The man told Macaulay that he was an historical painter, which the Bishop of Oxford thinks a very just character. Macaulay, I hear, denounces the wretched quack without measure. At twelve there was a large assemblage at the Bishop's to see a clairvoyante, brought by Sir David Brewster very much for the purpose of encountering Whewell, who is an arch-sceptic. About twelve of us in turns put our hands upon her eyes, and in every instance she read without mistake one, two, or three lines from books taken at random. We believed, except Whewell; who has very resilient eyes himself, which he thinks can see through everything."

Macaulay held the same opinion about his own eyes, at any rate so far as concerned the magnetoscope, as the following extract from his diary will

show:

Street, where a Dr.

“May 18, 1852.-Mahon came, and we went to a house in performs his feats of phrenology and mesmerism. I was half ashamed of going; but Mahon made a point of it. The Bishop of Oxford, and his brother Robert, came soon after us. Never was there such paltry quackery. The fraud was absolutely transparent. I cannot conceive how it should impose upon a child. The man knew nothing about me, and therefore his trickery completely failed him. He made me out to be a painter, a landscape painter or a historical painter. He had made out Hallam to be a musician. I could hardly restrain myself from expressing my contempt and disgust while he was pawing my head, and poring over the rota

tions and oscillations of his pendulum, and the deviations to different points of the compass. Dined at the Club. We have taught Lord Aberdeen to talk. He is really quite gay."

May 19.-To dine with the Bishop of London. The party should have been pleasant; -the Bishop of Oxford, Milman, Hallam, and Rajah Brooke. But unluckily we got into a somewhat keen argument about clairvoyance. The two Bishops lost their temper. Indeed, we were all too disputatious, though I hope I was not offensively so. The ladies, who wanted to be off to the Queen's Ball, wished us, I dare say, at Jericho."

Macaulay writes on a subsequent occasion: "A breakfast-party at my chambers. There was talk about electricity, and the rotatory motion of tables under electrical influence. I was very incredulous. We tried the experiment on my table; and there certainly was a rotatory motion, but probably impressed by the Bishop of Oxford, though he declared that he was not quite certain whether he had pushed or not. We tried again; and then, after we had given it up, he certainly pushed, and caused a rotatory motion exactly similar to what we had seen before. The experiment therefore failed. the same time I would not confidently say in this case, as I say in cases of clairvoyance, that there must be deception. I know too little of electricity to judge."*

At

* Macaulay did not love charlatans; and he included in that category

Equable and tranquil as was the course of Macaulay's life during the earlier months of 1852, that year had still both good and evil in store for him. The Parliamentary Session had been fruitful in events. "I met Greville in the street," Macaulay writes. "He is going to Broadlands, and seems persuaded that Palmerston has nothing but revenge on Lord John in his head and heart, and that he will soon be leader of the House of Commons under Lord Derby. I doubt." He might well doubt. The late Foreign Secretary was not the man to sit down under a grievance; but he knew how to pay off old scores in accordance with the rules of political decency. By his powerful aid, the Conservatives succeeded in defeating the Ministry on a detail of the Militia Bill; and Lord Derby came in with a minority, and scrambled through the Session as best he might. While the summer was yet young, Parliament was dissolved, and the General Election took place in July, with no very great issue definitely at stake. The Ministerial

He

some who pretty confidently arrogated to themselves the title of philosophers. "There came," he once writes to Lady Trevelyan, "a knock at my door, and in walked that miserable old impostor, --, who, I hoped, had been hanged or guillotined years ago. You must have heard of him. is a votary of Spurzheim; a compound of all the quackeries, physiological and theological, of half a century. I always detested the fellow; but I could not turn him out of the room; for he came up with, 'Do you not remember? You are so like the dear man, Zachary. It was just so that he used to look on me.' (I looked, by-the-bye, as sulky as a bear.) 'I felt your dear skull when you was a child, and I prophesied that you should be a Minister of State. Paff! That is a demonstration. I keep my eye on you ever since. Paff! It come true!' So I desired the man to sit down, and was as civil as I could be to one whom I know to be a mere Dousterswivel." Macaulay, very characteristically, ended his letter by regretting that his visitor did not ask for pecuniary assistance, in order that he might have given him a ten-pound note.

programme was not of a nature to arouse enthusiasm. Lord Derby confined himself to vague hints, which might be construed to mean either that Protection was capable of being revived, or that he personally had not ceased to be a mourner for its death; but he made up for his reticence on the question of the day by entreating the country to believe that his Government had every intention of upholding the Established Church. The country, which was very well aware that the Church could keep on its feet without the assistance of a Tory Administration, but which was sincerely anxious to be reassured that the Cabinet had no wish to tamper with Free Trade, did not respond to the appeal, and the electioneerers of the Carlton failed to make any marked impression upon the borough constituencies.

Edinburgh was one of the places where the Conservatives resolved to try an almost desperate chance. The Liberals of that city were at odds among themselves; and the occurrences of 1847 had not been such as to attract any candidate who enjoyed the position and reputation which would have enabled him to unite a divided party. Honourably ambitious to obtain a worthy representative for the capital of Scotland, and sincerely desirous to make amends for their harsh usage of a great man who had done his best to serve them, the electors turned their eyes towards Macaulay. A resolution in favour of taking the necessary measures for furthering his return was carried in a crowded public meeting by unanimous acclamation. The speeches in support of that resolution did.

honour to those who made them. "No man," said Mr. Adam Black, "has given stronger pledges than Mr. Macaulay that he will defend the rights of the people against the encroachments of despotism, and the licentiousness of democracy. His pledges have not been given upon the hustings, during the excitement of an election; but they have been published to the world in the calm deliberation of the closet; and he stands and falls by them. If Mr. Macaulay has a fault, it is that he is too straightforward; too open; that he uses no ambiguities to disarm opposition. By many his early, his eloquent, his constant, his consistent advocacy of civil liberty is forgotten, while a few unconsidered words are harped upon. Will you lose the most powerful defender for a piece of etiquette? Will you rob the British Senate of one of its brightest ornaments? Will you deprive Edinburgh of the honour of association with one of the most illustrious men of the day? Will you silence that voice whose tones would sustain the sinking spirits of the friends of constitutional liberty in Europe? No. I know the inhabitants of Edinburgh are not so unwise. It is in their power to secure the most able advocate of their own cause, and of the cause of truth and liberty in the world; and they will secure him." The resolution, proposed in these words by the chief of the Edinburgh Whigs, was seconded by a Radical; a fine fellow, whose remarks were very brief, as is almost universally the case, in Scotland and in the North of England, with local leaders who have any real influence over the political conduct