to review Hannah More's "Life" or "Works." If I did, it must have been in jest. She was exactly the very last person in the world about whom I should choose to write a critique. She was a very kind friend to me from childhood.. Her notice first called out my literary tastes. Her presents laid the foundation of my library. She was to me what Ninon was to Voltaire-begging her pardon for comparing her to a bad woman, and yours for comparing myself to a great man. She really was a second mother to me. I have a real affection for her memory. I therefore could not possibly write about her unless I wrote in her praise; and all the praise which I could give to her writings, even after straining my conscience in her favor, would be far indeed from satisfying any of her admirers.

I will try my hand on Temple, and on Lord Clive. Shaftesbury I shall let alone. Indeed, his political life is so much connected with Temple's that, without endless repetition, it would be impossible for me to furnish a separate article on each. Temple's "Life and Works;" the part which he took in the controversy about the ancients and moderns; the Oxford confederacy against Bentley; and the memorable victory which Bentley obtained, will be good subjects. I am in training for this part of the subject, as I have twice read through the Phalaris controversy since I arrived in India.

I have been almost incessantly engaged in public business since I sent off the paper on Bacon; but I expect to have comparative leisure during the short remainder of my stay here. The "Penal Code of India" is finished, and is in the press. The illness of two of my colleagues threw the work almost entirely on me. It is done, however; and I am not likely to be called upon for vigorous exertion during the rest of my Indian career. Yours ever, T. B. MACAULAY.

If you should have assigned Temple or Clive to any body else, pray do not be uneasy on that account. The pleasure of writing pays itself.

Calcutta, December 18th, 1837.

DEAR ELLIS,-My last letter was on a deeply melancholy subject the death of our poor friend Malkin. I have felt

very much for his widow. The intensity of her affliction, and the fortitude and good feeling which she showed as soon as the first agony was over, have interested me greatly in her. Six or seven of Malkin's most intimate friends here have joined with Ryan and me in subscribing to put up a plain marble tablet in the cathedral, for which I have written an inscription.*

This is the last letter

Our passage is taken

My departure is now near at hand. which I shall write to you from India. in the Lord Hungerford, the most celebrated of the huge floating hotels which run between London and Calcutta. She is more renowned for the comfort and luxury of her internal arrangements than for her speed. As we are to stop at the Cape for a short time, I hardly expect to be with you till the end of May or the beginning of June. I intend to make myself a good German scholar by the time of my arrival in England. I have already, at leisure moments, broken the ice. I have read about half of the New Testament in Luther's translation; and am now getting rapidly, for a beginner, through Schiller's "History of the Thirty Years' War." My German library consists of all Goethe's works, all Schiller's works, Müller's "History of Switzerland," some of Tieck, some of Lessing, and other works of less fame. I hope to dispatch them all on my way home. I like Schiller's style exceedingly. His history contains a great deal of very just and deep thought, conveyed in language so popular and agreeable that dunces would think him superficial.

I lately took it into my head to obtain some knowledge of the Fathers, and I read therefore a good deal of Athanasius, which by no means raised him in my opinion. I procured the magnificent edition of Chrysostom by Montfaucon from a public library here, and turned over the eleven huge folios, reading wherever the subject was of peculiar interest. As to reading him through, the thing is impossible. These volumes. contain matter at least equal to the whole extant literature of the best times of Greece, from Homer to Aristotle inclusive.

* This inscription appears in Lord Macaulay's "Miscellaneous Works."

There are certainly some very brilliant passages in his homilies. It seems curious that, though the Greek literature began to flourish so much earlier than the Latin, it continued to flourish so much later. Indeed, if you except the century which elapsed between Cicero's first public appearance and Livy's death, I am not sure that there was any time at which Greece had not writers equal, or superior, to their Roman contemporaries. I am sure that no Latin writer of the age of Lucian is to be named with Lucian; that no Latin writer of the age of Longinus is to be named with Longinus; that no Latin prose of the age of Chrysostom can be named with Chrysostom's compositions. I have read Augustine's "Confessions." The book is not without interest; but he expresses himself in the style of a field-preacher.

Our "Penal Code" is to be published next week. It has cost me very intense labor; and, whatever its faults may be, it is certainly not a slovenly performance. Whether the work proves useful to India or not, it has been of great use, I feel and know, to my own mind. Ever yours affectionately,

T. B. MACAULAY.

APPENDIX.

A FEW extracts from the notes penciled in Macaulay's Greek and Latin books may interest any one who is wise enough to have kept up his classics, or young enough for it to be still his happy duty to read them. The number of the dates scribbled at the conclusion of each volume, and their proximity in point of time, are astonishing when we reflect that every such memorandum implies a separate perusal.

"This day I finished Thucydides, after reading him with inexpressible interest and admiration. He is the greatest historian that ever lived.-February 27th, 1835."

"I am still of the same mind.-May 30th, 1836."

At the end of Xenophon's "Anabasis" may be read the words: "Decidedly his best work.-December 17th, 1835."

"Most certainly.-February 24th, 1837."

"One of the very first works that antiquity has left us. Perfect in its kind.-October 9th, 1837."

"I read Plautus four times at Calcutta.

"The first, in November and December, 1834.

"The second, in January and the beginning of February, 1835. "The third, on the Sundays from the 24th of May to the 23d of August, 1835.

"The fourth, on the Sundays beginning from the 1st of January,

1837.

"I have since read him in the Isle of Wight (1850), and in the South of France (1858)."

"Finished the second reading of Lucretius this day, March 24th, 1835. It is a great pity that the poem is in an unfinished state. The philosophy is for the most part utterly worthless; but in energy, perspicuity, variety of illustration, knowledge of life and manners, talent for description, sense of the beauty of the external world, and elevation and dignity of moral feeling, he had hardly ever an equal."

"Finished Catullus August 3d, 1835. An admirable poet. No Latin writer is so Greek. The simplicity, the pathos, the perfect grace, which I find in the great Athenian models are all in Catullus, and in him alone of the Romans."

To the "Thebaïs" of Statius are simply appended the dates "October 26th, 1835." "October 31st, 1836." The expressions "Stuff!" and "Trash!" occur frequently enough throughout the dreary pages of the poem; while evidence of the attention with which those pages were studied is afforded by such observations as "Gray has translated this passage;" "Racine took a hint here;" and "Nobly imitated— indeed, far surpassed-by Chaucer."

"Finished Silius Italicus; for which Heaven be praised! December 24th, 1835. Pope must have read him before me. In the 'Temple of Fame,' and the 'Essay on Criticism,' are some touches plainly suggested by Silius."

In the last page of Velleius Paterculus come the following comments: "Vile flatterer! Yet, after all, he could hardly help it. But how the strong, acute, cynical mind of Tiberius must have been revolted by adulation, the absence of which he would probably have punished! Velleius Paterculus seems to me a remarkably good epitomist. I hardly know any historical work of which the scale is so small, and the subject so extensive. The Bishop of London admires his style. I do not. There are sentences worthy of Tacitus; but there is an immense quantity of rant, and far too much ejaculation and interrogation for oratory, let alone history. - June 6th, 1835; again, May 14th, 1836."

"I think Sallust inferior to both Livy and Tacitus in the talents of an historian. There is a lecturing, declaiming tone about him which would suit a teacher of rhetoric better than a statesman engaged in