- guished 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. Eogers spoke of him with friendliness and to him with posi- tive affection, and gave him the last proof of his esteem and admiration by asking him to name the morning. for a break- fast-party. He was treated with almost fatherly kindness by the able and worthy man who is still remembered by the name of Conversation Shai-p. Indeed, his deference for the feelings of all whom he liked and respected, which an experienced ob- server could detect beneath the eagerness of his manner and the volubility of his talk, made him a favorite among those of a generation above his own. He bore his honors quietly, and enjoyed them with the natural and hearty pleasure of a man who has a taste for society, but whose ambitions lie else- where. 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 liv- ing, 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, in- deed, 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 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAY. 167 of his home, or the conversation of that one friend who had a share in the familiar confidence which Macaulay otherwise re- served for his nearest relatives. This was Mr. Thomas Flow- er Ellis, whose reports of the proceedings in King's Bench, extending over a whole generation, have established and per- petuated 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 uni- versity, 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 inti- macy 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 heart-felt participation in his great sorrow riveted the links of a chain that was already indissoluble. The let- ters contained in these volumes will tell, better than the words of any third person, what were the points of sympathy be- tween the two companions, and in what manner they lived to- gether 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 had de- parted. Brief and rare were the vacations of the most hard-worked Parliament that had sat since the times of Pym and Hamp- den. In the late autumn of 1831, the defeat of the Eeform Bill in the House of Lords delivered over the country to agi- tation, 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 provid- ing for the sisters of a comrade of whom they are fond and proud. 168 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap.iv. " On the evening that we arrived," says Lady Trevelyan, " we met at dinner "Whewell, Sedgwick, Airy, and Thirlwall ; 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. Whewell was then tutor : rougher, but less pompous and much more agreeable than in after-years, though I do not think that he ever cor- dially 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 months of every year at the seat of his uncle, Mr. Babington, who kept open house for his nephews and nieces throughout the sum- mer and autumn. Eothley Temple, which lies in a valley be- yond the first ridge that separates the flat, unattractive coun- try immediately round Leicester from the wild and beautiful scenery of Charnwood Forest, is well worth visiting as a sin- gularly 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 armor rude and rusty enough to dispel the suspicion of its having passed through a collector's hands ; the low ceil- ings ; 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 gayety that lighted up every cor- ner of the ever-crowded though comfortable mansion. In wet * A reminiscence from that week of refined and genial hospitality sur- vives in the " Essay on Madame D'Arblay." The reception which Miss Bur- ney would have enjoyed at Oxford, if she had visited it otherwise than as an attendant on royalty, is sketched oflf with all the writer's wonted spirit, and more than his wonted grace. 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAY. 169 weather there was always a merry group sitting on the stair- case or marching up and down the gallery; and wherever the noise and fun were most abundant, wherever there were to be heard the loudest laughter and the most vehement expostu- lation, Macaulay was the centre of a circle which was exclaim- ing at the levity of his remarks about the Blessed Martyr ; disputing vsdth him on the comparative merits of Pascal, Ea- cine, Corneille, Moli^re, 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 favorite walk was a mile of field- road and lane which leads from the house to a lodge on the highway ; and his favorite point of view in that walk was a slight accliv- ity whence the traveler from Leicester catches his first sight of Eothley Temple, with its background of hill and green- wood. He is remembered as sitting at the window in the haU, reading Dante to himself, or translating it aloud as long as any listener eared 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 aft- ernoon 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 ex- tracts 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 candor 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 brotli- er, 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 170 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. iv. me, and to inform me on any thing I wished to know, as he could have done to the greatest person in the land. I have heard him express great disgust toward those people who, lively and agreeable abroad, are a dead- weight in the family circle. I think the remarkable_clearnes8 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 su'periority, as some do, for the purpose of irritating an- other still more by coolness, but speaks iu 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 an evening. He did it, however, iu two hours, and, although they were of course most of them miserably bad, yet it was a proof of great quickness. "Saturday, February 26Wt, 1831. — At dinner we talked of the Grants. Tom said he had found Mr. Robert Graut walking about iu 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 V we asked. 'Ob, I said nothing ; but, if they'll give me the place, I'll defend it. When I am judge advocate, I promise yon that I will not go about asking any one 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 sing that killed Perceval, the lemon that Wilkes squeezed for Dr. Johnson, the pork-chop which Thurtell eat 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 In- dies, hoping to make money, but had only ruined the complexions of his daughters. Tom said : Mr. Walker was sent to Berbioe By the greatest of statesmen and earls. He went to bring back yellow boys, But he only brought back yellow girls. 1830-'32.] LOED MACAULAY. 171 " I never saw any thing like the fun and hnmor that kindle in his eye ■when a repartee or verse is working in his hrain. "March 3d, 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 uight. He went through it most triumph- antly, and called down upon himself admiration enough to satisfy eveu his sister. I like so much the manner in which he receives compliments. He does not pretend to be indifferent, but smiles in his kiud 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 overexoitement, got quite iuto a scream toward the last part. A person told him that he had not heard such speak- iug since Fox. 'You have not heard such screaming since Fox,' he said. "March, 2Ath, 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 morniug. 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 np 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.' Mam- ma asked him for franks, that she might send his speech to a lady" who, though of high Tory priuciples, 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.' " Torn 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; bnt I remember a writing-master of ours, when Tom had come iuto the room and left it again, saying, ' Ladies, your, brother looks like a b*mp of good humor !' "March '60th, 1831. — Tom has just left me, after a very interesting con- versation. 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 his tables are always covered with books and papers. I can not stick at any thing for above a day or two. I mustered industry enough to teach myself Ital- ian. 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 * This lady was Mrs. Hannah More. 172 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.iv. have not the courage to attempt it. If there had not been really some- thing 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 con- structed 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 Kome, in the midst of the French Revolution. Precision in dates, the day or hour iu which a man was born or died, becomes ab- solutely necessary. A slight fact, a sentence, a word, are of importance iu 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 Hol- bein's gate, and come out through the matted gallery. The conversations which I compose between great people of the time are long, and sufficient- ly 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 know- ing 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 pre- vent my preserving with greater truth a conversation which interested me very much. "May 31s*, 1831. — Tom was from London at the time my mother's death occurred, and thiugs 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 feel- ing. 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 predomi- nant 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 overDryden's poetry and the great men of that time; making jokes all the way along Bond Street, and talking politics everywhere. 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAY. 173 " Walking in tbe streets with Tom and Hannah, and talking ahout 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 i)art of the day !' ' Yes, here I am,' said he, ' walking with two* unidea'd girls. However, if one of the ministry says to me, " Why walk you here aU the day idle ?" I sliall say, " Because no man has hired me." ' " We talked of eloquence, which he has often compared to fresco-paint- ing : the result of long study and meditation, hut at the moment of execu- tion 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 any thing he had done to be proud of. "November lith, 1831, Half -past. Ten. — On Friday last Lord Grey sent for Tom. His note was received too late to be acted ou th^t daj'. Ou Satur- day came another, asking him to East Sheen on that day, or Sunday. Yes- terday, accordingly, he went, and staid 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 tbe 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, bat 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 ou the East Indian monopoly. " If he gets a snfflcient salary, Hannah and I shall most likely live with him. Can I possibly look forward to any thing happier? I can not imag- ine a course of life that would suit him better than thus to enjoy the pleas- ures 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 im- portance, which must be strictly private.' " November 27ift. — 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,+ 1 asked Tom when the present cool- ness between them began. He said : ' Nothing conld exceed my respect and admiration for him in early days. I saw at that time private letters in * 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." + The personage was Lord Brougham, who at this time was too formi- dable for the poor girl to venture to write his name at length even in a private journal. 174: LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. iv. •which be 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 ex- tremely cold to me, hardly ever spoke to me on circuit, aud treated me with marked slight. If I were talkiug to a man, if he wished to speak to him on politics or any thing else that was not in any sense a iirivate mat- ter, 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, aud 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." Wliat 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 head-quarters 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 Seciew 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 turn- ed 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 congrat- ulate 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 Pluuket 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. , yon 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 iu office without caballing against his colleagues.* * " There never was a direct personal rival, or one who was in a position 1830-'32.] LOED MACAULAY. 1Y5 " ' He is, next to the king, the most popular mau in England. There is no other mau 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 sitnatiou, for he has no real friends. Jeffrey, Syd- ney 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 or- ders, aud 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 frieuds feel toward 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 refnge, no band of such tried friends as Fox aud 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 strength- en himself by frieudships ; 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 soli- tary 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 some- thing 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. Nat- ure had predestined the two men to mutual antipathy. Mac- aulay, 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 encyclopedia, " a kind of semi-Solo- mon, half knowing every thingfrom the cedar to the hyssop." 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 which, however reluctantly, implied rivalry, to whom he has been just; aud on the fact of this ungenerous jealousy I do not understand that there is any difference of opinion." — Lord Cockburn'a Journal. 176 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.iv. a speech, see the Tories come in without offering to take a judgeship, or allow the French to make a revolution without proposing to naturalize himself as a citizen of the new repub- lic. 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 cabi- net, 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 cir- cumstance that it stands recorded in the handwriting of one who died before it was accomplished. "January 3d, 1832. — Yesterday Tom dined at Holland Honse, 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 scandalized, 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 beeu 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 8ih, 1832. — Yesterday Tom dined with us, and staid 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 his- tory of his own time, with characters of its eminent men, and one day ask- ed 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 express- ed his gratification for so favorable 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.' 1830-'32.] ' LORD MACAULAT. 177 "I am glad Tom LaS reviewed old John Bunyan. Many are reading it ■who never read it before. Yesterday, as he was sitting in the Athenieum, ii gentleman called out, 'Waiter, is there a copy of "The Pilgrim's Prog- ress " in the library V As might be expected, there was not. "February 12th, 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 partic- ular 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 Eeform Bill had passed, it would be absolutely necessary that the Government should be strengthened ; that he was of opiniou 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 13th, 1832. — It has been much reported, and has even appear- ed 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 endeavoring 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 apologized in the usual manner, and then added, oddly enough, ' I am very sorry, indeed, to stand in the way of your mounting.' "March l?>th, 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 Bnrleigh's Life, and he shrunk 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 np 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 his article a fictitious title in Italian of a critique on ' Clarissa Harlo we,' 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. Vol. I.— 12 178 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap, it. 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 toward that gentleman is a not ungen- ' erous envy, as I listened to that wonderful flow of natural and beautiful language, and to that utterance which, ra'pid 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 ■wiU come the remembrance of his beaming countenance, happy, affection- ate smile, and joyous laugh ; Avhile, with every one 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 qniet, 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 ad- mit that Macaulay's name will go down to posterity linked with eventful times and gi-eat 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 deseiwed for what he had done well was overshadowed by the renown of what he did best. The world, which has forgotten that New- ton 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 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAY. lYO 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 Eeform Bill : " Not a very striking debate. There was but one exception, and it was a brilliant one. I mean Macaulay, who surpassed his fonner appearance in closeness, fire, and vigor, and very much improved the ef- fect 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 lYth of December : " Mac- aulay made, I think, the best speech he has yet delivered ; the most condensed, at least, and with the greatest weight of mat- ter. It contained, indeed, the only argument to which any of the speakers who followed him applied themselves." Lord Cockbum, who sat under the gallery for twenty-seven hom-s during the last three nights of the bill, pronounced Macaulay's speech to have been " by far the best ;" though, Uke a good Scotchman, he asserts that he heard nothing at Westminster which could compare with Dr. Chalmers in the General As- sembly. 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 honorable 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 ren- der 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 180 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap.iv. 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 stanch ; 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 legit- imate self-assertion which was conspicuous in Maeaulay's char- acter, pointed him out to some whose judgment had been train- ed 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 selfreliance, 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 Maauey Ifapier, Esq. York, March 22d, 1830. My deae Sie, — 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 baU, 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 Eobert Montgomery who has written some volumes of detestable verses on relig- 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAY. 181 ious subjects, which by mere pufQng in magazines and news- papers have had an immense sale, and some of which are now in their tenth or twelfth edition. I have for some time past thought that the trick of puffing, as it is now practiced 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 19th, 1830. My deae Sie, — Th6 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 adopt- ed, and of the theory which he advances respecting the insti- tutions of Home. 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 ar- rangement 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 can not be mended.. The best editors can not always have good writers, and the best writers can not 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 any one else a single syllable to that effect. At all events, I shall not make Brougham's speech my text, We have had 182 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. iv. quite enougli of puffing and flattering each other in the Re- view. It is a vile taste for men united in one literary under- taking to exchange their favors. 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 Due de Broglie, Guizot, and so on. I think of writing an article on the politics of France since the Kestoration, with characters of the principal public men, and a parallel between the pres- ent statei 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 sub- ject 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. MACAtrLAT. It can not 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 Keport 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 Par- liament of a new reign, we could have wished to be able to con- tribute our aid toward the facts and arguments here so strili- ingly 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 circula- tion to the Corrected Eeport. Unfortunately, we can, at pres- ent, do nothing more than lay before our readers its glowing 1830-'33.] LORD MACAULAT. 183 peroration — so worthy of this great orator, this unwearied friend of liberty and humanity." To Maavey Napier, Esq. Paris, September 16th, 1830. Mt deae SiE, — I have just received your letter, and I can not deny that I am much vexed at what has happened. It is not very agreeable to find that I have thrown away the labor, the not unsuccessful labor, as I thought, of a month, particu- larly as I have not many months of perfect leisure. This would not have happened if Brougham had notified his inten- tions to you earlier, as he ought, in courtesy to you, and to ev- ery body 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 Eevolution here. Now, I really hesi- tated whether I should not make my excuses to you, and ac- cept this proposal ; not on account of the pecuniary terms, for about these I have never much troubled' myseK, 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 toward you. I accord- ingly 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 can not revive the negotiation. I can not hawk my rejected arti- cles up and down Paternoster Eow. 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 sit- uation. 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 Edimr 184: LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. iv. liurgh Bevuw could, without risking the ruin of the publica- tion, resolutely oppose the demands of a man so able and pow- erful. It was because I was certain that he would exact sub- missions 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 favora- ble time for efEeeting it ; not, as I hope you are well assured, from any unkind feeling toward 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 realized. The present constitution of the Edinburgh Review is this : that at what- ever 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 acts 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 eulogize people like me ?" ISTo man likes to be reminded of his infe- riority in such a way, and there are some particular circum- stances in this case which render the admonition more unpleas- ant than it would otherwise be. I know that Brougham dis- likes me ; and I have not the slightest doubt that he feels great pleasure in taking this subject out of my hands, and at hav- ing made me understand, as I do most clearly understand, how far my services are rated below his. I do not blame yoii 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 intolera- ble dictation. Whatever my writings may be worth, it is not 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAY. 185 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 hu- miliation 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 re- frain from writing for the Review. I hope you will forgive me if I say that I feel what has passed too strongly to be in- clined to expose myself to a recurrence of the same vexa- tions. Yours most truly, T. B. Macaulat. A few soft words induced Macaulay to reconsider his threat of withdrawing from the Review, but even before Mr. Na- pier's answer reached him the feeling of personal annoyance had already been effaced by a greater sorrow : a letter amved 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 iirst of her son's Parliamentary successes. ' Paris, September 26th. My deae Fathee, — This news has broken my heart. I am fit neither to go nor to stay. I can do nothing but sit in my room, and think of poor dear Jane's kindness and affec- tion. When I am calmer, I will let you know my intentions. There will be neither use nor pleasure in remaining here. My present pui'pose, as far as I can form one, is to set off in two or three days for England, and in the mean time to see no- 186 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap.iv. body, 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 30tb, 1831. Deae 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 Keform Bill must pass, either in this or in another Parlia- ment. 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 f erocitj^ 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 abso- lutely 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 Csesar 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 * " The practice In the Commons, until 1836, was to send one party forth into the lobby, the other remaining in the House." — Sir T. Ekskine May's Parliamentary Practice, i 1830-'32.] LOED MACAULAT. 187 evening. "When the doors were shut we began to speculate on our numbers. Every body 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 hun- dred. Alderman Thompson has counted them. He says they are two hundred and ninty-nine." This was the talk on our benches. I wonder that men who have been long in Parlia- ment do not acquire a better coup Wail 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 hun- dred. 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 stand- ing 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, howevei", 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 num- ber 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 foar. 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 tell- ers scarcely got through the crowd ; for the House was throng- ed 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 188 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.iv. face of a damned soul; and Hemes looked like Jiidas taking his neck-tie oil for the last operation.^ "We shook hands, and clapped each other on the back, and went out laughing, cry- ing, and huzzaing into the lobby. And no sooner were the outer doors opened than another shout answei'ed 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 equaled 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. Shell and I are on very civil terms. He talks largely concerning Demosthenes and Burke. He made, I must say, an excellent speech ; too floi'id and queer, but decidedly suc- cessful. 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 27th, 1831. Mt dear Hannah, — Let me see if I can write a letter d la Bichardson : a little less prolix it must be, or it will exceed my ounce. By-the-bye, I wonder that Uncle Se]by never 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAY. 189 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 some- thing more than the whole annual interest of her fifteen thou- sand pounds. I reached Lansdowne House by a quarter to eleven, and passed through the large suite of rooms to the great Sculpt- ure Gallery. There were seated and standing perhaps three hundred people hstening 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 inclose 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 every body 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 Fitzclai'ences, and a hideous Eussian spy, whose face I see everywhere, with a star on his coat. Dur- ing 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 sat 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 lady- ship gracious beyond description, and asked me to dine and take a bed at Holland House next Tuesday. I accepted the dinnei', 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. Every body 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, in- terspersed with luminous points of sound which ascend the air and appear Uke stars. This eloquence js quite beyond me. Ever yours, T. B. M. 190 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. iv. London, May 28th, 1831. My deae Hanitah, — More gayeties 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 cir- cle." 