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Calcutta: June 15, 1837.

Dear Napier,-Your letter about my review of Mackintosh miscarried, vexatiously enough. I should have been glad to know what was thought of my performance among friends and foes; for here we have no information on such subjects. The literary correspondents of the Calcutta newspapers seem to be penny-a-line men, whose whole stock of literature comes from the conversations in the Green Room.

My long article on Bacon has, no doubt, been in your hands some time. I never, to the best of my recollection, proposed to review Hannah More's Life or Works. If I did, it must have been in jest. She was exactly the very last person in the world about whom I should choose to write a critique. She was a very kind friend to me from childhood. Her notice first called out my literary tastes. Her presents laid the foundation of my library. She was to me what Ninon was to Voltaire,— begging her pardon for comparing her to a bad woman, and yours for comparing myself to a great man. She really was a second mother to me. I have a real affection for her memory. I therefore could not possibly write about her unless I wrote in her praise; and all the praise which I could give to her writings, even after straining my conscience in her favour, would be far indeed from satisfying any of her admirers.

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

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

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should have assigned Temple, or Clive, to anybody

else, pray do not be uneasy on that account. writing pays itself.

The pleasure of

Calcutta December 18, 1837.

Dear Ellis, My last letter was on a deeply melancholy subject, the death of our poor friend Malkin. I have felt very much for his widow. The intensity of her affliction, and the fortitude and good feeling which she showed as soon as the first agony was over, have interested me greatly in her. Six or seven of Malkin's most intimate friends here have joined with Ryan and me, in subscribing to put up a plain marble tablet in the cathedral, for which I have written an inscription.'

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

I lately took it into my head to obtain some knowledge of the Fathers, and I read therefore a good deal of Athanasius, which by no means raised him in my opinion. I procured the magnificent edition of Chrysostom, by Montfaucon, from a public library here, and turned over the eleven huge folios, reading wherever the subject was of peculiar interest. As to reading him through, the thing is impossible. These volumes contain matter at least equal to the whole extant literature of the best times of Greece, from Homer to Aristotle inclusive. There are certainly some very brilliant passages in his homilies. It seems curious that, though the Greek literature began to flourish so much earlier than the Latin, it continued to flourish so much later. Indeed, if you except the century which

! This inscription appears in Lord Macaulay's Miscellaneous Works.

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 of the age of Lucian is to be named with Lucian; that no Latin writer of the age of Longinus is to be named with Longinus; that no Latin prose of the age of Chrysostom can be named with Chrysostom's compositions. I have read Augustin's Confessions. The book is not without interest; but he expresses himself in the style of a field-preacher.

Our Penal Code is to be published next week.

It has cost me very intense labour; and, whatever its faults may be, it is certainly not a slovenly performance. Whether the work proves useful to India or not, it has been of great use, I feel and know, to my own mind.1

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

1 In October 1854, Macaulay writes to my mother : "I cannot but be pleased to find that, at last, the Code on which I bestowed the labour of two of the best years of my life has had justice done to it. Had this justice been done sixteen years ago, I should probably have given much more attention to legislation, and much less to literature than I have done. I do not know that I should have been either happier or more useful than I have been."

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CHAPTER VII.

1838-1839.

Death of Zachary Macaulay-Mr. Wallace and Mackintosh-Letters to Mr. Napier, and Mr. Ellis-Sir Walter Scott-Lord Brougham-First mention of the History-Macaulay goes abroad-His way of regarding scenery-Châlons-sur-Marne-Lyons-Marseilles-Genoa-PisaFlorence-Macaulay refuses the Judge Advocateship-Florence to Rome-Thrasymene-St. Peter's-The New Zealander-The Vatican -The Temporal Power-The doctrine of the Immaculate ConceptionLetter to Lord Lansdowne-The Canadian Insurrection-Gibbon-Rome to Naples-Bulwer's novels-Impressions of Naples-Virgil's tomb-Macaulay sets out homewards-Mr. Goulburn--Versailles.

THE Lord Hungerford justified her reputation of a bad sailer, and the homeward voyage was protracted into the sixth month. This unusual delay, combined with the knowledge that the ship had met with very rough weather after leaving the Cape, gave rise to a report that she had been lost with all on board, and brought a succession of Whig politicians into the City to inquire at Lloyd's about the safety of her precious freight. But it was in the character of a son and brother, and not of a party orator, that Macaulay was most eagerly and anxiously expected. He had, indeed, been sorely missed. "You can have no conception," wrote one of his sisters, in the year 1834, "of the change which has come over this household. It is as if the sun had deserted the earth. The chasm Tom's departure has made can never be supplied. He was so unlike any other being one ever sees, and his visits amongst us were a sort of refreshment which served not a little to enliven and cheer our monotonous way of life; but now day after day rises and sets without object or interest, so that sometimes I almost feel aweary of this world.”

Things did not mend as time went on. With Zachary Macaulay, as has been the case with so many like him, the years which intervened between the time when his work was done, and the time when he went to receive his wages, were years of trouble, of sorrow, and even of gloom. Failing health ; failing eyesight; the sense of being helpless and useless, after an active and beneficent career; the consciousness of depen

dence upon others at an age when the moral disadvantages of poverty are felt even more keenly than youth feels its material discomforts;-such were the clouds that darkened the close of a life which had never been without its trials. During the months that his children were on their homeward voyage his health was breaking fast; and before the middle of May he died, without having again seen their faces. Sir James Stephen, writing to Fanny Macaulay, says: "I know not how to grieve for the loss of your father, though it removes from this world one of the oldest, and, assuredly, one of the most excellent friends I have ever had. What rational man would not leap for joy at the offer of bearing all his burdens, severe as they were, if he could be assured of the same approving conscience and of the same blessed reward? He was almost the last survivor of a noble brotherhood now reunited in affection, and in employment. Mr. Wilberforce, Henry Thornton, Babington, my father, and other not less dear, though less conspicuous, companions of his many labours, have ere now greeted him as their associate in the world of spirits; and, above all, he has been welcomed by his Redeemer with 'Well done, good and faithful servant.

Zachary Macaulay's bust in Westminster Abbey bears on its pedestal a beautiful inscription, (which is, and probably will remain, his only biography,) in which much more is told, than he himself would wish to have been told, about a man

WHO DURING FORTY SUCCESSIVE YEARS,
PARTAKING IN THE COUNSELS AND THE LABOURS
WHICH, GUIDED BY FAVOURING PROVIDENCE,
RESCUED AFRICA FROM THE WOES,

AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE FROM THE GUilt,
OF SLAVERY AND THE SLAVE-TRADE,

MEEKLY ENDURED THE TOIL, THE PRIVATION, AND THE REPROACH,
RESIGNING TO OTHERS THE PRAISE AND THE REWard.

His tomb has for many years past been cut off from the body of the nave by an iron railing equally meaningless and unsightly; which withdraws from the eyes of his fellow-countrymen an epitaph at least as provocative to patriotism as those of the innumerable military and naval heroes of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries, who fell in wars the very objects of which are for the most part forgotten, or remembered only to be regretted.1

The first piece of business which Macaulay found waiting to be settled on his return to England was sufficiently disagreeable.

1 Since these lines were printed, the railing has been taken down by the orders of Dean Stanley, who is always ready to remove ecclesiastical barriers.

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