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

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

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

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. M.

Lancaster: March 24, 1829.

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

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

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

Ever yours very affectionately

T. B. M.

To Macvey Napier, Esq.

50 Great Ormond Street, London:

January 25, 1830.

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

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

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

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

Ever yours truly

T. B. MACAULAY.

Bowood: February 20, 1830.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Believe me ever yours most affectionately

T. B. M.



CHAPTER IV. 1830-1832.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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