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 thoiisand 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 Kubini's incomparable tenor, and Signor Curioni's incomparable counter-tenor, and Pasta's incompara- ble expression. You who know how airs much inferior to this 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 seMsh. "Al- ways," 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 wiU 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 quai-ter of an hour ; and I lounged into the anterooms, where I found Samuel Rogers. Eogers and I sat 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 insightinto 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 waver- ing 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. Maoaulat. 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAY. 191 To Hammxih More Maccmlay. London, May 30tli, 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 toward seven o'clock. The house is delightful — the very perfection of the old Elizabethan style — a consid- erable 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 li- brary is a very long room — as long, I should think, as the gal- lery at Kothley Temple — with little cabinets for study branch- ing out of it, warmly and snugly fitted up, and looking out on very beautiful grounds. The collection of books is not, lUte Lord Spencer's,' curious ; but it contains almost every thing 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 . ■ ■ T. B. M. To Hmvnah M. MoGcmlay. . Baslnghall Street, July 15tb, 1831. Mt deae Sistee,— rThe rage of faction at the present mo- ment exceeds any thing, that has been known in our day. In- deed, I doubt whether, at the time of Mr. Pitt's first becoming premier, at the time of Sir Robert Walpole's fall, or even dur- ing the desperate struggles between the Whiga 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 tliat the schism between the reformers and the anti- reformers was spreading from the House of Commons into every private gin of his Aulus Gellius as an illustration of tlio passage in the nineteenth book in which Jnliiis Csesax is described, absurdly enough, as " perpetuus ille dictator, Cneii Pompeii sooer." 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAY. 213 circle. Lord Malion 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 afterward much regretted that I had gone away ; not that my presence was necessary, but because I should have liked to have sat through so tremendous a storm. Toward eight in the morning the Speaker was almost fainting. The minis- terial members, however, were as true as steel. They fur- nished 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 Toi-ies have been rather cowed. But their demeanor, 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 holi- day. 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 Hamnah M. MacoAday. London, July 25th, 1831. Mt deae Sistbe, — On Saturday evening I went to Holland House. There I found the Dutch Embassador, M. de Weis- sembourg, Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Smith, and Admiral Adam, a son of the 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 214 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. iv. saw. The last time that I was there she was frightened out of her wits by the thunder. She closed all \he 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 ; talk- ed of nothing else ; refused to eat any ice, because somebody said that ice was bad for the cholera ; was sure that the chol- era was at Glasgow; and asked me why a cordon of troops was not instantly placed around that town to prevent all in- tercourse 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 an- cient and modern times. He sets me more at ease than al- most any person that I know by a certain good-humored 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 lady- ship is all courtesy and kindness to me; but her demeanor to some others, particularly to poor Allen, is such as it quite pains me to witness. He is really 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 can not 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 JScmnah M. Maoaula/y. Library of the House of Commons, July 26th, 1831. Mt deak Sistee, — Here I am seated, waiting for the debate on the borough of St. Germains with a very quiet pasty — Lord 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAY. 215 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 com- plete the narrative which I left imperfect in my epistle of yesterday. 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 no- ble house ; four superb drawing-rooms on the first floor hung rotmd with some excellent pictures — a Hobbema (the finest by that artist in the world, it is said), and Lawrence's charm- ing portrait of Mrs. Littleton. The beautiful original, by-the- bye, did not make her appearance. We were a party of gen- tlemen. 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 chan- cellors, 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, Eice and EUice ; George Lamb; Denison; and half a dozen more lords and distin- guished commoners, not to mention Littleton himself. Till * 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. a. Macaulay! "Macaulay. What? " Sir J. G. Whom are you writing to, that you laugh so much over your letter ? " Macaulay. To my constituents at Calue, 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 yon than to most people, to ^udge by your face. " Macaulay. How do you know that I am not writing a billetdoux to a lady? " Sir J. G. You look more like it, by Jove ! " Cutler Ferguason, M.P. for Kirkcudbright. Let ladies and constituents alone, and come into the House. We are going on to the case of the bor- ough of Great Bedwiu immediately." 216. LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.iv. last yeai' He lived iii Portman Square. Wlien lie 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 ,Groavenor Place. I _can only say that I have never been in a finer house than Littleton's, Lansdowne House ex- cepted, and perhaps Lord Milton's, which is also in Grosvenor Place. He gave me a dinner of dinners. I talked with Den- ison, and with nobody else. I have found out that the real use of conversational powers is to put them forth in t6te-£i,-t^te.- 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 doc- tor 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, no^ 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 Kogers, and I went to shake hands with him. You can not 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. 1830-'32.] LOKD MACAULAY. 217 To Homnah M. Macaulay. House of Commous Smoking-room, Saturday. My deae 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 peo- ple stowed together like negroes in the pious John ISTewton's slave-ship. 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 toward twelve o'clock with smokers. It is then a perfect cloud of fume. There have I seen (tell it not to the West In- dians) Buxton blowing fire out of his mouth. My father will not believe it. At present, however, all the doors and win- dows 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 60 enamored 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 ex- citement and a great occasion overcomes a certain reserve and mauvaise honte which I have in public speaking ; not a mavr vaise honte which in the least confuses me or makes me hesi- tate for a word, but which keeps me from putting any fervor 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. 218 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. iv. 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. ISTow that I had risen again he hoped that they should hear me oft- en. See whether I do not dust that varlet's jacket for him in the next number of the Bhie amd Ydlow* I detest him more than cold boiled veal. After the debate I walked about the streets with Bulwer till nearly 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 criti- cism as a good, dutiful boy takes senna-tea. He has one emi- nent 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 honor ! 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 neighbors. I am glad that you have read Madame de Stael's "Alle- magne." 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 Edge- worth, I think, the second ; and Miss Austen the third. Ever yours, T. B. M. * " By-the-bye," Macaiilay writeB 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 no- tice — 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 hon- orable friend. ' Your friend ! d — u your impudent face !' said the member who sat next me." 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAY. 219 To Ha/rwboh M. Macaulay. London, Angnst 29fch, 1831. My deak Sistee, — 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 remain- ing two. I dined on Saturday with Lord Althorp, and yes- terday with Sir James Graham. Both of them gave me ex- actly the same dinner ; and though I am not generally copi- ous on the repasts which my hosts provide for me, I must tell you, for the honor of official hospitality, how our minis- ters regale their supporters. Turtle, turhot, 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 aft- er 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 al- ways 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 arrowroot, 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 were 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 cer- 220 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap, iv." tainly one of tlie 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 go- ing to speak, are as dry as those of a man who is going to be hanged." Nothing can be more composed and cool than Stan- ley's manner. His fault is on that side. A little hesitation at the beginning of a speech is graceful, and many eminent speakers have practiced it merely in order to give the appear- ance of unpremeditated reply to prepa:red speeches. Stanley speaks like a man who never knew what fear, or even mod- esty, was. Tierney, it is remarkable, who was the most ready and fluent debater almost ever known, made a confession sim- ilar to Stanley's. He never spoke, he said, without feeling his knees knock together when he rose. My opinion of Lord Althoi-p is extremely high. In fact, his character is the only stay of the ministry. I doubt wheth- er any person has ever lived in England who, with no elo- quence, 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 gentleman -like court- esy, 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 princi- ptes of Eomilly. If he had the oratorical powers of either of those men, he might do any thing. 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 Kef orm 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 Com- mons, to give a grand dinner to Lord Althorp and Lord John 1830-'32.] LOED MACAULAY. 221 Russell, as a mark of our respect. Some people wished to have the other cabinet ministers included; but Grant and Palmerston are not in suflBciently high, esteem among the Whigs to be honored with such a compliment. Ever yours, T. B. M. To Hcmnah M. Macomlay. London, September 9tb, 1831. My deae Sister, — I scarcely know where to begin, or where to end, my story of the magnificence of yesterday. No pag- eant 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 can- non 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 horse-guards in cuirasses and helmets to Westminster Hall, which we reached as the clock struck eight. The House of Commons was crowded, and the whole assem- bly 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 favorite 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 as. At eleven the guns fired, the organ struck up, and the proces- sion entered. I never saw so magnificent a scene. All down that immense vista of gloomy arches there was one blaze of scar- let and gold. First came heralds in coats, stiff with embroider- ed lions, unicorns, and harps; then nobles bearing the regalia, 222 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. iv. 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 alto- gether beautiful, attending on the queen. Her train of pur- ple velvet and ermine was borne by six of these fair creatures. All the great officers of state in full robes, the Duke of Wel- lington with his marshal's staff, the Duke of Devonshire with his white rod. Lord Grey with the sword of state, and the chancellor witJi 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 Devon- shii'e 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 effective- ly 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 linger 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 splendor through the Abbey seemed to be doubled. The king was then conducted to the raised throne, where the peers suc- cessively 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. 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAY. 223 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 yes- terday. 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. Ever yours, T. B. M. To Hannah M. Macaulay. London, September 13th, 1831. My deae Sistee, — I am in high spirits at the thought of soon seeing you all in London, and being again one of a fam- ily, and of a family which I love so much. It is weU 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 set- tle the whole, and bring to an issue the question, Kef orm 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 can not 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, any body 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 dis- tinctly 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 nat- ure of our connection and to his age and rank, that if the min- 224 LIFE AND LETTERS OF, [chap. iv. isters 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 plow and look back ? Why begin to build without counting the cost of finishing? Why raise the public appetite, and then balk 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 as- sured that, if those who are bidden will not come, the high- ways and hedges will be ransacked to get together a reform- ing cabinet. To one thing my mind is made up. If nobody else will move an address to the crown against a Tory minis- try, I will. Ever yours, T. B. M. London, October 17th, 1831. My deah Ellis, — I should have written to you before, but that I mislaid your letter and forgot your direction. When ^all you be in London ? Of course you do not mean to sac- rifice your professional business to the work of numbering the gates and telling the towers of boroughs* in Wales. You will come back, I suppose, with your head full of ten-pound householders instead of ripwiQ, and of Caermarthen and Den- bigh 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 Eeform Bill as we who debated it. I believe that there are fifty mem- bers of the House of Commons who have done irreparable in- * Mr. Ellis was one of the commissioners appointed to arrange the boundaries of parliamentary boroughs in connection with the Reform Bill. 1830-'32.] LORD MACAULAT. 005 jury 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 sta- tion which I now hold ia the House is such that I should not be Inclined to quit it for any place which was not of consid- erable importance. "Wbat 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 honorable and learned member for Calne, though only a practicing barrister in title, seemed to be in reality the most efficient member of the Gov- ernment. By -the -bye, my article on Croker has not only smashed his book, but has hit the Westminster Review inci- dentally. 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 ATill is in a rage, and says that they are in a worse scrape than Croker ; John Murray says that it is a d — d nuisance; and Croker looks across the House of Commons at me with a leer of ha- tred which I repay with a gracious smile of pity. I am ashamed to have said so much about myseK. But you asked for news about me. Xo 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. Macaulat. London, January 9th, 1832. Deae Xapiee, — ^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 oflE my article about Hamp- den till Thursday, the 12th. It wiU 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. YoL. I.— 15 226 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. iv. 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 19tb, 1832. Deab Napiee, — I will try the " Life of Lord Burleigh," if j'ou 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. Al^iost 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-play- ing professor of moral philosophy would be too degrading. I could have demolished every paragraph of the defense. Cro- ker defended his flvijToi ^iXot* by quoting a passage of Eurip- ides which, as every scholar knows, is corrupt ; which is non- sense and false metre if read as he reads it ; and which Mark- land and Matthise have set right by a most obvious correction. But, as nobody seems to have read his vindication, we can gain nothing by refuting it. Ever yours, T. B. Macatjlat. * " Mr. Croker has favored us with some Greek of his own. 'At the al- tar,' says Dr. Johnson, 'I recommended my 9 0.' 'These letters,' says the editor (which Dr. Strahan seems not to have understood), 'prohahly mean BvrjTol (piKot, d^arted friends.' Johnson was not a first-rate Greek scholar ; but he knew more Greek than most boys when they leave school ; and no Bchool-boy could venture to use the word Bvriroi in the sense which Mr. Croker ascribes to it without imminent danger of a flogging." — Macaulay'a Beview of Croker's Boswell. 1832-'34.] LOKD MACAULAY. 227 CHAPTER V. 1832-1834. Macanlay is Invited to stand for Leeds.— The Eeforin Bill passes. — Mao- aulay appointed Commissioner of the Board of Control. — His Life in Of- fice. — Letters to his Sister. — Contested Election at Leeds. — Macaulay's Bearing as a Candidate. — Canvassing. — Pledges. — Intrusion of Religion into Politics. — Placemen in Parliament. — Liverpool. — Margaret Mac- aulay's Marriage. — How it Affected her Brother. — He is Returned for Leeds. — Becomes Secretary of the Board of Control. — Letters to Lady Trevelyan. — Session of 1832. — Macaulay's Speech on the India BiU. — His Regard for Lord Glenelg. — Letters to Lady Trevelyan. — ^The West In- dian Question. — Macaulay resigns Office. — He gains his Point, and re- sumes his Place. — ^Emancipation of the Slaves.— Death of Wilberforce. — Letters to Lady Trevelyan. — Macaulay is appointed Member of thei Su- preme Council of India. — Letters to Lady Trevelyan, Lord Lausdowne, and Mr. Napier. — Altercation between Lord Althorp and Mr. Shell. — Macaulay's Appearance before the Committee of Investigation. — He sails for India. Dtjeing the earlier half of the year 1832 the vessel of Eef orm was still laboring heavily ; but long before she was through the breakers, men had begun to discount the treas- ures 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 night- ly 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 228 LIFE AND LETTERS OF ;[chap.V. candidate in a member of tlie great local firm of the Mar- shalls, resolved to seek for another among the distinguished politicians of their party. As early as October, 1831, Macau- lay had received a requisition from that town, and had pledged himself to stand as soon as it had been elevated into a parlia- mentary borough. The Tories, on their side, brought forward Mr. Michael Sadler, the yery 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 Beview, in- fused 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 bat- tle of the Leeds Liberals, he fought it stoutly and cheerily, and would have been the last to claim it as a merit, that, with numerous opportunities of a safe and easy election at his dis- posal, he remained faithful to the supporters who had been so forward to honor him with their choice. The old system died hard ; but in May, 1832, came its final agony. The Eef orm Bill had passed the Commons, and had been read a second time in the Upper House ; but the facili- ties 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 una- nimity 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 Six- teenth, 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 Kevolution, 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 1832-'34.] LOED MACAULAY. 229 Grey resigned, and tHe Duke of "Wellington, with a loyalty whicli 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 iu Parhament, 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 Birming- ham, a hundred thousand voices had sung the words : Grod 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 dec- laration 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 Eebellion, more effectual than its predecessor, but so brief and bloodless that history does not recognize it as a rebellion at all, was in- augurated 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 suc- cession 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, honored 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 ith of June ; a strange, and not very com- 230 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. plimentary, method of celebrating old George the Third's birthday. On the 5th it received the last touches in the Com- mons ; 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 Kussell first presented it to Parliament. Macaulay, whose eloquence had signalized 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 com- missioners of the Board of Control, which, for three quarters of a century, from llSi onward, 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 re- gard to those duties must not be deduced from the playful al- lusions contained in letters dashed off during the momentary leisure of an overbusy 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 offi- cial interest in India and her people ; and his minutes remaiu 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 any thing 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 1832-'34.] LOBD MACAULAY. 231 nature was such tlaat whatever he did was done with all his heart and all his power, and he was constitutionally incapable of doing it otherwise. He always underestimated the tension and concentration of mind which he brought to bear upon his labors, as compared with that which men in general bestow on whatever business they may have in hand; and toward the close of life this honorable self-deception no doubt led him to draw far too largely upon his failing strength, under the im- pression that there was nothing unduly severe in the ieflEorts to which he continued to brace himseK with ever-increasing dif- ficulty. 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 Com- mons 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 Wal- pole and Lord Chatham, and to gratify a political opponent who was destined to be a life-long friend by his kindly criti- cism 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 mom on thee My fancy shaped both tower and tree. To HamMh and Margaret Macaulay. Bath, June 10th, 1832. Mt deae Sisters, — Every thing has gone wrong with me. The people at Calne fixed Wednesday for my re-election on 232 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. v. taking office ; tlie very day on wMeh. 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, Kyots, Polygars, Courts of Phouj- dary, 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 transac- tions 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 de- posed 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 Hfe here; reading, writing, and walking all day ; speaking to nobody but the waiter and the chamber-maid ; 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 shotdd 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 !N"ancy's Sunday reading. And, if you do not read novels, what do you read ! How does Schil- ler 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 omd Ma/rga/ret MacoMla/y. London, July 2d, 1832. Mt deae Sistees, — I am, I think, a better con-espondent 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 Edinhwrgh Rmiew on my hands ; the " Life of Mirabeau " to be criticised ; the Eajah of Tra- vancore to be kept in order ; and the bad money, which the Emperor of the Burmese has had the impudence to send us 1832-'34.] LORD MACAULAT. 233 by way of tribute, to be exchanged for better. You bave 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 my- self. Lord Eadnor, Lord Poltimore, Lord King, Lord Eus- sell, and his uncle Lord John. Lady Holland was very gra- cious, 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 minis- try for ghostly counsel. Poor Macdonald's case was most un- doubtedly cholera. It is said that Lord Amesbury also died of cholera, though no very strange explanation seems neces- sary to account for the death of a man of eighty-four. Yes- terday it was rumored 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 be- lieve 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 Ecmnalh cmd Margwret Macaulay. London, Jnly 6th, 1832. Be you Foxes, be yon Pitts, You must write to silly chits. Be you Tories, be you Whigs, You must write to sad youug gigs. 234 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. v. On whatever board you are — Treasury, Admiralty, War, Customs, Stamps, Excise, Control — Write you must, upon my soul. So sings the Judicious Poet: and liere I sit in my parlor, looking out on the Thames, and divided, like Garriek 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 & Co., late bankers to the Nizan. Poor Sir "Walter Scott is going back to Scotland by sea to- morrow. 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 peo- ple 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, how- ever, 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 correspond- ents 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." Wliat can I say more? as the Indians end their letters. Did not Lady Holland tell me of some good novels ? I re- member " 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 1832-'34.] LOED MACAULAT. 235 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 teU 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 Ra/rmah amd Marga/ret Maeaulm/. London, July 18th, 1832. Mt deae Sibteks, — I have heard from Napier. He speaks rapturously of my article on Dumont,* but sends me no mon- ey. 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 hus- band is nothing in society. Kogers has some very good sto- ries about their domestic happiness — stories confirming a the- ory of mine which, as I remember, made you very angry. AVhen they first married, Mrs. treated her husband with great respect. But, when his novel came out and failed com- pletely, she changed her conduct, and has, ever since that un- fortunate publication, hen-pecked the poor author unmerciful- ly. And the case, says Kogers, is the harder, because it is sus- pected that she wrote part of the book herself. It is like the • Dumont's "Life of Mirabeau." See the "Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macanlay.'* 236 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. v. 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 be- half of your sex, you resented the imputation ? As to the present state of affairs abroad and at home, I can not 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 sung 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 Hcmnah cmd Ma/rgofret Macavla/y. London, July 21st, 1832. Mt deae Sistees, — 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 Cam- bridge. 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 Eight Honorable Thomas Babington Macaulay, with large extracts from his correspond- ence, in two volumes, by the "Very Eev. J. Macaulay, Dean of Durham, and Rector of Bishopsgate, with a superb portrait from the picture by Pickersgill in the possession of the Mar- quis 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 183a-'34.] LOED MACAULAT. 237 wrote dqggerel 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 school-boy habit of writing verses all day long. Shall I teU 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 Eussian 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 were 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 Eobert Peel ! Bat hang the dirty Tories! and let them starve and pine! Huzza for the majority of glorious seventy-nine ! Ever yours, T. B. M. To Hcmnah amd Marga/ret Maccmlay. House of Commons Smoking-room, Jnly 23d, 1832. My dear Sistees, — 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 Socie- ty ; 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. Eeject not my letter, though it is redolent of cigars and genuine pig- tail ; 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 238 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. out since I wrote last. I have been dining with the Listers, at Knightsbridge. They are in a very nice house next, or al- most next, to that which the Wilberf orces had. "We had quite a family party. There were George Villiers, and Hyde Yill- iers, and Edward Yilliers. Charles was not there. George and Hyde rank very high in my opinion. I liked their be- havior 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 van- ish at once. They seem to love the very ground that she treads on ; and she is undo^ubtedly a charming woman — pret- ty, 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 honor, I kept away. If I could fall in with her at a great party, where I could see un- seen and hear unheard, I should very much like to make ob- servations 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 argu- ment about the Church with an Irish papist who has seated himseK at my elbow ; and they keep such a din that I can not tell what I am writing. There they go. The lord lieu- tenant — the Bishop of Derry — Magee — O'Connell — your Bi- ble 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 Momnah amd Mcwgwret MoGcmlay^ Library of the H. of C, July 30th, 1832, 11 o'clock at night. My deae SiSTEKS, — Here I am. Daniel Whittle Harvey is 1832-'34.] LORD MACAULAY. 239 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 of- ficer, 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 compar- ative merits of the two rooms. They are, I think, very happy. If thou goest iuto 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 inany 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 Ken- sington to ask Fanny how she did, and staid there two hours. Then I went to Knightsbridge to call on Mrs. Lister, and 240 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. chatted witli her till it was time to go and dine at the Athe- naeum. Then I dined, and after dinner, like a good young man, I sat and read Bishop Heber's journal till bed -time. There is a Sunday for you ! I think that I excel in the diary line. I wUl 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 Eichmond, so that I hope to have something to tell you. But on second thoughts I will tell you nothing, nor ever wiU write to you again, nor ever speak to you again. I have no pleasure in writing to imdutiful sisters. Why do you not send me long- er 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 Ha/tmah mid Ma/rgwret Macomlay. London, August 14th, 1832. Mt deae Sistees,^ — Our work is over at last ; not, however, tiU it has half killed us all.* 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 Palmer- ston, 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 * On the 8th of August, 1832, Maoaulay -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 farther than the smoking- room without a^jprehension. In spite of all our exertions, the end of the session seems farther and farther off every day. If you would do me the favor 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." 1833-'34.] LORD MACAULAY. 241 found out that every thing was not as it shoi;ld be but for her criticisms. The soup was too salt ; the cutlets were not exactly comme ilfaut; 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 vehe- mently defended the match ; and, when Allen said that had caught a Tartar, she quite went off into one of her tan- trums : " She a Tartar ! Such a charming girl a Tartar ! He is a very happy man, and your language is insufferable ; in- sufferable, 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 favor, 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 essen- tial 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. Eogers, who is the bitter- est 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 Mira- beau, 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 YoL. I.— 16 242 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. v. points. If she knew how far I see into hers, she would be ready to hang herself. Ever yonrs, T. B. M. To Hamnah and Marga/ret Maoaulay. London, August 16th, 1832. My deae Sistees, — ^We begin to see a hope of liberation. To-morrow, or on Saturday at furthest, we 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 proces- sions of Orangemen which have excited a good deal of irri- tation 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 aban- doned. 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 nega- tived 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 de- lay 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,* might have * A circular ventilator, in the roof of the House of Commons, was the only Ladies' Gallery that existed in the year 1832. 183-2-'34.] ' LOED MACAULAY. 243 been greatly edified, touching the nature of vows ; whether a man's promise given to himself — a promise from which no- body could reap any advantage, and which every body wished him to violate — constituted an obligation. Jephtha's daugh- ter 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 imjustifiably. 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, staid to the last, not expressing remorse like Shaw, but glorying in the unaccom- modating temper he showed and in the delay which he pro- duced. 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 un- justifiable 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 in- troducing them because they are brought forward by me. I am sensible that I have forfeited all claim to the favor 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 amus- ing. The oddest part of the business is that Shaw's frank, 244: LIFE AND LETTERS, OP [chap. Y. good-natured way of proceeding, absurd as it -was, has made him popular. He was never so great a favorite 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, un- intelligible. But I have thought it my duty to set before you the evil consequences of making vows rashly and adher- ing to them superstitiously ; for in truth, my Christian breth- ren, or rather my Christian sisters, let us consider, etc., etc., etc. But I reserve the sermon on promises, which I had intended to preach, for another occasion. Ever yours, T. B. M. To Homtidh cmd Mwrga/ret Macaulay. London, Angust 17th, 1832. Mt deae Sistees, — I brought down my story of Holland House to dinner-time on Saturday evening. To resume my narrative, I slept there on Sunday night. On Monday morn^ ing, after breakfast, I walked to town with Luttrell, whom I found a delightful companion. Before we went, we sat 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 iN'eapolitan Embassador 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 play- ing at leap-frog. Another day the English Embassador was sitting opposite the king at dinner. His majesty asked him to take wine. The glasses were filled. The embassador bow- ed, and put the wine to his lips. The king grinned hideous- ly, 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 1832-'34.3 LORD MACAULAY 245 a practiced diplomatist, could not help giving some signs of astonishment. The king immediately addressed him in French : ' Eh, mais, Monsieur I'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 I'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 resi- dence in Somerset House. It is well that he is a bachelor; for he tells me that the ladies, his neighbors, make bitter com- plaints of the unfashionable situation in which they are cruelly obliged to reside gratis. Yesterday I dined with Will Brough- am, and an official party, in Mount Street. We are going to establish a Club t6 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 af- fairs of the state better, I hope, than om- masters at their cab- inet dinners. Ever yours, T. B. M. To Hannah M. Macaulay. Loudon, September 20th, 1832. My deak SrsTEE, — I am at home again from Leeds, where every thing 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 peo- ple 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. T traveled to town with a family of children who eat with- 24:6 LIFE KSB LETTERS OP [chap. V. out 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 preced- ing day. They dined as if they had never breakfasted. They eat on the road one large basket of sandwiches, another of fruit, and a boiled fowl : besides which there was not an or- ange - girl, or 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 break- fast ; then look over the newspaper ; frank letters ; scrawl a line or two to a foolish girl in Leicestershire ; and walk to my oifiee. There I stay till near five, examining claims of money- lenders on the native sovereigns of India, and reading Parlia- mentary papers. I am beginning to understand something about the Bank, and hope, when next I go to Pothley 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 al- most entirely there ; but I love my own chambers and inde- pendence, and am neither qualified nor inclined to succeed Al- len 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 complain- ing ; and, though I can ill spare time for the visit, yet, as he was very kind to me when his kindness was of some conse- quence to me, I can not, and will not, refuse. Ever yours, T. B. M. To Homnah M. Macaulay. London, September 25tli, 1832. Mt deab Sisteb, — I went on Saturday to. Holland House, and staid there Sunday. It was legitimate Sabbath employ- ment — visiting the sick — which, as you well know, always stands first among the works of mercy enumerated in good 1832-'34.] LOED MACAULAY. 247 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 sat 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 particulai-ly valuable, for he has the keenest zest for those pleasures which health would en- able 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 humor over the face of every one who comes near him. His sister, an excellent old maid as ever lived, and the favorite of all the young people of her ac- quaintance, 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 there- fore the fitter for the bedside 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. Toward 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 Gre- ville, 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 even- ings passed there when London was full and Lord Holland 248 LIFE AJSfD LETTERS OF [chap, v. 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 can not 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 iU. I am seriously alarmed about him. Kindest love to all. Ever yours, ' T. B. M. To Hcmnah M. Macomlay. Westou House, September 29th, 1832. Mt deae Sistee, — 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 imitatioil of the do- mestic 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 with- out. 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 favorite spot. I al- ways liked " the trim gardens " of which Milton speaks, and thought that Brown and his imitators went too far in bring- ing forests and sheep-walks up to the very windows of draw- ing-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 with- out you and Margaret. All my old Oxford associations are gone. Oxford, instead of being, as it used to be, the magnifi- cent 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 Man- chesters the same aspect which it wore when Charles held his court at Christchurch, and Rupert led his cavalry over Magda- lene Bridge — is now to me only the place where I was so hap- 1832-'34.] LOED MACAULAY. 249 py witli 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, mustached 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 Eatclifie 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 pret- ty 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 elect- ors 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 con- stituents. This young politician, who depended on ofiice for his bread, and on a seat in the House of Commons for ofiice, adopted from the first an attitude of high and almost peremp- tory independence which would have sat well on a prime min- ister 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 3d, 1832. My deae Sie, — 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 beg- 250 LIFE AND LETTEES:OF [chap. v. ging for votes is, as it seems to me, absurd, pernicious, and al- together at variance with the true principles of representative government. The suffrage of an elector ought not to be ask- ed, or to be given, as a personal favor. It is as much for the interest of constituents to choose well as it can be for the in- terest 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 Par- liament to serve the public. While we had only a mock rep- resentation, 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 in- telligent body of people who have obtained the elective fran- chise will see that seats in the House of Commons ought not to be given, like rooms in an almshouse, to urgency of solici- tation ; 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 equal- ly shocked at the thought of voting for a candidate for whose public character he felt no esteem, merely because that can- didate 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 con- duct, 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 honor ; but I should think it no honor to be returned to Par- liament by persons who, thinking me destitute of the requi- site qualifications, had yet been wrought upon by cajolery 1832-'34.] LORD MACAULAY. 251 and importunity to poll for me in despite of their better judg- ment. I wigh 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 labor. Just as a physician understands medicine better than an ordinary man, just as a shoe-maker 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 de- rives no benefit from the prescription of his physician, he calls in another. If his shoes do not fit him, he changes his shoe- maker. 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 phy- sician to order particular pills and particular draughts. While he continues to be the customer of a shoe-maker, it would be absurd in him to sit by and mete every motion of that shoe- maker'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 se- lected their member has expired, to review his conduct equita- bly, 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 prom- 252 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. ises, it is in their power to do so. I can only say that on such terms I can not 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 Macau- lay 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 watch-word of Kef ormers. 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 respect- able 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 1/ruth, and nothing hut the truth, to the peo- ple, this is that time. E^othing 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 pretenses. Un- der the old system I have never been the flatterer of the great. Under the new system T will not be the flatterer of the peo- ple. The truth, or what appears to me to be such, may some- times 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 unfa- vorable to me, I shall submit to that decision with fortitude 1832-'34.] LORD MACAULAY. 253 and good humor. 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. Maeaulay had his own ideas as to the limits within which constituents are justified in exerting their privilege of ques- tioning a candidate ; and, on the first occasion when those lim- its were exceeded, he made a notable example of the trans- gressor. 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. Mar- shall and Mr. Maeaulay." 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 of- fender, who proved to be a Methodist preacher, was hoisted on to a bench by his indignant neighbors ; 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 Maeaulay, who harangued him as if he, were the living embodiment of religious intolerance and illegiti- mate 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 Mae- aulay would have none of their applause. " This is no sub- ject," he said, " for acclamation. I wiU say no more. No man shall speak of me as the person who, when this disgrace- ful inquisition was entered upon in an assembly of English- men, 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 favor any large meeting with his infidel attacks upon 254 LIFE AND LETTEES" OF [chap. V. 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, dil- igently spread through the town, that the Whig candidates were Unitarians ; a report which, even if correct, would prob- ably 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 re- ligious worship of people who believe less than themselves, or to vote at elections for people who believe more than them- selves. 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 sel- dom the case that any but Unitarians are seen inside a Uni- tarian chapel. On the other hand, at the general election of 18T4, 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 overrepresented sect in the kingdom. While Macaulay was stern in his refusal to gratify his elect- ors 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 rea- son 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 Cob- den into an orator, made of Macaulay a Parliamentary de- bater ; 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 ex- cept on the hustings and the platform. There is no better sample of Macaulay's extempore speaking than the first words which he addressed to hjg comnjittee at Leeds after the Ee- 1833-'34.] LOED MACAULAT. 255 form Bill had received the royal assent. " I lind it difficult to express my gratification at seeing such an assembly con- vened 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 Keform Bill, .we shall find something to dis- grace and tarnish the achievement. It was by the assistance of French arms and of Eoman bulls that King John was har- assed 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 con- fess I think it still more important from the manner in which it has been achieved. Other countries have obtained deliver- ances equally signal and complete, but in no country has that deliverance been obtained with such perfect peace ; so entire- ly 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 labor 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 arms successfully vin- dicated 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 authori- ties 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 gi'eat 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 defense. " The only 256 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. 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 pos- sess 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 Ee- form 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 Ee- form Bill had done little for the people, if under it the serv- ice of the people was not consistent with the service of the crown." Just before the general election Hyde Yilliers died, and the secretaryship to the Board of Control became vacant. Mac- aulay 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 fullness of time its inevitable destiny shaU convert it into docks. The young ladies were the guests of Mr. John Cropper, who be- longed to the Society of Friends, a circumstance which read- ers 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 Macau- lay'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, ^lay perhaps be slow to credit him ; but which, taking his life 183a-'34.] LORD MACAULAY. 257 as a wliole, were predominant in tbeir power to affect his hap- piness and give matter for his thoughts. Those who are least partial to him will allow that his was essentially a virile intel- lect. He wrote, he thought, he spoke, he acted, like a man. The public regarded him as an impersonation of vigor, vivaci- ty, 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. Oth- ers may well be loath to parade what he concealed ; but a por- trait of Macaulay from which those 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 feel- ing 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 suf- fered 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 ines- timable 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 re- covered that tone of thorough boyishness which had been pro- duced by a long, unbroken habit of gay and affectionate inti- macy with those younger than himself ; indulged in without a suspician 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 iany . 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 Vol. I.— it 258 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. 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 unchangea- ble as the constitution of the human body and mind. To re- pine against the nature of things, and against the great fund- amental 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 noth- ing left in this world but ambition. There is no wound, how- ever, 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 favorite number in the lottery of life, and who have sufiered double disappointment when their ticket came up a blank V To Jlcmnah M. Maeaulay. Leeds, December 12th, 1832. My deae Sistee, — The election here is going on as well as possible. To-day the poll stands thus : Marshall, 1804 Maeaulay, 1792 Sadler, 1353. The probability is that Sadler will give up the contest. If he persists, he will be completely beaten. The voters are un- der 4000 in number ; those who have already polled are 3100 ; and about 500 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 ie32-'34.] LOED MACAULAY. 259 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 congratu- lations. Dearest, dearest sister, you alone are now left to me. Whom have I on earth but thee? Eut for you, in the midst of all these successes, I should wish that I were lying by poor Hyde Yilliers. But I can not go on. I am wanted to write an address to the electors ; and I shall lay it on Sad- ler pretty heavily. By what strange fascination is it that am- bition and resentment exercise such power over minds which ought to be superior to them ? I despise myself for feeling so bitterly toward 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 afEable and kind-hearted of men, 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 24th, 1832. Mt deae Sistee, — I am much obliged to you for your let- ter, 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 un- derstand that his lordship's cuisme was superintended by the first French artists, and that I should find there all the luxu- ries 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 Koger de Coverley, or Sir Hugh Tyrold,* might have set before his guests. A huge haunch of venison on the side- board ; a magnificent piece of beef at the bottom of the table ; and before my lord himself smoked, not a dindon aux i/ruffes, * The iincle of Miss Barney's Camilla. 260 LIFE AND LETTEES OP [chap. v. 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 Sbarp ; Lubbock ; Watson, M.P. for Canterbury ; and Eich, the author of " What will the Lords do ?" who wishes to be M.P. for Knaresborough. Eogers 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 learn- ed 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 ses- sion, 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'ConneU — criti- cising the king's speech at vast length, and passing in turns through every mood from the most exquisite pathos to down- right and undisguised ferocity — at once plunged the House into a discussion on Ireland, which alternately blazed and smoldered through four live-long nights. Shell 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 greet- ed each of the glowing periods in which Macaulay, as the champion of the Whig party,* met the great agitator face to * " We are called base, and brutal, and bloody. Such are the epithets •which the honorable 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 suf- fered for Ireland. I see on the benches near me men who might, by utter- 1832-'34.] LOED MACAULAY. 261 face with high, but not intemperate, defiance. In spite of this flattering reception, he seldom addressed the House. A sub- ordinate member of a government, with plenty to do in his own department, finds little temptation, and less encourage- ment, to play the debater. The difference of opiaion 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 live- ly 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 ab- stinence 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 im- mense and salutary reforms with which the Cabinet had re- solved 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 ing one word against Catholic Emancipation — nay, by merely abstaining from uttering a word in favor of Catholic Emancipation — have been re- turned to this House without difficulty or expense, and who, rather than wrong their Irish fellow-subjects, were content to relinquish all the ob- jects of their honorable ambition, and to retire into private life with con- science and fame untarnished. As to one eminent person, who seems to be regarded with especial malevolence by those who ought never to men- tion his name without respect and gratitude, I will only say this, that the loudest clamor which the honorable and learned gentleman can excite against Lord Grey will be trifling when compared with the clamor which Lord Grey withstood in order to place the honorable and learned gentle- man 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 honorable and learned gentleman, that the same spirit which sustained us in a just contest for him will sust.ain us in an equally just contest against him. Calumny, abuse, royal displeasure, popular fnry, exclusion from ofiSce, ex- clusion from Parliament, we were ready to endnre them all, rather than that he should be less than a British subject. We never will suffer him to be more. 262 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. V. valor 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 India 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 en- able 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 li- abilities of the company on terms the favorable 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 be- came a corporation charged with the function of ruling Hin- doostan ; and its directors, as has been well observed, remain- ed princes, but merchant-princes no longer. The machinery required for carrying into effect this gigan- tic metamorphosis was embodied in a bill every one of whose provisions breathed the bro.ad, 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 22d day of April, 1834, the exclusive right of trading with the do- minions of the Emperor of China and of trading in tea shall cease ;" and 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 color, be disabled from holding any place, office, or 1833-'34.] LOED MACAULAY. 263 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 of July. On that occa- sion Macaulay defended the bill in a thin House ; a circum- stance 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 Kussell, 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 recognize 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 honorable and learned friend : a speech which, I will venture to assert, has never been exceeded with- in 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 virtuoiis 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 per- ceived in the hands of my honorable friend the great prin- ciples which he expounded glowing with fresh colors and ar- rayed 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 honor and feeling will always cherish with regard to ths statesman under whom he began his career as a servant of the crown. The secretary repaid the president for his un- * The affinity between this sentiment, and that of the quaestor toward 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. 264 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. varying 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 appoint- ing 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 Gov- ernment carried every point by large majorities, and, with slight modifications in detail and none in principle, the meas- ure became law with the almost universal approbation both of Parliament and the country. To Hcmnah M. MoGOMlavy. House of Commous, Monday Night, half-past 13. Mt deae Sistee, — 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 defense 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. 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 par- ish church. I remember that when you were at Leamington two years ago I used to fill my letters with accounts of the people with * In his great Indian speech Macaulay referred to this affair, in a pas- sage, the first sentence of which has, by frequent quotation, been elevated into an apothegm : "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 In- dia. If it had been an English question, the walls would scarcely have Iield the members who would have flocked to the division. It was an Indian question; and we could scarcely, by^Jint of supplication, make a House." 1833-'34.] LORD MACAULAY. 265 whom I dined. Higli life was new to me tlien ; 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 af- fected me. I was talking to Lady Charlotte Lindsay, the daughter of Lord North, a great favorite 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 nev- er 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." Tlien 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 disap- pointed her. She longed, she said, to go over the garrets and rummage her old nursery. She told me how, in the No-Pop- ery 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 nurs- ery the fires in different parts of London ; but she did not un- derstand 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 guard-room 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." 266 LIFE AND LETTERS -OF [chap. v. "Ay, 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 Li- brary of the House of Commons on the night of the 3d of June, 1833, reported word for word. To the historian three centuries hence this letter will be invaluable. To you, un- grateful as you are, it will seem worthless. Ever yours, T. B. M. To Hannah M. Macaulay. Smoking-room of the House of Commons, June 6th, 1833. Mt Daeling, — ^Why am I such a fool as to write to a gyp- sy 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 wei'e reading verse. I have some gossip for you about the Edinhv/rgh Bmiew. 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 par- ties, where he hears sad complaints. The universal cry is that the long dull articles are the ruin of the Review. As to my- self, he assures me that my articles are the only things which keep the work up at all. Longman and his partners corre- spond with about five hundred book-sellers in different parts of the kingdom. All these book-sellers, 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,* shall not care how proud I am. At all events, I can not but be pleased to learn that, if I should be forced to de- pend 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 * The central male figure in " Pride and Prejudice." 1832-'34.] LORD MACAULAY. 267 SO here I am in the Binoking-room, with three Repealers mak- ing 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 Havana ! Tou know that the Lords have been foolish enough to pass a vote* implying censure on the ministers. 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 reso- lution 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 offense was partly occasioned by Napier ; and I have a very strong reason for wishing to keep Napier in good humor. He has promised to be at Edinburgh when I take a certain damsel thither ; to look out for very nice lodgings for us in Queen Street ; to show us every thing and every body ; and to see us as far as Dunkeld on our way northward, if we do go northward. In general I abhor visiting ; but at Edin- burgh we must see the people as well as the walls and win- dows ; and Napier will be a capital guide. Ever yours, T. B. M. * On June 3d, 1833, a vote of censure on the Portuguese policy of the ministry was moved by the Duke of Wellington, and carried iu the Lords by 79 votes to 69. On June 6th a counter-resolution was carried in the Commons by 361 votes to 98. 268 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. To Hammh M. MacoAilwy. Londou, June 14th, 1833. My deae Sistee, — I do not know what you may have been told. I may have grumbled, for aught 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 ar6 its object. You have seen the papers, I dare say, and you will perceive that I did not speak yesterday night.* 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 ad- vised me to reserve myself for the second reading. What have I to tell you? I will look at my engagement- book, to see where 1 am to dine. Friday, June 14th, Lord Grey ; Saturday, June 15th, Mr. Boddington ; Sunday, June 16th, Mr. S. Rice ; Saturday, June 22d, Sir E. Inglis ; Thurs- day, June 27th, the Earl of Eipon ; Saturday, June 29th, Lord Moi*peth. Head, 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 bine ribbon 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 tlie 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 * The night of the first reading of the India Bill. 1833-'34.] LOED MACAULAY. 269 result : yet I believe that Lord Grey understands the position ia 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. 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 wom- an ! But Mrs. Harbottle, dear suffering angel ! And Emma Lovel, all excellence ! Dr. MacGopus you doubtless like ; but you probably do not admire the Duchess and Lady Cath- erine. There is a regular coze over a novel for you ! But, if you will have my opinion, I think it Theodore Hook's worst performance ; far inferior to " The Surgeon's Daughter ;" a set of fools making themselves miserable by their own non- sensical fancies and suspicions. Let me hear your opinion; for I wiU be sworn that, In spite of all the serious world, Of all the thumbs that ever twirled, Of every hroadbrim-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 can not 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 17th, 1833. Deae Hannah, — All is still anxiety here. Whether the House of Lords will throw out the Irish Church Bill, whether * This "last blander" was the refusal of the king to stand by his min- isters in May, 1832. Macaulay proved a bad prophet ; for after an inter- val of only three years, William the Fourth repeated his blunder in an ag- gravated form. 270 LIFE Am) LETTERS OF [chap. v. 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 be dis- solved, entertain scarcely any hopes. I see nothing before us but a frantic conflict between extreme opinions ; a short peri- od of oppression ; then a convulsive reaction ; and then a tre- mendous crash of the Funds, the Church, the Peerage, and the Throne. It is enough to make the most strenuous royahst 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 cer- tainly his own virtues or abilities would never have raised him. The question must come to a decision, I think, within the fortnight. In the mean time 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 be- conie of the tea^trade ? Will the negroes, after receiving the resolutions of the House of Commons proniising them lib- erty, 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 re- solved to perish, and drag the king to perish with them, in the I'uin which they have themselves made ? I begin to wonder what the fascination is which attracts men, who could sit over 183e-'34.] LORD MACAULAT. 271 their tea and tlieir 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 vex- ation 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 al- low to you, let me know how you explain this philosophical disposition of mine, and how you reconcile it with my ambi- tious 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 sat next that loveliest of women, Mrs. Littleton? Her hus- band, our new Secretary for Ireland, told me this evening that Lord Wellesley, who sat near us at the duchess's, asked Mrs. Littleton afterward 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 ac- quainted with that man." Accordingly, Littleton has engaged me to dine with him, in order to introduce me to the mar- quess. 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 wor- thy 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 sat in little cocked hats along a table; and we stood uncovered on the other side, 272 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. v. 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 21st, 1833. Deak. Hannah, — I can not 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 cor- onet or a penny for a mitre. I shall not read " The Kepealers ;" and I think it very im-- pudent 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 nov- el 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 stud- ies. A wretched, trumpery imitation of Godwin's worst man- ner. 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 lie quarter-day ; And then, if I'm alive. Of sterling pounds I shall receive Three hundred seventy-flve. Already I possess in cash Two hundred twenty-four, Besides what I have lent to John, Which makes up twenty more. 18a2-'34.] LOED MACAULAY. 2T3 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 littlp budget derive a certain dignity and meaning from the events of the ensuing weeks. The unparalleled labors of the antislavery 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 in- troduction of his bill : " That all persons, now slaves, be en- titled to be registered as apprenticed laborers, and to acquire thereby all the rights and privileges of freemen, subject to the restriction of laboring, 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 ; al- though 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 oc- casion 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 states- man, whose prospects would be irremediably injured by ab- ruptly quitting a government that seemed likely to be in Vol. I.— 18 274 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. power for the next quarter of a century ; a zealous Whig, who shrunk 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 hun- dred 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 it- seK 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 de- manded, 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,* 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 can not make our happiness." Macaulay's colleagues, who, without knowing his whole sto- ry, knew enough to be aware that he could ill afford to give up office, were earnest in their remonstrances ; but he answer- ed shortly, and almost roughly : " I can not go counter to my * Henry Macaulay married, in 1841, a daughter of his brother's old polit- ical ally, Lord Denman. He died at Boa Vista in 1846. 1833-'34.] LORD MACAULAT. 275 father. He has devoted Ms whole life to the question, and I can not grieve h\m by giving way when he wishes me to stand firm." During the crisis of the West India Bill, Zach- ary 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 any thing heroic in the course which they were pursuing, that it appears never to have occurred to either of them that any other line of con- duct could possibly be adopted. London, July 22d, 1833. Mt dear Fathek, — 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 honor keep their places. I believe that they will resign if any material alteration should be made ; and then every thing is confusion. These circumstances render it very difficult for me to shape my course right with respect to the West India Bill, the sec- ond 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 vdll be decided one way or the other ; and I shall be able to take my own course on the slavery ques- tion without exposing myself to the charge of deserting my friends in a moment of peril. Ever yours, affectionately, T. B. Macaulay. Having made up his mind as to what he should do, Mac- 276 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. v. aulay 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 atti- tude 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 24:th of July Mr. Thomas Fowell Buxton moved an amendment in committee, limiting the apprenticeship to the shortest period necessary for estab- lishing the system of free labor. 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 judgr ment would have told him that it was not the moment for an oratorical display. He began by entreating the House to ex- tend to him that indulgence which it had accorded on occa- sions when he had addressed it "with more confidence and with less harassed feelings." He then, at some length, ex- posed the efEects of the Government proposal. " In free coun- tries the master has a choice of laborers, and the laborer 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 mag- istrate to keep peace between master and slave. Every time that the slave takes twenty minutes to do that which the mas- ter 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 a 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 desti- tute of any vital principle — will be that the whole negro pop- ulation will sink into weak and drawling inefficacy, and will 1833-'34.] LOKD MACAULAY. 277 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 honorable gentlemen in doing all that is pos- sible 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 circum- stances was equivalent to a victory. The next day Mr. Stan- ley rose; adverted shortly to the position in which the min- isters 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 pro- ceedings acted as leader of the antislavery party in the House of Commons, advised his friends to make the best of the con- cession ; and his counsel was followed by all those abolition- ists 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 hon- or and my place, and of having given no just ground of offense 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, Wilberf orce was carried to his grave in Westminster Abbey. 278 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. " We laid him," writes Maoaulay, " 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 wa,s 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 re- joice. My sober a,nd deliberate opinion is that you have done more toward 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 al- lowed them to ascribe to human effort and self-sacrifice. London, July 11th, 1833. Deau 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 re- sent being forced to attend on that day, which is their holi- day. 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 Eussell, Wynne, O'Connell, Grai^t,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, aud like the second from his stop- ping other people's moaths. 1832-'34.] LORD MACAULAT. 279 The Slavery Bill is miserably bad. I am fully resolved not to be dragged througb 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 favor; 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 small- est degree ill-used if the Cabinet accepted my resignation. This is the present posture of affairs. In the mean time 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 chat- ting with my dear sister. Ever yours, T. B. M. To Hannah M. Macaulay. London, July 19th, 1833. Mt deae Sistee, — I snatch a few minutes to write a single line to you. We went into committee on the India Bill at twelve this morning, sat tiU three, and are just set at liberty for two hours. At live Ve recommence, and shall be at work till midnight. In the interval between three and five I have to dispatch 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 appro- bation. The very cause of the negligence of the reporters, and of the thinness of the House, is that we Jiave framed our measure so carefully as to give little occasion for debate. Lit- tleton, 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 wiU be over. Ova 280 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. 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 minis- ters should suffer me to keep my place and oppose their meas- ure. 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 every thing, 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 peo- ple unlearn all their philosophy — in crowded senates and fine drawing-rooms. But time files, and Grant's dinner will be waiting. He keeps open house for us during this fight. Ever yours, T. B. M. To Hannah M. Maca/ulay. London, July 24th, 1833. My deae Sistee, — You will have seen by the papers that the West India debate on Monday night went off very quietly in little more than a 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 lib- erty 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 privi- lege. 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 tenns ; and that what I would not do to serve 1832-'34.] LOED MACAULAY. 281 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 lengthen- ing, 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 1st of Sep- tember. 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 JReview 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 gen- tleman who shall be nameless. Ever yours, T. B. M. To Hwrmah M. Macaulay. Londou, July 25th, 1S33. Mt deae Sistee, — The plot is thickening. Yesterday Bux- ton 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 polit- ical friends — so painful that at times I could hardly go on. I treated them as mildly as I coidd, and they all tell me that I performed my diflflcult 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. Ac- cordingly they came down to the House at twelve this day, and agreed to reduce the apprenticeship to seven years for the agricultural laborers, and to five years for the skilled laborers. What other people may do I can not 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, bat 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 282 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. 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 myseK 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 ex- press. 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* says : " Novels ! Oh, Lord ! I never read novels. I have something else to do." Farewell. T. B. M. To Hannah M. Maccmlm/. London, July 27th, 1833. My deae Sistek, — ^Here I am, safe and well, at the end of one of the most stormy weeks that the oldest man remem- bers 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 min- istry has been so hard run in the Commons as to be forced to modify its plan ; and has received a defeat in the Lords ;f 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 re- signing. 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 BUI is so far modified that, I believe, it will be carried. The Irish Church Bill has got through the com- mittee in the Lords ; and we are all beginning to look for- ward to a prorogation in about three weeks. * The young Oxford man in Northanger Abbey. t On the 35th of July the Archbishop of Canterbury carried an amend- ment on the Irish Church Bill, against the Government, by 84 votes to 82. 1832-'34.] LOKD MA.CAULAY. 283 To-day I went to Haydon's to be 'painted into his great picture of " The Eef orm Banquet." Ellis was with me, and de- clares that Haydon 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. Haydon pro- nounces my profile a gem of art, perfectly antique ; and, what is worth the praise of ten Haydons, I was told yesterday that Mrs. Littleton, the handsomest woman in London, had paid me exactly the same compliment. She pronounced Mr. Mac- aulay's profile to be a study for an artist. I have bought a new looking-glass and razor-case on the strength of these com- pliments, and am meditating on the expediency of having my hair cut in the Burlington Arcade, rather than in Lamb's, Con- duit Street. As Kichard says. Since I am crept in favor with myself, I will maintain it with some little cost. I begin, like Sir "Walter Elliot,* to rate all my acquaintance according to their beauty. But what nonsense I write, and in times that make merry men look grave ! Ever yours, T. B. M. To Homiiah M. Maaaulay. London, July 29th, 1833. My deae Sistee, — 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 oth- ers, 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 color than, I am sor- ry to say, is often seen among fine ladies. So our dinner and our soiree were very agreeable. * The Baronet in " Persuasion." 284 LIFE AND LETTERS -OF [ctiap. v, 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 admi- ralty, complimented the duchess on her son's merit, to which^ he said, every dispatch bore witness. The duchess forthwith began to entreat that he might be recalled. He was very ill, she said. If he staid longer on that station she was sure that he would die ; and then she began to cry. I can not bear to see women cry, and the matter became serious, for her pret- ty daughter began to bear her company. That hard-hearted Lord seemed to be diverted by the scene. He, by all ac- counts, has been doing little else than making women cry dur- ing the last tive-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 t^te-^-tSte 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 daugh- ter who still is so. The duchess said one thing that amused us. We were talk- ing 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 every body 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-f t. 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. 1833-'34.] LORD MACAULAY. 285 I amuse myself, as I walk back from the House at two in the morning, with .translating Yirgil. 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 Hammah M. Macaulay. London, July 31st, 1833. My deae 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 compen- sation 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 labors. Heavy labors they have been. So Wilberforce is gone ! "We talk of burying him in West- minster Abbey ; and many eminent men, both Whigs and To- ries, are desirous to join in paying him this honor. 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 fascina- tion which makes us cling to existence, in spite of present suf- ferings 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 I'aimais eomme I'on aime." And how is that ? How very little one human being general- ly cares for another! How very little the world misses any body ! How soon the chasm left by the best and wisest men closes ! I thought, as I walked back from Cadogan Place, that 286 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. o'ur 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 cdtelette omx petits pois the less on Saturday at the table to which I was invited to meet them, or will smile less gayly at the ladies over the Cham- pagne. And I am quite even with them. What are those pretty lines of Shelley ? Oh, world, farewell ! Listen to the passing hell. 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 Ec- clesiastes ? 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 Hcmnah M. Macanday. London, August 2d, 1833. My deae Sistee, — I agree with your judgment on Chester- field'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 value : Lord Granville's little compositions, for ex- ample ; Canning's verses ; Fox's history ; Brougham's trea- tises. The writings of people of high fashion, also, have a value set on them far higher than that which intrinsically be- longs to them. The verses of the late Duchess of Devonshire,- 1832-'34.] LOED MACAULAT. 287 or an occasional prologue by Lord Alvanley, attract a most undue share of attention. If the present Duke of Devon- shire, who is the very " glass of fashion and mold of form," were to publish a book with two good pages, it would be ex- tolled 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 ac- knowledged chief of the fashionable world ; at the head of the House of Lords and at the head of ton / Mr. Canning and the Duke of Devonshire in one. In our time the division of lar bor 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 centuiy 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 ionmot. 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 John- son'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 favorably by far than they desei-ved. So much for criticism. As to politics, every thing seems tending to repose ; and I should think that by this day fort- night 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 I^ew 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 288. LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. must cost as much as that of any five other members of Par- liament. To-morrow Wilberf orce 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 coflBn into the Abbey. The Duke of Wellington, Lord Eldon, and Sir E. 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 do- ing honor 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 any thing like theatrical display — any thing like a set funeral oration not springing naturally out of the discussion of a question — is extremely distasteful to the House of Com- mons. I have been clearing off a great mass of business which had accumulated at our oiBce while we were conducting our bill through Parliament. To-day 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 super- human 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, in- troduces the mention of what proved to be the most iniportant circumstance in Macaulay's life. To Hannah M. MaowvUay. London, August 17th, 1833. My deak Sistee, — I am about to write to you on a sub- ject, which to you and Margaret will be one of the most 1832-'34.] LORD MACAULAT. 289 agitating interest ; and whicli, on that account chiefly, is so to me. By the new India Bill it is provided that one of the mem- bers of the Supreme Council, which is to govern our Eastern empire, is to be chosen from among persons who are not serv- ants 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 intimate- ly, and who have themselves mixed in the highest circles and held the highest offices at that presidency, that I may live in splendor there for five thousand a year, and may save the rest of the salary with the accruing interest. I may therefose hope to return to England at only thirty-nine, in the full vig- or 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 compe- tence 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 abso- lutely 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 Edi'nhurgli Review; and if I had been out of office, I should have been able to do very little. Ed- ward Bulwer has just given up the Nem Monthly Magazine on the ground that he can not conduct it and attend to his Parliamentary duties. Cobbett has been compelled to neg- lect 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 j^ear by my pen. I could not support myself in Vol. I.— 19 290 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. comfort on less than five hundred ; and I shall in all probabil- ity have many others to support. The prospects of our fam- ily are, if possible, darker than ever. In the mean time 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 can not 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 fonned 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 en- counter them with courage. A man can always act honora- bly 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 im- pending disasters, J 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 heire. 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 mean time 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 Mar- quess 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 honorable kind. I shall have whatever that country- affords of comfort 1832-'34.] ■ LORD MACAULAY. 291 or splendor ; 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 sep- aration, 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 splendor of the Indian Court, and the gayeties 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 any body 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 difiiculties may arise at the India House ; and I do not mean , to say any thing to any person who is not already in the se- cret till the directors have made their choice, and till the king's pleasure has been taken. 292 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. 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 insurmount- able 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 re- pent of it. She shall not, if the unbounded confidence and attachment of one to whom she is dearer than life can com- pensate her for a few years' absence from much that she loves. Dear Margaret ! She wiU feel this. Consult her, my love, and' let us both have the advantage of such advice as her ex- cellent understanding, and her warm affection for us, may iiir- nish. 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 councilor 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 can not 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 sur- prise. India was not then the familiar name that it has be- come 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 house- holds where service in our Eastern territories now presents it- self in the light of a probable and desirable destiny for a prom- ising 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 cross- ed no water broader and more tempestuous than the Mersey, 1832-'34.] LORD MACAULAY. 293 looked forward to a voyage which (as she subsequently learn- ed 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 fi'om beloved relations un- der such conditions was a separation indeed ; and if Macaiilay 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 in- duced 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 Smol- lett'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 5th, 1833. Deae 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 every thing and every body — metaphysics, poetry, politics, scenery, and painting. One thing I have ob- served 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. 294 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. I have also seen Kenny for an hour or two. I do not know that I ever mentioned Kenny to you. When London is over- flowing, I meet such numbers of people that I can not remem- ber half their names. This is the time at which every ac- quaintance, however slight, attracts some degree of attention. In the desert island, even poor Poll was something of a com- panion to Kobinson 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 honor. However, this man is one of our great comic writers. Pie has the merit, such as it is, of hitting the very bad taste of our modem audiences better than any other person who has stooped to that degrading work. We had a good deal of liter- ary chat, and I thought him a clever, shrewd fellow. My father is poorly : not that any thing very serious is the matter with him ; but he has a cold, and is in low spirits. Ever yours, T. B. M. London, October 14tl], 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 ofE my mind. I should be quite joyous' if I had only you to read it to. But to Na- pier 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 of tener 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 any thing so flowingly as the lat- ter 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 favorite in her youth. Neither am I sure that Lord and Lady Holland 183^'34.] LORD MACAULAY. 295 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.* 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 recognize. 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 can not think of parting with him. This, to be sure, matters little ; for there is at present just as little chance of getting any thing 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 can not 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, we should never have dreamed of having places. Why can not 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 : h6 will never, I am sure, write good dispatches. There is nothing truer than Poor Eichard's saw, " 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 * Lord Holland, once upon a time, speaking to Macaulay of his grand- father, said, " He had that temper which kind folks have heen pleased to say belongs to my family ; but ho shared the fault that belonged to that school of statesmen, an utter disbelief in public virtue." 296 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [Chap. v. been above the world, as bakers, watch-makers, or innkeepers. The next time my father speaks to me about P , I will of- fer to subscribe twenty guineas toward 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 be- ginning? What do you think of the old fellow? He was always a great favorite of mine; honest, though careless; a strong party man on the right side, yet with much kind feel- ing toward his opponents, and even toward his personal ene- mies. He is to me a most entertaining writer ; far superior to Clarendon in the art of amusing, though of course far Clar- endon's infei'ior in discernment, and in dignity and correctness of style. Do you know, by-the-bye. Clarendon's life of him- self ? I like it, the part after the Eestoration 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 toward 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. Maoaulay. London, October 21st, 1833. My dear Sistee, — 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 ne- gotiations 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 Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the East India Company •were at that time Mr. Campbell Maqoribauks and Mr. Wigram. 183a-'34.] LOED MACATILAY. 297 Tlie question now is whether' their opposition will be sup- ported by the other directors. If it should be so, I have ad- vised 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 favor of some person whom we can not be suspected of supporting from interested motives. From the extreme unreasonableness and pertinacity which are discernible in ev- ery 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 l-ight 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. How- ever, a few days will decide the matter. I have heard from Napier. He praises my article on Wal- pole 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. Loudon, October 21st, 1833. Dear Napiee, — 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 de- lay of which you must, I am sure, have complained very bit- terly in your heart. I was so thoroughly dissatisfied with the article as it stood at first that I completely rewrote it ; altered the whole arrangement ; left out ten or twelve pages in one part ; and added twice as many in another. I never wrote any thing so slowly as the first half, or so rapidly as the last half. LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. You are in an error about Akenside, which I must clear up for his credit, and for mine. You are conf ounc^ing the " Ode to Curio " and the " Epistle to Curio." The latter is general- ly 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 unskilKul way. Johnson says, in his "Life of Aken- side,"* that no poet ever so much mistook his powers as Aken- side when he took to lyric composition. "Having," I think the words are, " written with great force and poignancy his 'Epistle to Curio,' he afterward transformed it into an od£ only disgraceful to its author." When I said that Chesterfieldf 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 testi- mony of all his contemporaries of all parties, for wit, taste, and eloquence ; that what remains of his Parliamentary ora- tory is superior to any thing 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, be- cause I thought it, like most of his lordship's' criticism, below refutation. On the drama Lord Byron wrote more nonsense * "Akenside was one of the fiercest and tbe most uncompromising of the young patriots out of Parliament. When he found that the change of ad- ministration had produced no change of system, he gave vent to his indig- nation 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 Gray and Collins, and had employed his powers in grave and elevated sat- ire, he might have disputed the pre-eminence of Dryden." — Macaulay's Es- say on Sorace Walpole. + "Lord Chesterfield stands much lower in the estimation of posterity than he would have done if his " Letters" had never been published.- 1833-'34.] LORD MACAULAY. 299 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 Eogers greater poets than "Wordsworth and Coleridge. Ever yours truly, T. B. Macaulat. London, Octoter 28th, 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. Malkin is a man of singular temper, judgment, and firmness of nerve. Danger and responsibili- ty, 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 sat down to be examined, which is just the situation in which all other people, from natural flurry, do worse than at other times, he 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 Yiceroy of Can- ton 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. Apropos 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 Thm-sday with the Fish-mongers' Company, the first company for gourmands in the world. Their mag- nificent hall near London Bridge is not yet built ; but as re- * Sir Benjamin Malltin, a college friend of Macaulay, was afterward a judge iu the Supreme Court at Calcutta. 300 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. v. spects eating and drinking I shall be no loser, for we are to be entertained at the Albion Tavern. This is tbe first dinner- party tbat I shall have been to for a long time. There is no- body 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 honor ! — that Macaulay was in London. I pre- served all the dignity of a young lady in an affaire du cmur. "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 1st, 1833. Deae Hannah, — I have not much to add to what I told you yesterday ; but every thing that I have to add looks one way. Marjoribanks and "Wigram have resigned. "We have a new chairman and deputy chaii-man, both very strongly in my favor. Sharp, by whom I sat yesterday at the Fish-mongers' 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 any body so fit. This is all the news that I have for 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. I encouraged him ; and told him that I hoped to be in England * * Mr. Sharp died in 1837, before Macaiilay's return from India. 183a-'34.] LORD MACAULAY. 301 again before the end of 1839, and that there was nothing im- possible 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 prom- ised to select the best books, and send them regularly to me. The Fish-mongers' dinner was very good, but not so pro- fusely splendid as I had expected. There has been a change, I iind, 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. LoDdoo, November — , 1833. Deae 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 attach- ment, 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 repre- sents, as I do, a town of a hundred and twenty thousand peo- ple, to keep his own constituents in good humor ; and the Spitalflelds weavers and Whitechapel butchers are nothing to 302 LIFE AND LETTERS: OP i[chap.v. me. But, ever since I succeeded in what every body 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 polities. However — to return from that delightful theme, my own praises — rLushington, who is not very popular with the rabble of the Tower Ham- lets, 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 Plorace "Walpole so much that Sir Stratford Canning advised me not to go near her. She was "Walpole's greatest favorite. His "Eeminiscences" are addressed to her in terms of the most gallant eulogy. When he was dying, at past eighty, he asked her to many 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 ar- ticle 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 Rog- ers and once with Grant. Lady Holland is in a most extraor- dinary state. She came to Rogers's, with Allen, in so bad a humor 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 nide; 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 183a-'34.] LORD MACAULAY. 30^ 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 defense of his patroness the best thing that Ije had seen in him. No sooner had Tom and I got into the street than he broke forth: "That such an old stager as Eogers should talk such nonsense, and give Allen credit ,ior attach- ment to any thing but his dinner! Allen was^ursting 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 invita- tions. I have at last found out the cause of her ill-humor, 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 can not 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 sure- ly not calculated to injure the sale of the book. Lord Hol- land 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 lis 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 22d, 1833. My deak Sistek, — The decision is postponed for a week ; but there is no chance of an unfavorable 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 among them. The very courte- ous manner in which several of the directors begged to be ^04 LIFE AND LETTERS OF tcHAP. v. introduced to me, and drank my health at dinner, led' me to thiiik that t^ie 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 bea; 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 extr^.vagant outfit. I shall take only what will be necessary for the voyage. Plate, wine, coaches, furni- ture, glass, china, can be bought in Calcutta as well as in Lon- don. I shall not have money enough to fit myself out hand- somely with such things here ; and to fit myself out shabbi- ly would be folly. I reckon that we can bring our whole ex- pense for the passage within the £1200 allowed by the com- pany. My calculation is that our cabins and board will cost £250 apiece. The passage of our servants £50 apiece. That makes up £600. My clothes and etceteras, as Mrs. Meeke* observes, will, I am quite sure, come within £200. Yours will, of course, be more. I will send you £300 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 send- ingin your milliner's bills to me. I I'sckon my servant's out- fit at £50 ; your maid's at as much more. The whole will be £1200. One word about your maid. You really must choose with gi'eat caution. Hitherto the company has required that all ladies who take maid-servants 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 inso- * Mrs. Meeke was his favorite among bad novel-writers. See page 129. 183a-'34.] LORD MACAULAY. 305 lence ; 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 toward 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 dis- credit on their country by the immorality of their lives and the vulgarity of their manners. On these grounds the com- pany has hitherto insisted upon their being sent back at the expense of those who take them out. The late act will en- able your servant to stay in India, if she chooses to stay. I hope, therefore, that you will be carefid 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 can not be aware, and which have turned many heads that might have been steady enough in a quiet nursery or kitchen in En- gland. To find a man and wife, both of whom would suit us, would be very difficult ; and I think it right, also, to ofEer to my clerk to keep him in my service. He is honest, intelli- gent, and respectful ; and as he is rather inclined to consump- tion, the change of climate would probably be useful to him. I can not 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, Decemljer 5th, 1833. Dear Loed Lactsdowne, — I delayed returning an answer to your kind letter till this day, in order that I might be able to send you definitive, intelligence. Yesterday evening, the di- VoL. I.— 20 306 -LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. rectors 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. •Eut the motives which urge me to make it are quite irresisti- ble. 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 impos- sible 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 peri. Hitherto, literature has been merely my relaxation — the amuse- ment of perhaps a month in the year. I have never consid- ered it as the means of support. I have chosen my own top- ics, taken my own time, and dictated my own terms. The thought of becoming a book-seller's hack; of writing to re- lieve, not the fullness 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 pe- cuniary gain, and whom your salary very poorly compensates for the sacrifiee of ease and of your tastes to the public serv- ice, can not 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 aad deprived me of my presence of mind. 1832-'34.] LORD MACAULAY. 307 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 fond- ly 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 prof essional 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 opportuni- ty 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 En- gland 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 regu- lar 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 fel- low-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 stoop- ing 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 ap- palled 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; 308 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. and yoti will therefore, I am sure, fully enter into my feel- ings. 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 de- pendence ; that I am almost certain, if I live, of obtaining a competence by honorable means before I am past the full vig- or of manhood — all 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 Bo- wood on Wednesday next. Labouchere vrill be my fellow- traveler. On Saturday we must both retm'n to town. Short as my visit must be, I look forward to it with great pleas- ure. Believe me ever yours most faithfully and afEectionately, T. B. Maoatjlay. To Harmah M. MacaMlay. Loudon, December 5tli, 1833. Mt deae Sistek, — I am overwhelmed with business, clear- ing off my work here, and preparing for my new functions. Plans of ships, and letters from captains, pour in without in- termission. I really am mobbed with gentlemen begging to have the honor 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 ac- commodation, 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 no- tice. Every thing in India is given by the governor in coun- 1833-'34.] LOED MACAULAY. 309 cil ; and, though I have no direct voice in the disposal of pa- tronage, my indirect influence may be great. Grant's kindness through all these negotiations has been such as I really can not 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 Rob- ert Grant's absence ; not that Eobert ever did me ill oflBces with him — ^far from it ; but Grant's is a mind that can not stand alone. It is — ^begging your pardon for my want of gal- lantry — a feminine mind. It turns, like ivy, to some support. When Eobert is near him, he clings to Eobert. Eobert being away, he clings to me. This may be a weakness in a public man, biit 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 sepa- ration, like the approach of death, brings out aU friendly feel- ings 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) irrepa- rable. They all, however, he said, agreed that a man of honor could not make politics a profession unless he had a compe- tence 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 aU 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 Eeach. Selina professes that she is ready to die with envy of the fine houses and v*andas. I heartily wish we were back again in a nice plain brick house, three windows in front, in Cadogan Place or Eussell Square, with twelve or fif- 310 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. teen hundred a year, and a spare bedroom (we, like Mrs. ISTor- ris,* must always liaTe a spare bedroom) for Edward and Mar- garet. Love to them both. Ever yours, T. B. M. To Macvey Ncvpier, Esq. London, December 5th, 1833. Deae Napiee, — 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 coun- try 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 EdwMirgh Be- view. In the situation in which I shall now be placed, a con- nection with the Meview 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. Per- haps 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. Yery little, if any, of the eflEect 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 com- merce 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, * A leading personage in MisB Austen's "Mansfield Park." 1832-'34.] LORD MACAULAY. 311 and wMcli, 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 sign-post 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 mat- ters, we shall have ample time to discuss them before my de- parture. Let me know whether you are willing to make an arrangement on this basis. I have not forgotten Chatham in the midst of my avoca- tions. I hope to send you an article on him early next week. Ever yours sincerely, T. B. Macaulat. From the Right Hon. Frcmcis Jeffrey to Maeuey Napier, Esq. 24 Moray Place, Saturday Evening, December 7th. Mt dear Napiee, — 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 can not help it. I was not prepared for six years, and I must still hope that it wiU 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 seces- sion 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. Jeffeet. To Harmah M. Maeaulay. London, December 2l8t, 1833. Mt deae Sistee, — Yesterday I dined at Boddington's. We had a very agreeable party : Duncannon, Charles Grant, 312 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. Sharp, Chantrey the sculptor, Eobus 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. Eobus was very amusing. He is a great authority on In- dian matters. He was during sevei'al years advocate general in Bengal, and made all his large fortune there. I asked him about the climate. IN^othing, he said, could be pleasanter, ex- cept in August and September. He never eat 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 ex- penses. "I can not conceive," he said, "how any body at Calcutta can live on less than £3000 a year, or can contrive to spend more than £4000." We talked of the insects and snakes, and he said a thing which reminded me of his broth- er Sydney, "Always, sir, manage to have at your, table some fleshy, blooming young writer or cadet, just come out ; that the mosquitoes 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 ex- pense. 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 can not 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 seem to be in the most amiable mood. I have twice as many invitations as I can ac- cept, 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 1832-'34.] LOED MACAULAY. 313 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 ; Eogers, Luttrell, Eice, Tom Moore, Sydney Smith, Grant, and other great wits and politicians. I am quite delighted at this ; both because you wiU, 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 wUl be of advan- tage 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, pi- ano-forte-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 Hcmndh M. Macmilay. London, January 2d, 1834. My deae Sistee, — I am busy with an article* for Napier. I can not in the least tell at present whether I shall like it or not. I proceed with great ease ; and iu 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 hyster- ical about my goiug ; paid me such compliments as I can not repeat ; cried ; raved ; called me dear, dear Macaulay. " Tou 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 * The first article on Lord Chatham. 314: LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. V: reasons : because she is a woman ; because she is very unhap- py 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 begin- ning 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 pui-pose 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 din- ner she became so violent that even Lord Holland, whose tem- per, 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 gentle- man 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 opportuni- ty 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. MacoAday. London, January 4tl], 1834. Mt deab Sistbe, — 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 book-stalls ; and I shall no longer sufEer 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 1833-'34.] LOED MACAULAY. 315 for the voyage is Eiehardson, Yoltaire's works, Gibbon, Sis- mondi's "History of the French," "Davila," "The Orlando" in Italian, " Don Quixote " in Spanish, Homer ia Greek, Hor- ace in Latin. I must also have some books of jurisprudence, and some to initiate me in Persian and Hindoostanee. Shall I buy "Dunallan" for you? I believe that in your eyes it would stand in the place of all the rest together. But, seri- ously, let me know what you would like me to procure. Ellis is making a little collection of Greek classics for me. Sharpe 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 writ- ing to you, and fall to my article. I rather think that it will be a good one. Ever yours, T. B. M. London, February i3th, 1834. Deae Napiee, — It is true that I have been severely tried by ill-health during the last few weeks ; but I am now rapid- ly 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 ex- ecuted. I think that the time is come when a fair estimate may be formed of the intellectual and moral character of Yol- taire. The extreme veneration with which he was regarded during his life -time 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 Eousseau and Marmontel's " Memoirs," and Madame du Deffand's " Letters," and perhaps a few other works which 316 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. would be of use. But Grimm's " Correspondence," and sever- al other volumes of memoirs and letters, would be necessary. If you would make a smaU 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 Yoltaire. I fear that the article, must be enormously long — seventy pages, perhaps ; but you know that I do not run into imnecessary 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 , JSeview, I should like to have any work of very striking merit which may appear during my absence. The particular department of litei'ature 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 bid farewell to his elect- ors, in an address which the Leeds Tories probably thought too high-flown* for the occasion. But he had not yet done * "If, now tbat I have ceased to be your servant, and am only your sin- cere and grateful friend, I may presume to offer you advice which must, at least, be allowed to be disinterested, I would say to yon : Act toward yonr future representatives as you have acted toward 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 plain- ly. Reject, as you have hitherto rejected, the wages of dishonor. 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 virt- uous principles for which we have struggled and triumphed together — the principles of liberty and toleration, of justice and order. Support, as 1832-'34.] LOED MACAULAY. 3I7 with the House of Oommons. 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 im:possible for any man to live in Ire- land.' " O'Connell called upon Lord Althorp, as the repre- sentative 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 ease was a feeling of reluctance to throw over poor Mr. HiU to be bullied by O'Con- nell 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 pri- vate 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 inter- fere ; but the matter had gone too far. One Irish representa- tive after another jumped up to repeat the same question with regard to his own case, and received the same answer. At length Shell rose, and asked whether he was one of the 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 a hundred -fold! May your manu- factures 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 farthest regions of the East, and give me fresh cause to be proud of tho intelligence, the industry, and the spirit of my constituents !" 318 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. v. members to whom the noble lord had alluded. Lord Althorp replied: "Yes. The honorable 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 no- ble lord to have made himself responsible for the imputation. Then ensued one of those scenes in which^ the House of Com- m'ons appears at its very worst. All the busy-bodies, 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'Con- nell made some observation to the honorable member sitting next him which was not heard in the body of the House. Lord Althorp immediately rose, and amidst loud cheers, and with considerable warmth, demanded to know what the hon- orable 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, honorable 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, com- posed of members who enjoyed a special reputation for dis- cretion. 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 senti- 1832-'34.] LOED MACAULAY. 319 ment 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 sit- ting of the House, withdrew his charge in unqualified terms of seK-abasement and remorse. Lord Althorp readily admit- ted that he had acted " imprudently as a n^an, and still more imprudently as a minister," and stated that he considered him- self 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 honorable gentleman had been raised by the transaction. Shell 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.* Gravesend, February 15th, 1834. Deab Loed Lajstsdowne, — I had hoped that it would have been ia 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, shab- by things that I had heard Shell say at Brooks's. I can not 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. Macaulat. * In Macaulay's journal for June 3d, 1851, we read : " I -went to break- fast with the Bishop of Oxford, and there learned that Shell was dead. Poor fellow ! We talked about Sheil, and I related my adventure of Feb- rnary, 1834. Odd that it should have been so little known, or so complete- ly forgotten ! Every body thought me right, as I certainly was." 320 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vi. CHAPTEK YI. 1834-1838. The Outward Voyage. — Arrival at Madras. — Maoaulay is summoned to join Lord William Beutiuok in the Neilgberries. — His Journey Up-coun- try. — His Native Servant. — Arcot. — Bangalore. — Seringapatam. — As- cent of the Neilgherries. — First Sight of the Governor-general. — Letters to Mr. Ellis and the Miss Maoaulays. — A Sunimer 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 Cal- cutta Public Meeting. — ^Macaulay's Defense 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 Func- tions of that Post. — Specimens of his Official Writing. — Results of his Labors. — He is appointed President of the Law Commission, and recom- mends 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 En- gland. — Calcutta and Dublin. — Departure from India. — Letters to Mr. Ellis, Mr. Sharp, Mr. Napier, and Mr. Z. Macaulay. Feom the moment that a deputation of Falmontli Whigs, headed by their mayor, came on board to wish Macaulay his health in India and a happy return to England, nothing oc- curred 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 sea-faring na- tion. The company on the quarter-deck was much on a level with the average society of an East Indiaman. "Hannah will 1834-'38.] LOED MACAULAY. 321 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, Lat- in, Spanish, Italian, French, and English ; folios, quartos, octa- vos, 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 color and his nakedness, nearly made me die of laugh- ing." This gentleman was soon followed by more responsi- ble messengers, who brought tidings the reverse of welcome. Lord William Bentinek, who was then governor-general, was detained by ill-health at Ootacamund, in the l^eilgherry Hills ; a place which, by name at least, is now as familiar to English- men 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 ren- dered 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 YoL. I.— 21 322 LIFE AND LETTERS, OF [chap, yi eminent an Evangelical as the editor of the Christicm Ob- server, 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 hot-house, and the ar- chitecture as strange as the vegetation." Every feature in that marvelous scene delighted him, both in itself and for the sake of the innumerable associations and images which it con- jured 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 outwai'd re- spect 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 congratu- lation to the King of England, in which he calls himself his majesty's good brother and ally." 1834-'38.] LORD MACAULAY. 323 Macaulay set forth on his journey within a week from his landing, traveling by night, and resting while the sun was at its hottest. He has recorded his first impressions of Hindoo- stan in a series of journal letters addressed to his sister Mar- garet. 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 en- abled 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 re- versed in his own case the experience of those countless writ- ers 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 East- ern empire are to this day incomparably the most popular* of his works. It may be possible, without injury to the fame of the author, to present a few extracts from a correspond- ence which is in some sort the raw material of productions that have already secured their place among our national classics. " lu the afternoon of the 17th of 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 rae 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 Bias's devout * 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 twen- ty years together, there has been little to choose between the pair. The steadiness and permanence of the favor with which they are regarded may be estimated by the fact that, daring 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. 324 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.vi, 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 coun- try 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 cele- brated 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 serv- ant, and the captain and I took a ride to see the lions of the neighborhood. 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 gar- den 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 corre- spondent, the pleasure which the reality was capable of afford- ing. If he put up at a collector's bungalow, he liked to think that his host ruled more absolutely and over a larger popula- 1834-'38.] LORD MACAULAY. 325 tion than " a Duke of Saxe-Weimar or a Duke of Lucca ;" and when he came across a military man with a turn for read- ing, he pronounced him, " as Dominie Sampson said of an- other 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 23d, I took leave of Colonel Cnbbon, who told me, with a \va,rmth 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 author- ities at the town of Mysore, and an oflScer 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 resi- dence 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 lie was afterward distinguished at the siege. I remembei* 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 ex- pectations 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 every thing silent and desolate. The mosque, indeed, is still kept iip, and de- serves to be so ; but the palace of Tippoo has fallen into utter ruin. I saw, however, with no small interest, the air-holes 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 throngh which the English soldiers fought their way against desperate disadvantages into 326 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vi. 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 Tintem Abbey and Melrose Abbey. The courts, which bear a great resem- blance to those of the Oxford colleges, are completely overrun with weeds and flowers. The Hall of Audience, once considered the finest in India, still retaius 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 build- ings 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 iu 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 Tippog himself ou 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 minute- ness that would qualify him for an Anglo-Indian Eichardson. By the evening of the 24th of June he was once more on the road ; and, about noon on the following day, he began to as- cend the ISTeilgherries, 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 to- gether he met nothing more human than a monkey, until a turn of the road disclosed the pleasant surprise of an amphi- theatre 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 1834-'38.] LOED MACAULAY. 327 look of a rising Englisli watering-place. The largest house is occupied by the governor-general. It is a spacious and hand- some building of stone. To this I was carried, and immedi- ately ushered into his lordship's presence. I found him sit- ting by a fire in a carpeted hbrary. 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 labors 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. OotacamuDd, July let, 1834. Deae 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 swnaterion. It lies at the height of seven thousand feet above the sea. While London is a perfect gridiron, here am I, at 13° north from the equator, by a blazing wood-fire, with my windows closed. My bed is heaped with blankets, and my black serv- ants are coughing round me in all directions. One poor fel- low 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 Shakspeare, is so interesting to the English* — a dead Indian. I traveled the whole four hundred miles between this and Madras on men's shoulders. I had an agreeable journey, on the whole. I was honored by an interview with the Kajah of Mysore, who insisted on showing me all his wardrobe, and his * "The Tempest," act ii., scene 2. 328 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vi. picture-gallery.' He has six or seven colored English prints not much inferior to those which I have seen in the sanded parlor 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 " Yenus," or Lord Carlisle of " The Three Maries," is a head of the Duke of Wel- lington, which has most certainly been on a sign-post in En- gland. Yet; after all, the rajah was by no means the greatest fool whom I found at Mysore. I alighted at a bungalow apper- taining to the British Residency. " There I found an English- man who, without any preface, accosted me thus : " Pray, Mr. Macaulay, do not you think that Bonaparte was the Beast ?" "No, sir, I can not, say that I do." "Sii', 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 door-keeper, and the librarian — make 666." " Well, sir, that is strange. But I can assure you that, if you write Napoleon Bonaparte in Arabic, leaving out only two let- ters, it will give 666." "And, pray, sir, what right have you to leave out two letters ? And, as St. John was ivriting Greek and to Greeks, is it not likely that he would use the Greek rather than the Arabic notation ?" " But, sir," said this learn- ed divine, "every body knows that the Greek letters were never used to mark numbers." I answered with the meek- est look and voice possible : " I do not think that every body 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 end- ed the controversy. Tlie man looked at me as if he thought me a very wicked fellow ; and, I dare say, has by this time dis- covered thati 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. 1834-'38.] LOED MACAULAY. 329 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 ex- actly 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 " Il- iad " and " Odyssey," Virgil, Horace, Caesar's " Commentaries," Bacon, "De Augmentis," Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto,Tasso, "Don Quixote," Gibbon's "Eome," Mill's " India," all the seventy vol- umes 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 lit- tle 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 any thing be so bad as the living bush which bleeds and talks, or the Harpies who befoul ^neas'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 "Ec- logues" best — the second and tenth above all. But I think that the finest lines in the Latin language are those five which begin : Sepibus in nostris parvam te roscida mala — * I can not tell you how they struck me. I was amused to find * Eclogue viii., 37. 330 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap, vt that Voltaire pronounces that passage to be the finest in "Vir- gil. 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 Shakspeare 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 peo- ple. Tour 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 Chick- asaws ; whether Yan Diemen's Land was peopled from !New Holland, or New Holland from Yan Diemen's Land ; what is the precise mode of appointing a head-man in a village in Timbuctoo. I would not give the worst page in Clai-endon or Fra Paolo for all that ever was or ever will be written about the migrations of the Leleges and the laws of the Os- cans. 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 at Madras has sent me a paper on legislation. " Your honor 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 honor can make men to swear truly, your hon- or'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 honor, for your fame, and for the profit of the company. 1834-'38.] LORD MACAULAY. 331 Let your honor cut off the great toe of the right foot of every man who swears falsely, whereby your honor'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 forever. Ever yours affectionately, T. B. M. To Miss Fammy cmd Miss Selina Maoaulay. Ootaoamund, August lOth, 1834. My deah Sistees, — I sent last month a full account of my journey hither, and of the place, to Margaret, as the most sta- tionary 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 nar- rative than a good many imperfect fragments. Money matters seem likely to go on capitally. My ex- penses, I find, will be smaller than I anticipated. The rate of exchange, if you know what that means, is very favorable 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 Mac- aulays 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 hun- dred pounds for my father, and you all. I can not 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, some- times, 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 any body ; and perfectly indifferent, at least as far as our pecuniary interest is concerned, to the changes of 332 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vl. the political world. Eely on it, my dear girls, that there is no chance of my going back with my heart cooled toward 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 traveler fresh from England. " I have as yet seen little of the Idolatry of India ; and that little, though excessively absurd, is not characterized 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 u, council day ; but I found afterward that I had lost nothing. The whole ceremony consisted in sac- rificing bullocks to the manes of the defunct. The roaring of the poor vic- tims was horrible. The people stood talking and laughing till a particu- lar 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 1834-'38.] LOED MACAULAY. 333 now it is considered impious to say otherwise, for they have got into a vio- lent qnarrel with the missionaries and the bishop. The missionaries re- fused to recognize the distinctions of caste in the administration of the sacrament of the Lord's-siipper, and the bishop supported them in the re- fusal. I do not pretend to judge whether this was right or wrong. Swartz and Bishop Heber conceived that the distinction of caste, however objeo- tiona;b]e 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 com- municate apart from the pariahs. " Bnt, whoever was firpt in the wrong, the Christians of Tanjore took care to be most so. They called in the iuterposition 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 feir specimen of the whole : ' These missionaries, my lord, loving only filthy lucre, bid us to eat Lordsupper 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 yon 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 f 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 aud Heber had not been inclined to regard as essen- tial. 'Sir,' said the reverend gentleman, 'the sooner the Church of Tan- jore is broken up, the better. You can form no notion of the worthless- ness 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 Neilghemes coin- cided 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 hoars' walking." He began to be bored, for the first and last time in his life : while his companions, who had not his resources, 334: LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vi. were ready to hang themselves for very dullness. The ordi- nary amusements with which, in the more settled parts of In- dia, 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 " trodden 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 favorite romance into general favor. The reader will consent to put up with one or two slight inaccuracies in order to have the stoiy told by Thackeray. " 1 spolie to him once about ' Clarissa.' ' Not read " Clarissa !" ' lie 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 Athensenm 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 Jadobin and a freethinker, who could only be got to attend church by the positive orders of the governor-general, cried over the last volume* until he was * 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 any one, after obtaining the out- line 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. 1834-'38.] LOED MACAULAY. 335 too ill to appear at dinner. The chief secretary — afterward, as Sir William Macnaghten, the hero and the victim of the darkest episode in onr Indian history — declared that reading this copy of " Clarissa " under the inspiration of its owner's en- thusiasm was nothing less than an epoch in his life. After the lapse of thirty years, when Ootacammid had long enjoyed the advantage of a book-club and a circulating library, the tra- dition of Macaulay and his novel still lingered on with a te- nacity 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 Cbristian, 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 b^ the cook aforesaid ; Desdemona by au ugly, impudent pariah girl, his wife ; lago by Colonel Casement's servant ; and Michael Cassio by my rascal. The place of the handkerchief was supplied by a small piece of sugar-caur dy 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 Shakspeare 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 opiuion of my man's mor- als, and a very poor opinion also of the veracity of his accusers. It was, however, so very inconvenient for me to be jnst then deprived of my serv- ant that I offered to settle the business at my own expense. Under ordi- nary circumstances this would have been easy enough, for the Hindoos of the lower castes have no delicacy on these subjects. The Iiusband 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, giv- 336 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap.vi: ing liim a flogging, Seating kettles before him, and carrying liim round on au ass witli his face to tlie 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 au end of my sweet words. My blood was beginning to boil at the undis- guised display of rancorous hatred and shameless injustice. I sat 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 assem- bled, and continued all night in violent contention. At last the judge pro- nounced 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 re- fused 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 palauquin, torn off his turban, stripped him almost naked, and were, as it seemed, about to pull him to pieces. I sna,tohed 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 ray arms ; for, like most of his countrymen, he is a chicken-hearted 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 councilor. 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 ns — a vast ocean of foliage on 1834-'38.] LORD MACAULAY. 337 which the san was shining gloriously. I am very little given to cant about the beauties of nature, but I was almost moved 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 great- ly 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 Dev- onshire. After reaching the foot of the hills, we traveled through a suc- cession 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 aud rain in which I had been living for weeks. " On Tuesday, the 16th, I went on board at Madras. I amused myself on the voyage to Calcutta with learning Portuguese, and made myself al- most 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 Camo- ehs ; but I have so often found my first impressions wrong on such snbjects 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 iu these cases I had not pitched my expectations low." He had not mucli time for his Portuguese studies. The run was unusually fast, and the ship only spent a week in the Eay of Bengal, and forty-eight hours in the Hooghly. , He found his sister comfortably installed in Government House, where he himseK took up his quarters during the next six weeks ; Lady William Bentinck having been prepared to wel- come him as a guest by her husband's letters, more than one of which ended with the words "6 un miracolo." Toward the middle of November, Macaulay began housekeeping for himself ; living, as he always loved to live, rather more gen- erously than the strict necessities of his position demanded. His residence, then the best in Calcutta, has long since been converted into the Bengal Club. Vol. I.— 22 338 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vi. To Macvey Najpier, Esq. Calcutta, December 10th, 1834. Deae Napiee, — First to busiwess. At length I send you the article on Mackintosh ; an article which has the ijaerit 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 secrecy. The printers at Edin- burgh will, therefore, have no trouble in deciphering my man- uscript, and the corrector of the press will find his word done to his hands. The disgraceful imbecility, and the still more disgi-aceful 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 unspar- ingly abused by Southey and Lockhart in the Qua/rterly ; 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 Biirnet's " Characters " edited by Bishop Jebb. This reminds me that I have to ac- knowledge 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 for- eign 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 Yenise ;" St. Eeal's " Conjuration de Yenise ;" Era Paolo's works ; Mon- strelet'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 1834-'38.] LOED MACAULAY. 339 some reason, tlie City of Palaces ; bnt I have seen nothing in the East like the view from tlie Castle Rock, nor expect to see any thing like it till we stand there together again. Kindest regards to Lord Jeffrey. Yours most truly, T. B. Maoaulat. To Mrs. Cropper. Calcutta, December 7tb, 1834. Deaeest Maegaeet, — I rather suppose that some late let- ters from ISTancy may have prepared you to learn what I am now about to communicate. She is going to be married, and with my fullest and wannest 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 intrusted 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 Sir Edward Colebrooke, 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 Sir Edward, then almost at the head of the service, of receiving bribes from the natives. A per- fect storm was raised against the accuser. He was almost ev- erywhere abused, and very generally cut. But, with a firm- ness 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. Sir Edward was dismissed in disgrace, and is now living obscurely in England. The Gov- ernment here, and the directors at home, applauded Trevelyan in the highest terms ; and from that time he has been consid- ered as a man likely to rise to the very top of the service. Lord William told him to ask for any thing that he wished for. Trevelyan begged that something might be done for 340 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vi. his elder brother, who is in the company's army. Lord William told him that he had richly earned that, or any thing else, and gave Lieutenant Trevelyan a very good diplomatic employment. Indeed Lord William, a man who makes no favorites, 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 un- der secretaryship for foreign affairs, an office of a very impor- tant 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 re- port 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 master- piece in its kind. Accustomed as I have been to public af- fairs, 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 any one had observed Trevelyan's attentions to Nancy, " That man is almost always on the right side in every question ;. and jt is well that he is so,:for he gives a most confounded ideal of trouble when he happens to take the wrong one."* He is quite at the head of that active party among the younger serv- ants of the company who take the side of improvement. In particular, he is the soul of every scheme for diffusing edu- cation 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, particu- larly on horseback. He is very active and athletic, and is re- * Maoaulay used to apply to his future l)rother-in-law the remark wliicli Julias Caesar made -nith regard to his young friend Brutus : " Magni reffert hie quid velit. Quidquid volet, valdfe volet." 1834-'38.] LOED MACAULAY. 341 nowned as a great master in the most exciting and perilous of tield-sports, tlie spearing of wild boars. His face has a most characteristic expression of ardor 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 prov- ince of India, where his whole time was divided between pub- lic business and field-sports, and where he seldom saw a Eu- ropean 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 equalization of the sugar duties, the substitution of the Eoman for the Arabic alphabet in the Oriental lan- guages. 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 behavior to every body 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 sach 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 ob- stacle in the way of her having a good husband. I there- fore gave every facility and encouragement to both of them. "What I have myself felt, it is unnecessary to say. My part- ing 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 hav- ing acted not ungenerously. Biit I do not repine. Whatever I suffer I have brought on myself. I have neglected the plain- est lessons of reason and experience. I have staked my hap- 342 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap.vi. piness without calcnlating. the. chances of the dice. I have hewn out broken cisterns ; I have leaned 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 establish- ment. 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 honorable 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 af- ford. 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 Kothley Tem- ple or Leamington, I forget which. Those foolish lines con- tain 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. Macattlay. A passage from a second letter to the same person deserves to be quoted, as an instance of how a good man may be un- able to read aright his own nature, and a wise man to forecast 1834-'38.] LOED MACAULAT. 343 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 un- diminished, but strengthened by the very events which have deprived me of every thing else) my thirst for knowledge; my passion for holding converse with the greatest minds of all ages and nations ; my power of forgetting what surrounds me, and of living with the past, the future, the distant, and the unreal. Books, are becoming every thing 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 be- fore me." So little was he aware that, during the years which were to come, his thoughts and cares would be less than ever for himseK, 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 henceforward 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 forever. The fate of so young a wife and motlier touched deeply all who had known her, and some who knew her only by name.* When the melancholy news arrived' in India, the young couple were spending their honey- moon in a lodge in the governor-general's part at Barrackpore. They immediately returned to Calcutta, and, under the shad- * 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 baud between my soul and thee. Sweet sister of my early friend, the kind, the single-hearted, 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. 344 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vi. ow 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 oflScial work. 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 honorable chapter of his life ; while, on the other hand, the task of in- teresting 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 bu- reau 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 dispatch, a memorial, a report, and a decision. His method of applying general principles to tlie circum- stances of a special case, and of illustrating those principles with just so 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 diflScult," 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 pop- * "April 8th, Lichfield, Easter-Sunday. — After the service was ended, we went over the cathedral. When I stood before the famons 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 af- fected. I could not command my tears, and was forced to leave our party and walk about by myself." — Macaulay's Journal for Wie year 1849. 1834-'38.] LORD MACAULAY. 345 iilar forms and names. The conduct of the Indian Groverument with re- spect to the Press has been altogether at variance with this trite and ob- vious 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 discussiou, to those in- conveniences we are already subject. Yet while our policy is thus liberal and indulgent, we are daily reproached aud taunted with the bondage in which we keep the Press. A strong feeling on this subject appears to ex- ist throughout the European community here ; aud the loud complaints which have lately been uttered are likely to produce a considerable effect ou the English people, who will see at a glance that the law is oppressive, aud 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 itr— be in some coun- tries a wise policy. But this is not the point at issue. The question be- fore 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 in- dulgence under such outward forms as bring on it the reproach of tyran- ny. Yet this is now our policy. We are exposed to all the dangers — dan- gers, I conceive, greatly overrated — 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 ou any public measure or any public functionary. Yet the very words 'license to print' have a sound hateful to the ears of En- glishmen 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 nmrmurs 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 se- curity or of power. " One' argument only has been urged in defense of the present system. It is admitted that the Press of Bengal has long been suffered to enjoy practical liberty, aud that nothing but an extreme emergency could jus- tify 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. Par- liament has armed the governorrgeneral in council, and, in extreme cases. 346 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.vt. the governor-general alone," we sliall probably be inclined to allow little weight to this argument. No government in the world ia better provided with the means of meeting extraordinary dangers by extraordinary pre- cautions. Five persons, who may be brought together iu 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 unques- tionable power to interfere, whenever the safety of the state may require it, with overwhelming rapidity and energy, we surely ought not, in quiet times, to be constantly keeping the oifensive form and ceremonial of des- potism 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 and 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-craftsmen 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 imbittered as stainless lives. The allusions in his correspondence, all the more surely be- cause they are brief and rare, indicate that the torrent of ob- loquy 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 Direct- ors 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. 1834-'38.] LORD MACAULAY. 34Y " I regret that on this, or on any subject, my opinion should differ from that of the honorable 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 re- peal that law. "I must, in the first place, venture to express an opinion that the im- portance of that question is greatly overrated by persons, even the best in- formed and the most discerning, who are not actually on the spot. It is most justly observed by the honorable court that many of the arguments which may be urged in favor 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 argu- ments which have been employed in Europe to defend restrictions on the Press apply to a press such as that of ludia. " In Europe, and especially in England, the Press is an engine of tremen- dous 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 amouut 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' Govern- ment 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 toward keeping the administration pure. On the other hand, by misrepresenting public measures, and by flattering theprejudices of those who support it, it sometimes produces a slight degree of excite- ment 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 institu- tions. Even those English settlers who are not in the service of the Gov- ernment 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 color, in common : they feel that any convulsion which should overthrow the existing order of things would be ruinous to themselves. Particular acts of the Govern- ment — especially acts which are mortifying to the pride of caste natural- ly felt by an Englishman in India — are often angrily condemned by these persons. But every indigo-planter in Tirhoot, and every shop-keeper in Calcutta, is perfectly aware that the downfall of the Government would 348 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vi. 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 En- glish laborers and artisans whose minds are rendered irritable by frequfent 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 any thing but their own circu- lation. The fire goes out for waut 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 cus- toms and excise, judges and masters in chancery, upper clerks in Govern- ment offices, officers in the army, bankers, landed proprietors, barristers, and master-manufacturers ! The most timid politician would not antici- pate 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." Tlie motive for the scumlity with whieli Macaulay was as- sailed 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 privi- lege of bringing civil appeals before the Supreme Court at Cal- cutta. 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 imputa- tion of personal corruption, and selected by the Government from a body which abounds in men as honorable and as in- telligent 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 undeni- able 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 ad- 1834-'38.1 LORD MACAULAY. 349 minister 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 admiuister justice to the great body of the people, why should we exempt a mere hand- ful of settlers from its jurisdiction ? There certainly is, I will not say the reality, but the semblauce, 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 them, 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 confi- dence in them ? " The draft of the act was published, and was, as I fully expected, not unfavorably received by the British in the Mofussil.* Seven weeks have elapsed since the notification took place. Time has been allowed for peti- tions from the farthest corners of the territories subject to this presidency. But I have heard of only one attempt in the Mofussil to get up a remon- strance ; and the Mofussil newspapers which I have seen, though generally disposed to cavil, at all the acts of the Government, have spoken favorably of this measure. " In Calcutta the case has been somewhat different ; and this is a re- markable 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 small- est objection to it. The clamor, 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 signa- tures; 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. Thongh nobody who resides at Calcutta will be sued in the Mofussil conrts, 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 term "Mofussil" is used to denote the provinces of the Bengal Presidency, as opposed to the capital. 350 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vi. The political phraseology of the English in India is the same with the political phraseology of our countrymen at home ; but it ia never to be forgotten that the same words stand for very different things at Loudon 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 toward the fifty millions ; that the Press is altogether supported by the five hun- dred, and has no motive to plead the cause of the fifty millions. "We know that India can not 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 recognize 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 English- men to settle in India, armed us with those large powers which, in my opin- ion, we ill deserve to possess if we have not the spirit to use them now." Maeaulay 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, fine- ly 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 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 lu- dicrous for description^ " I have seen," said one of the speak- ers, " at a Hindoo festival, a naked, disheveled figure, his face painted with grotesque colors, 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 flgm'e, cov- ered with ashes, dirt, and bleeding vohmtary woimds, rnay the next moment ascend the Sudder bench, and in a suit between a Hindoo and an Englishman think it an act of sanctity to de- cide against law in favor of the professor of the true faith." 1834-'38.] LOED MACAULAY. 351 Another gentleman, Mr. Longueville Clarke, reminded " the tyrant " that There yawns tlie 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 mild- er 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. Grentlemen, there has been much talk during the evening of laws, and regulations, and rights, and libei'ties; 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 Bat- tle 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, him- self a barrister, gave another barrister the lie, and a tumult ensued which Captain Biden in vain endeavored to calm by his favorite remedy. " The opinion at Madras, Bombay, and Canton," said he (and in so saying he uttered the only sen- tence of wisdom wliich 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 pro- pose an amendment which shall go into the whole question." The chairman, who certainly had earned the vote of thanks 352 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vi. for " liis very extraordinary patience " which Captain Biden was appropriately selected to move, contrived to get resolu* tions passed in favor of petitioning Parliament and the Home Government against the obnoxious act. The next few weeks were spent by the leaders of the move- ment in squabbling over the preliminaries of duels that nev- er came ofE, 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 pe- titions were signed, and an agent was selected who undertook to convey them to England. On the 22d of March, 1838, a committee of inquiry into the operation of the act was moved for in the House of Commons ; but there was noth- ing in the question which tempted honorable 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 Mac- aulay claimed their support. " I conceive," he wrote, " that the act is good in itself, and that the time for passing it has bee;i 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 En- glish were the conquerors and the lords of the country ; the dominant race ; the electors of the House of Commons, wliose 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 hun- dred 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 honor of the British Government, and with the dearest in- terests of the Indian people, it is unnecessary for me to poiut 1834-'38.] , LORD MACALflAY. 353 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 can not 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 compro- mise, and conducted by both parties with a pertinacity and a warmth that was nothing but honorable 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 favor of teaching the elements of knowl- edge 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. Late in January, 1835, the advo- cates 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 2d 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 can not at present be educated by means of their mother tongue. We must teacli them some foreign language. The claims of our own language it is hard- ly necessary to recapitulate. It stands pre-eminent even among the lan- guages 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 mcre- VoL. I.— 23 354 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. vi. ly as narratives, have seldom been surpassed, and whioli, considered as ve- liicles of etliical and political instruction, have never been equaled ; vrith just and lively representations of human life and human nature ; with the most profound speculations on metaphysics, morals, government, jurispru- dence, and trade ; with full and correct information respecting every ex- perimental science which tends to preserve the health, to increase the com- fort, or to expand the intellect of man. Whoever knows that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety gen- erations. It may safely he said that the literature now extant in that language is of far greater value than all the literature which three hun- dred 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 govern- ment. 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 in- trinsic value of our literature, or at the particular situation of this coun- try, 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 com- pared to our own ; whether, when we can teach European science, we shall teach systems which, by universal confession, whenever they differ from j those of Europe, differ for the worse ; and whether, when we can patron- f ize sound philosophy and true history, we shall countenance, at the public expense, medical doctrines which would disgrace an English farrier — as- tronomy, 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 imptilse 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 every thing that was worth read- I834:r'38.] LOED MACAULAY. 355 iiig was contained in the writings of the ancient Greeks and Eonians. Had our ancestors acted as the Committee of Public Instruction has hith- erto 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 hut 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 Asoham, 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 civilized communities. I speak of Eussia. 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 wise 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 im- provement. And how was this change effected? Not by flattering na- tional prejudices ; not by feeding the mind of the young Muscovite with the old woman's stories which his rude fathers had believed ; not by fill- ing 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 lias 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 civilized Eussia. I can not 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 business-like as a re- port of a royal commission, set the question at rest at once and forever. On the 7th of March, 1835, Lord William Ben- tinek decided that " the great object of the British Govern- ment 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 366 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap, vi. new members, both English and native, were appointed ; and Macaulay entered upon the functions of president with an en- ergy and assiduity which in his case were 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 ut- terly inadequate for the undertaking on which he was engaged. Nothing resembling an organized 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 super- intending body at Calcutta. Macaulay rose to the occasion, and threw himself into the routine of administration and con- trol with zeal sustained by diligence and tempered by tact. " We were hardly prepared," said a competent critic, " for the amount of conciliation which lie evinces in dealing with irri- table colleagues and subordhiates, and for the strong, sterling, practical common sense with which he sweeps away rubbish, or cuts the knots of local and departmental problems." The value which a man sets upon the objects of his pursuit is gen- erally in proportion to the mastery which he exercises over himself, and the patience and forbearance displayed in his dealings with others. 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 Par- liament, or pushing his own fortunes in Downing Street. Throughout his innumerable minutes, on all ' subjects, from the broadest principles to the narrowest detail, he is every- where free from crotchets and susceptibilities; and every- where ready to humor any person who will make himself use- ful, and to adopt any appliance which can be turned to ac- count. "I think it highly probable that Mr. Nicholls may be to blarae, because I have seldom kuown a qnarrel in which both parties were not to blame. But I see no evidence that he is so. Nor do I see any evidence whicli 1834-'38.] LOED MACAULAY. 357 tends to prove that Mr. Nioholls leads the Local Committee by the nose. The Local Committee appear to have acted with perfect propriety, and I can not consent to treat them in the manner recommended by Mr. Suther- land. 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 sug- gestion of putting military men on the committee as a check on the civil- ians. 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 brauoh of the service they belonged, or whether they belonged to the service at all."* Exception had been taken to an applicant for a mastership, on the ground that he had been a preacher with a strong turn for proselytizing. "Mr. seems to be so little concerned about proselytizing, 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 objec- tion than the Eeverend 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 ad- vocate of appointment by competitive examination, wherever a field for competition existed, he was no pedantic slave to a theory. In the dearth of school-masters, which is a feature in every infant educational system, he refused to reject a candi- date who " mistook Argos for Corinth," and backed the claims of any aspirant of respectable character who could "read, write, and work a sum." " Bj' all means accept the King of Oude's present, though, to be sure, more detestable maps were never seen. One would think that the rev- enues of Oude and the treasures of Saadut Ali might have borne the ex- pense 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." * This and the following extracts are taken from a volume of Macau- lay's Minutes, " now first collected from Records in the Department of Pub- lic Instmotion, by H. Woodrow, Esq., M.A., Inspector of Schools at Calcut- ta, and formerly Fellow of Caius College, Cambridge." The collection was published in India. 358 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vi. "As to the corrupting influence of the zenaua, of -wUioli Mr. Trevelyan speaks, I may regret it ; but I own tliat I cau not 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 school- master 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 sub- scription 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 bet- ter thau 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 Mem- oirs,' 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 dispatches for the information of his secretaries. "We are a little too indulgent to the whims of the people in our em- ploy. We pay a large sum to send a master to a distant station. He dis- likes 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 vaporized ladies at home run about from spa to spa. All situations have their dis- comforts ; 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 artns for Hooghly Col- lege, he says : 1834-'38.] LORD MACAULAY. 359 " I do not see why the mummeries of European heraldry should be in- troduced into any part of our Indian system. Heraldry is not a science which has any eternal rules. It is a system of arbitrary canons, origina- ting in pure caprice. Nothing can be more absurd and grotesque than ar- morial 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 par- ticipate. 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 any thing disrespectful of that liberal and generous enthusiasm for Oriental literature which appears in Mr. Suther- land's minute ; but I own that I can not 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 roman- tic. That the Saracens a thousand years ago cultivated mathematical sci- ence is hardly, I think, a reason for our spending any money in transla- ting 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 patronizing Arabic literature in the nineteenth century. The undertaking may be, as Mr. Sutherland con- ceives, a great national work. So is the breakwater at Madras. But un- der 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 HoogUy College hits nearer home. That men of thirty should be bribed to con- tinue their education into mature life "seems very absurd. Moglial 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 school-boys 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 'Eobinson 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 360 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vi. 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 diiference between a syllogism and an enthy- menie ? Who ever composed with greater spirit and elegance because he could define an oxymoron or an aposiopesis ? I am not joking, but writ- ing 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 on them, even after they have re- ceived all Mr. Piuuock's improvements. I must own, too, that I think the order for globes and other instruments unnecessarily large. To lay out £324 at once on globes alone, useful as I acknowledge those articles to be, seems exceedingly profuse, when we have only about £3000 a year for all purposes of English education. One twelve-inch or eighteen-inch globe for each school is quite enongh ; and we ought not, I think, to order six- teen such globes when we are about to establish only seven schools. Use- ful 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 school-master, and that if we purchase them it will be necessary to defer the establish- ment of schools." At one of the colleges at Calcutta tlie distribution of prizes was accompanied by some bistrionic 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 iu this country such exhibitions are peculiarly out of place. I cau 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 na- tion to a knowledge of the richest and noblest literature iu the world. The society of Calcutta assemble to see what progress we are.makiug ; 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 hiccough, and tumbles and staggers about in imitation of the tipsy English sailors whom he has seen at the punch- houses. Really, if we cau find nothing better worth reciting than this trash, we had better give up English instruction altogether." 1834-'38.] LORD MACAULAY. 361 "As to the list of prize boolis, I am not much better satisfied. It is ab- solutely uniutelliglble to me why Pope's works, and my old friend Moore's ' Lalla Eookh,' should be selected from the whole mass of English poetry to be prize books. I will engage to frame, currente calamo, a better list. Ba- con's 'Essays,' Hume's ' England/ Gibbon's ' Eonie,' Robertson's ' Charles V.,' Robertson's ' Scotlaud,' Robertson's 'America,' Swift's ' Gulliver,' ' Robin- sou Crusoe,' Shakspeare's works, ' Paradise Lost,' Milton's smaller poems, 'Arabian Nights,' Park's 'Travels,' Anson's 'Voyage,' the ' Vicar of Wake- field,' Johnson's ' Lives,' ' Gil Bias,' 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 'Aberorombie on the Intellectual Powers,' Dick's ' Moral Improvement,' Young's ' lutellectual Philosophy,* Chalmers's ' Poetical Economy '! ! ! (in passing, I may be allow- ed 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 neces- sity of ordering at haphazard. We know ' Robinson Crusoe,' and ' Gul- liver,' 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 0\^n Bopk,' Niggens's ' Earth,' Mudie's ' Sea,' and some- body 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 Benja- min Malkin will furnish the names of teu 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 tiirns 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 addi- tion. 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 prououuciiig 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 nev- er answered and never will answer, in any part of the world. Languages grow. They can not be built. We are now following the slow but sure m2 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vl. 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 he hun- dreds, uay thousands, of natives familiar with the best models of composi- tion, and well acquainted with Western science. Among them some per- sons 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, upward of a thousand works of litera- ture and science are published annually in Bengal alone, and at least four times that number throughout the entire conti- nent. 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 im- provement 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 Instruc- tion 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 ex- travagance of pageants and festivals, to promote the intellect- ual advancement of their fellow-countrymen. On several different occasions, at a single stroke of the pen, our Indian It 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 chan- nels along which this stream of public and private mimificence was to flow for the regeneration of our Eastern empire. It may add something to the merit of Macaulay's labors in 1834-'38.] LOED MACAULAY. 363 the cause of education that those labors were voluntary and unpaid ; and voluntary and unpaid likewise was another serv- ice 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. Mac- aulay, 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 Macau- lay, " should not be a mere digest of existing usages and regu- lations, but should comprise all the reforms which the commis- sion may think desirable. It should be framed on two great principles — the principle of suppressing crime with the small- est possible amount of suffering, and the principle of ascer- taining 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 gen- eral, 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 Mac- aulay 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. "Daring the last rainy season — a season, I believe, peculiarly unhealthy —every member of the commission except myself was wholly incapaci- tated for exertion. Mr. Anderson has been twice under the necessity of leaving Calcutta, and has not, till very lately, been able to labor 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 disor- dered him ; and bis health is so delicate that, admirably qualified as he is by very rare talents for the discharge of his functions, it would be iui- 364 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. vi. prudeut, iu formiug any prospective calculation, to reckon on much service from liim. Mr. Camerou, of the importance of whose assistance I need not speak, has been during more than four months utterly unable to do any ^vork, 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-gen- eral 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 occur- rences which have retarded our progress, that progress can not be called slow. People who have never considered the importance and difficulty of the task in which we are employed are surprised to hud that a code can not be spoken off extempore, or written like an article in a magazine. I am not ashamed to acknowledge that there are several chapters iu 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 sat- isfied. I certainly shall not hurry on my sliare 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 performing of which the welfare of millions may, during a long series of years, de- pend. 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 prog- ress of codes under circumstances far more favorable, we shall find little reason to accuse the Law Commission of tardiness. Bonaparte 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 com- pleted till 1808, aud 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 pa- pers 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 contro- versy and to many animated debates, I mnst acknowledge that I am inclined to fear that we have been guilty rather of precipitation than of delay." This minute was dated the 2d of January, 1837 ; and in' 1834-'38.] LORD MACAULAY. 365 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 di- gests, its pages are alive with illustrations drawn from history, from literature, and from the habits and occurrences of every- day life. The ofEense of fabricating evidence is exemplified by a case which may easily be recognized as that of Lady Mac- beth and the grooms ;* and the oiiense 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,t with an afEeetionate pre- cision which would have gladdened the heart of Charles Lamb or Sir "Walter Scott. 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 out- rage 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 appor- tioning the punishment, we are reminded of " examples which * "A, after wonuding a person ■with a kuife, goes into the room where Z is sleeping, smears Z's clothes with blood, and lays the knife under Z's pil- low ; intending not only that suspicion may thereby be turned away from himself, but also that Z may be convicted of voluntarily causing grievous hurt. A is liable to punishment as a fabricator of false evidence." t "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 «p 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 author- ize A so to do. A trespasses." "A, being exasperated at a passage iu a book which is lying on the count- er 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 criiiiiual trespass and mischief." 366 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap, vi. are universally known. Harley was laid up more than twen- ty 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 vn-iter who endowed school-boys 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 " fulfills the ends for which it was framed, the answer may safely be left to the gratitude of Indian civilians, the younger of whom car- ry 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 : ' "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 thor- oughly well established that the crime of the country is hafdly more than an annoyance. In India, if crime is allowed to get 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 dis- posed to be innocent; but, for that very reason, bold and successful crim- iuals are dangerous in the extreme. In old days, when they joined in gangs or organized bodies, they soon acquired political importance. Now, in many parts of India, crime is quite as uncommon as in the least crimi- nal parts of England ; and the old high-handed, systematized crime has almost entirely disappeared. This great revolution (for it is nothing less) ill 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 intrusted to a very small number of English magistrates, organized according to a carefully devised system of appeal and supervision which represents the experience of a cent- ury. This system is not unattended by evils ; but it is absolutely neces- sary, 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 Petal Code ' and the ' Code of Criminal Procedure.' The ' Code of Criminal Procednre ' 1834-'38.] LORD MACAULAY. 357 contains 541 sections, and forms a pamphlet of 310 -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 pock- et 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 la-w 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 ac- cepted at ouce. It was a draft when he left India in 1838. His successors made remarks on it for tweuty-two years. Those years were filled with wars and rumors 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 favorable to it, Then came the Mutiny, which iu its essence was the breakdown of an old system ; the renunciation of an attempt to eifect 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 revis- ion are both eminently creditable to their authors ; and the resnlt 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 any one 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 knowl- edge of English criminal law which, cdnsidering how little he had prac^ ticed it,* may fairly be called extraordinary. He must have possessed the * Macaulay's practice at the bar had been less than little, according to 368 LIFE AND LETTEKS OF [chap. vi. gift of going at once to the very root of tlie 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 P^nal,' 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 Livingston's 'Code for Louisi- ana ;' 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, Mac- aulay 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 can not be a great administrator; and it is pos- sible that this consciousness had something to do with the heartiness and fervor which he threw into his defense of the author of " Cato " against the charge of having been an ineffi- cient 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 fort- unes may account in part for the indulgence, and almost ten- derness, 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 an account which he gave of it at a public dinner: "My own forensic expe- rience, 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 cooks and hens." 1834-'38.] LOED MACAULAY. 369 hear that it keeps its verdure during a great part of the year. A flight of steps leads down from my library into the gar- den, 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 sunrise which Anglo-In- dian gentlemen devote to riding, and Anglo-Indian ladies to sleeping ofE the arrears of the sultry night. Regularly, every morning, his studies were broken in upon by tlie 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 ad- vances of a multitude of birds, each almost as big as her- self, which hopped and fluttered round her as she stood on tlie steps of the veranda. 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 toilet, and then to breakfast ; " at which we support nature under the exhausting effects of the climate by means of plenty of eggs, mango-tish, snipe-pies, and fre- quently a hot beefsteak. My cook is renowned through Cal- cutta 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. This great man, and his two assistants, I ani to have for thirty rupees a month. While I am on the subject of the cuisine, I may as well say ^,11 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 plant- ain is very like a rotten pear — so like, that I would lay twen- * Lord Dalhousie, the father of the governor-general, was commander- iu-chief in India during the years 1830 and 1831. Vol. I.— 24 370 LIFE AND LETTERS OP [chap. vi. ty 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 curi- ous 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 sei'vant, with a large bowl of juice fresh from the tree. I drank it, and found it very like ginger-beer in which the gin- ger has been sparingly used." Macaulay necessarily spent away from home the days on which the Supreme Council, or the Law Commission, held itheir 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 ex- penditure 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 revBrend 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 sat with Mrs. Trevelyan, translating Greek or reading Fi-ench for her benefit ; and Scribe's comedies and Saint Simon's " Memoirs " beguiled the long, languid leisure of the Calcutta afternoon, while the punka 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 com- fort 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 1834-'38.] LORD JIACAULAY. 37J^ 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 ofE than my neighbors." Nevertheless he was far too acute a judge of men to under- value 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 adapt- ed to interest those who know good talk from bad. He de- lighted in that freedom from pedantry, affectation, and pre- tension 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 honor 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 Mac- leod, the law commissioners ; Macnaghten, among the older servants of the company, and Mangles, Colvin, and John Peter Grant, among the younger. 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 * It can not bo said that all the claims made upon Macaulay's friend- ship 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 that 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 fulfills his intention, I will have him taken before the police-magis- trates." 372 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.vl the progress wMch the Law Commission had made in its la- bors ; and each successive point which was started opened the way to such a flood of talk, legal, historical, political, and per- sonal, that the company would sit far on toward noon over the empty tea-cups, until an uneasy sense of accumulating dis- patch-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 ex- change thetriumphs 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 reit- erated outpourings of lachrymose eloquence with which the Homan philosopher bewailed an expatriation that was hardly one-third as long. " I have no words," writes Macaulay, very much ;underestimating 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 mat- ter. No person can judge of it who has not experienced it. A complete revolution in all the habits of life ; an estrange- ment from almost every old friend and acquaintance ; fifteen thousand miles of ocean between the exile and every thing that he cares for; all this is, to me at least, very trying. There is no temptation of wealth or power which would in- duce 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 school-boys, 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 Orientalized and, by the time that they are of my age, they would gen- 1834-'38.] LORD MACAULAY. 373 erally 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 every thing, 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 Ire- land for years. I can not 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 set- tled 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 rav- ing Eepealers, and distracted by a contest between Protestant- ism as fanatical as that of Knox, 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 sim 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 un- derta kers ar e the only living creatures which seemto'enjoy the climate. But, thougli our atmosphereTs~hot, oiiF 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 for- midable annoyances. We have agitators in om* own small way, Tritons of the minnows, bearing the same sort of resem- blance to O'Connell that a lizard bears to an alligator. There- fore 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 374 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. vi. one half of the English society in Bengal, and seriously in- jured the other half. A lai-ge proportion of the most im- portant functionaries here are deeply in debt, and, according- ly, 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 every body 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 toward mak- ing 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."* " The rainy season of 183Y 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 staid but an hour or two, and I took such vig- orous measures that it never came again ; but I remained un- nerved and exhausted for nearly a fortnight. This was my first, audi 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 * Macaulay writes to Lord Mahon on the last day of December, 1836 : 'fin 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 Dur- ham below it. I have no intention of again taking part in politics ; but I can not tell what effect the sight of the old Hall and Abbey may produce on me." 1834-'38.] LORD MACAULAY. 375 Lord Canning and Mr. James Wilson. He put the finishing stroke to his various labors ; resigned his seat in the council, and his presidentships of the Law Commission and the Com- mittee of Public Instruction ; and, in company with the Trev- elyans, sailed for England in the first fortnight of the year 1838. To Mr. Thomas Flower Ellis. Calcutta, December 15th, 1834. Deae Ellis, — Many thanks for your letter. It is delight- ful in this strange land to see the handwriting of such a friend. We must keep up our spirits. We shall meet, I trust, in lit- tle more than four years, with feelings of regard only strength- ened 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 hon- orable and useful, are not painfully burdensome ; leisure for study, good books, an unclouded and active mind, warm affec- tions, 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 honor, 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 Trev- elyan, 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 Avithout the smallest difficulty. This ari-angement 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 376 LIFE AND LETTEES OF [chap. vi. Trevelyan, whose education, like that of other Indian serv- ants, 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 oth- er 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 Charter-house, 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 100 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 col- lege, 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 He- rodotus, and four plays of JEschylus. My admiration of ^s- chylus has been prodigiously increased by this reperusal. I can not 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. Hor- ace's notice of liim 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 ^sehylus as a manager, as a prop- erty-man ; the judicious way in which he boarded the stage ; the masks, the buskins, and the dresses.* And, after all, the * Post hnuo personse pallieque repertor honestss JEschyliis et modicis iustravit pulpita tignis, Et docuit miignumqne loqiii, nitique cothufuo. 1834-'38.] LOKD MACACJLAY. 377 " magnum loqui," tliougli the most obvious characteristic of J^schylus, is by no means his highest or his best. Nor can I explain this by saying that Horace had too tame and unim- aginative a mind to appreciate ^schyhis. 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 en- thusiastically. It seems incomprehensible to me that a critic who admired Pindar should not admire ^schylus far more. Greek reminds me of Cambridge and of ThirlwaU, and of Wordsworth's unutterable baseness and dirtiness.* When you see ThirlwaU, 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 treat- ed, on such an account, than have tlie mastership of Trinity. 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 Mal- kin's appointment to the vacant seat on the bench at Calcutta. I can not tell you how delighted I am at the prospect of hav- ing him here. An honest, enlightened judge, without profes- sional 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 es- * The subjoiued extract from the letter of a leading member of Trini- ty College explains Macaulay's not unrighteous indignation: "ThirlwaU published a pamphlet in 1834, on the admission of Dissenters to the uni- versity. The result was that he was either deprived of his assistant tu- torship by the master, Wordsworth, or had to give it up. Whewell, also,' was supposed to have behaved badly in not standing up for him. Thirl- waU left Cambridge soon afterward. I suppose that if he had remained he would have been very^ possibly Wordsworth's successor iu the master- ship." 3Y8 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap. vi. timable a friend, brought so near to me in this distant coun- try. Erer, dear Ellis, yours very affectionately, T. B. Macaulay. Calcutta, February 8th, 1835. Deae 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 En- gland 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 any thing 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 can not write about her without being altogether unmanned. That I have not utterly sunk under this blow I owe chiefly to litera- ture. 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 un- real ! Many times during the last few weeks I have repeated to myself those fine lines of old Hesiod : £1 yap Ti£ Kai mvBoe txi^v veoKrjSi'i Sv/id aZriTai lepaSirjv aKaxvi'^vog, avrdp doiSbc liovacutiv Qzpd-iritiv kXeio irporkpwv avBpilnruiv iifivfiay, liaKapag n Oeoiie o1 "GKvinrov ixovai, dii^i' bye Svtrippovkiav Eiri\^9erai, oiiSk n laiSewv fii/ivriTai ■ raxewe Se naperpaws SUpa 6ea' NjjTrauXirwi; iiariyovTO X^'C ig ,KaXKOVTTav."j On the first page of Theocritus : " March 20th, 1835. Lord W. Bentinck sailed this morning." On the last page of the " De AmicitiS :" " March 5th, 1836. Yesterday Lord Auckland arrived at Government House, and was sworn in." . ' . Beneath an idyl of Moschus, of all places in the world, Mae- * " To-day I distributed the prizes to the students of the Sanscrit Col- lege." t " The embassadors from the King of Nepaul entered Calcutta yester- day.'' It may be observed that Macaulay wrote Greek >vith or -without accents, according to the humor or hurry of the moment. 1834-'38.] LOED MACAULAY. 405 aulay notes tlie fact of Peel being Eirst Lord of the Treasury ; and he finds space, between two quotations in Athenseus, to commemorate a ministerial majority of 29 on the second read- ing 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 En- glish books that he read in the cold season of 1835-36 ; as, for instance, Gibbon's "Answer to Davis," November 6th and 7th ; Gibbon on Virgil's YI. ^neid, November 7th ; Whately's "Logic," November 15th; Thirlwall's "Greece," November 22d ; EdirMirgh JReview, November 29th. 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 ex- istence since the day that he left Mr. Preston's school-room. There is something refreshing, amidst the long list of graver treatises, to light upon a periodical entry of " UiKviKiva" the immortal work of a classic who has had more readers in a sin- gle year than Statins and Seneca in all their eighteen centti- ries 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 recog- nized a master; and, by the time that he landed in England, he knew his " Pickwick " almost as intimately as his " Grandi- son." Calcutta, June 15th, 1837. Deajr Napiee, — -Tour letter about my review of Mackin- tosh 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 men whose whole stock of literature comes from the conversations in the Green Koom. My long article on Bacon has, no doubt, been in your hands some time. I never, to the best of my recollection, proposed 406 LIFE AND LETTERS OF [chap.vi. 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 criticLue. She was a very kind friend to me from childhood. Her no- tice first called out my literary tastes. Her presents laid the foundation of my library. She was to me what Ninon was to Yoltaire — 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 favor, 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 repeti- tion, it would be impossible for me to furnish a separate ar- ticle 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 obtaiined, 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. Maoaulay. If you should have assigned Temple or Clive to any body else, pray do not be uneasy on that account. The pleasure of writing pays itself. Calcutta, December 18th, 1837. Dear Ellis, — My last letter was on a deeply melancholy subject^he death of our poor friend Malkin. I have felt 1834-'38.] LORD MACAULAY. 4O7 very mucli 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 Kyan and me in subscribing to put up a plain marble tablet in the cathedral, for which I have written an inscrip- tion.* 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 Hvrngerford, 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 an-angements 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 my- seK a good German scholar by the time of my arrival in En- gland. I have already, at leisure moments, broken the ice. I have read about haM of the New Testament in Luther's translation ; and am now getting rapidly, for a beginner, through Schiller's " History of the Thirty Tears' "War." My German hbrary consists of all Goethe's works, all Schiller's works, Miiller's " History of Switzerland," some of Tieck, some of Lessing, and other works of less fame. I hope to dis- patch them all on my way home. I like Schiller's style ex- ceedingly. 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. * This inscription appears in Lord Macaulay's " Miscellaneous Works.'' 408 LIFE AND LETTERS, ETC. [chap. vi. There are certainly some very brilliant passages in Lis homi- lies. It seems curious that, though the Greek literature be- gan 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 con- temporaries. I am sure that no Latin writer of the age of Lueian 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 Augustine's " Con- fessions." 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 labor ; 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. Ever yours affectionately, T. B. Macaulat. APPENDIX. A FEW extracts from the notes penciled in Macaulay's Greek and Latin books may interest any one who is wise enough to have kept up his classics, or young enough for it to be still his happy duty to read them. The number of the dates scribbled at the conclusion of each volume, and their proximity in point of time, are astonishing when we reflect that every such memorandum implies a separate pe- rusal. " This day I finished Thucydides, after reading him with inexpressi- ble interest and admiration. He is the greatest historian that ever lived.— February 27th, 1835." " I am still of the same mind. — May 30th, 1836." At the end of Xenophon's "Anabasis " may be read the words : "Decidedly his best work. — December 11th, 1835." " Most certainly. — February 2Uh, ISST." " One of the very first works that antiquity has left us. Perfect in its VmA.— October 9th, 1837." " I read Plautus four times at Calcutta. "The first, in November and December, 1834. " The second, in January and the beginning of February, 1835. "The third, on the Sundays from the 24th of May to the 23d of August, 1835. "The fourth, on the Sundays beginning from the 1st of January, 1837. "I have since read him in the Isle of "Wight (1850), and in the South of France (1858)." 410 APPENDIX. " Finished the second reading of Lucretius this day, March 24th, 1835. . It is a great pity that the poem is in an unfinished state. The philosophy is for the most part utterly worthless ; but in energy, per- spicuity, variety of illustration, knowledge of life and manners, talent for description, sense of the beauty of the external world, and eleva- tion and dignity of moral feeling, he had hardly ever an equal." " Finished Catullus August 3d, J 835. An admirable poet. No Lat- in writer is so Greek The simplicity, the pathos, the perfect grace, which I find in the great Athenian models are all in Catullus, and in him alone of the Romans." To the " Thebais " of Statius are simply appended the dates ">0c- tober 26th, 1835." " October 31st, 1836." The expressions " Stufi!" and "Trash!" occur frequently enough throughout - the dreary, pages of the poem ; while evidence of the attention with which those pages were studied is afforded by such observations as " Gray has translated this passage ;" " Racine took a hint here ;" and " Nobly imitated-^ indeed, far surpassed — by Chaucer." " Finished Silius Italicus ; for which Heaven be praised ! Decem- ber 24th, 1835. Pope must have read him before me. In the ' Tem- ple of Fame,' and the ' Essay on Criticism,' are some touches plainly suggested by Silius." In the last page of Velleius Paterculus come the following com- ments: "Vile flatterer! Yet, after all, he could hardly help it. But how the strong, acute, cynical mind of Tiberius must have been re- volted by adulation, the absence of which ho would probably have punished ! Velleius Paterculus seems to me a remarkably good epit- omist. I hardly know any historical work of which the scale is so small, and the subject so extensive. The Bishop of London admires his style. I do not. There are sentences worthy, of Tacitus ; but there is an immense quantity of rant, and far too much ejaculation and interrogation for oratory, let alone history. — June 6i!A, 1835; again, May \^ih, 1836." " I think Sallust inferior to both Livy and Tacitus in the talents of an historian. There is a lecturing, declaiming tone about him; which would suit a teacher of rhetoric better than a statesman engaged in APPENDIX. 411 recording great events. Still, he is a good writer ; and the view which he here gives of the state of parties at Rome, and the frightful de- moralization of the aristocracy, is full of interest. — June 10s TaxtBTa,"* " The 'Agamemnon ' is indeed very fine. From the king's entrance into the house to the appearance on the stage of ^gistheus, it is be- yond all praise. I shall turn it over again next week." To the " Prometheus " are appended the words, " One of the great- est of human compositions." " The ' Orestes ' is one of the very finest plays in the Greek lan- guage; Among those of Euripides, I should place it next to the ' Medea ' and the ' Bacchae.'f It has some very real faults ; but it pos- * " The happiest -destiny is never to have been bom; and the next best, by far, is to return, as swiftly as may be, to the bourn whence we came." The wound caused by his sister Margaret's death was then ten months old. t Macaulay ranked the plays of Euripides thus: The "Medea;" the "Bac- chse';" the "Orestes;" the "Iphigenia in Aulis;" th-e "Alcestis;" the "Phoe- nissse;" the " Troades ;" the "Hippolytus." 416 APPENDIX. sesses that strong human interest which neither -^schylus nor Sopho- cles — ^poets in many respects far superior to Euripides — ever gave to their dramas. ' Orestes ' and ' Electra ' keep a very strong hold on our sympathy. The friendship of Pylades is more amiably represented here than anywhere else. Menelaus teeps the character which the Athenian dramatists have agreed to give him. The sick -chamber scene, and the scene after the trial, are two of the finest things in ancient poetry. When Milton designated Euripides ' sad Electfa's poet,' he was thinking of the ' Orestes,' I suppose, and not of the ' Electra.' Schlegel says (and he is perfectly right) that the ' Electra ' is Euripides's worst play. It is quite detestable." " I can hardly account for the contempt which, at school and col- lege, I felt for Euripides. I own that I like him now better than Sophocles. The 'Alcestis' has faults enough; but there are scenes in it of surpassing beauty and tenderness. The choruses, too, are very fine. Fox thought it the best of Euripides's plays. , I can not like it so well as the ' Medea.' The odious baseness of Admetus, in accept- ing the sacrifice of his wife, is a greater drawback than even the' ab- surd machinery. Thomson avoided this very happily in his imitation, by making Eleanora suck the poison while Edward is sleeping." " The ' Bacchse ' is a most glorious play. . I doubt whether it be not superior to the ' Medea.' It is often very obscure ; and I am not sure that I fully understand its general scope. But, as a piece of lan- guage, it is hardly equaled in the world. And, whether it was intend- ed to encourage or to discourage fanaticism, the picture of fanatical excitement which it exhibits has never been rivaled." END OF THE FIKST VOLUME. A"^--^ C cu^,.-/^^ ^^ Zx^v-^rAc- ,,'1// , c<__cro-^/^>...^ /^^.^.^ ^ <^,^^,.vt^i_^ ... Cc.,_^