CHAPTER XV.

1859.

Melancholy anticipations-Visit to the English Lakes, and to Scotland— Extracts from Macaulay's Journal-His death and funeral.

WHEN the year 1859 opened, it seemed little likely that any event was at hand which would disturb the tranquil course of Macaulay's existence. His ailments, severe as they were, did not render him discontented on his own account, nor diminish the warmth of his interest in the welfare of those who were around him. Towards the close of the preceding year, his niece Margaret Trevelyan had been married to the son of his old friend Sir Henry Holland; an event which her uncle regarded with heartfelt satisfaction. Mr. Holland resided in London; and consequently the marriage, so far from depriving Macaulay of one whom he looked on as a daughter, gave him another household where he was as much at home as in his own. But a most unexpected circumstance now occurred which changed in a moment the whole complexion of his life. Early in January 1859 the Governorship of Madras was offered to my father. He accepted the post, and sailed for India in the third week of February. My mother remained in England for a while; but she was to follow her husband after no very long interval, and Macaulay was fully convinced that, when he and his sister parted, they would part for ever. Though he derived his belief from his own sensations, and not from any warning of physicians, he was none the less firmly persuaded that the end was now not far off. "I took leave of Trevelyan," he says on the 18th of February. "He said, 'You have always been a most kind brother to me.' I certainly tried to be so. Shall we ever meet again? I do not expect it. My health is better; but another sharp winter would probably finish me.” In another place he writes: "I am no better. This malady tries me severely. However, I bear up. However, I bear up. As to my temper, it never has been soured, and, while I keep my understanding, will not, I think, be soured, by evils for which it is evident that no

human being is responsible. To be angry with relations and servants because you suffer something which they did not inflict, and which they are desirous to alleviate, is unworthy, not merely of a good man, but of a rational being. Yet I see instances enough of such irritability to fear that I may be guilty of it. But I will take care. I have thought several times of late that the last scene of the play was approaching. I should wish to act it simply, but with fortitude and gentleness united."

The prospect of a separation from one with whom he had lived in close and uninterrupted companionship since his childhood and his own early manhood, a prospect darkened by the thought that his last hour would surely come when she was thousands of miles away,-was a trial which weighed heavily on Macaulay's sinking health. He endured it manfully, and almost silently; but his spirits never recovered the blow. During the spring and summer of 1859 his journal contains a few brief but significant allusions to the state of his feelings; one of which, and one only, may fitly be inserted here. "July 11, 1859. -A letter from Hannah; very sad and affectionate. I answered her. There is a pleasure even in this exceeding sorrow: for it brings out the expression of love with a tenderness which is wanting in ordinary circumstances. But the sorrow is very, very bitter. The Duke of Argyll called, and left me the sheets of a forthcoming poem of Tennyson. I like it extremely ;-notwithstanding some faults, extremely. The parting of Lancelot and Guinivere, her penitence, and Arthur's farewell, are all very affecting. I cried over some passages; but I am now apridarpus, as Medea says."

Towards the end of July my uncle spent a week with us at Lowood Hotel, on the shore of Windermere; and thence he accompanied my mother and my younger sister on a fortnight's tour through the Western Highlands, and by Stirling to Edinburgh. Every stage of the journey brought some fresh proof of the eager interest which his presence aroused in the minds of his fellow-countrymen, to whom his face and figure were very much less familiar than is usual in the case of a man of his eminence and reputation. He now so rarely emerged from his retirement that, whenever he appeared abroad, he was attended by a respect which gratified, and a curiosity which did not annoy him. "I went the day before yesterday," he writes to Mr. Ellis, "to Grassmere Churchyard, and saw Wordsworth's tomb. I thought of announcing my intention of going, and

1 'With the tears near the eyes."

issuing guinea tickets to people who wished to see me there. For a Yankee who was here a few days ago, and heard that I was expected, said that he would give the world to see that most sublime of all spectacles, Macaulay standing by the grave of Wordsworth." "In Scotland," my mother writes, “his reception was everywhere most enthusiastic. He was quickly recognised on steamers and at railway stations. At Tarbet we were escorted down to the boat by the whole household; and, while they surrounded your uncle, finding a seat for him, and making him comfortable, I sat modestly in the shade next a young woman, who called a man to her, and asked who they were making such a fuss about. He replied that it was the great Lord Macaulay, who wrote the History. 'Oh,' said she, 'I thought it was considered only a romance!' However, she added herself to the group of starers. When we went to Dr Guthrie's church at Edinburgh, the congregation made a line for us through which to walk away." At the hotels, one not uncommon form of doing Macaulay honour consisted in serving up a better dinner than had been ordered,-no easy matter when he was catering for others besides himself,—and then refusing to accept payment for his entertainment. At Inverary he writes: "The landlord insisted on treating us to our drive of yesterday, but I was peremptory. I was half sorry afterwards, and so was Hannah, who, at the time, took my part. It is good to accept as well as to give. My feeling is too much that of Calderon's hero :

'Cómo sabrá pedir

Quien solo ha sabido dar?' 1

I shrink too much from receiving services which I love to render."

During this visit to the North my uncle was still the same agreeable travelling companion that we had always known him; -with the same readiness to please and be pleased, and the same sweet and even temper. When one of us happened to be alone with him, there sometimes was a touch of melancholy about his conversation which imparted to it a singular charm; but, when the whole of our little circle was assembled, he showed himself as ready as ever to welcome any topic which promised to afford material for amusing and abundant talk. I especially remember our sitting at the window through the best part of an afternoon, looking across Windermere, and drawing up under his superintendence a list of forty names for an imaginary English Academy. The result of our labours, in the

1 "How will he know how to ask who has only known how to give?"

shape in which it now lies before me, bears evident marks of having been a work of compromise; and cannot therefore be presented to the world as a faithful and authentic expression of Macaulay's estimate of his literary and scientific contemporaries.

In a letter to Mr. Ellis, written on the 24th of October 1859, Macaulay says: "I have been very well in body since we parted; but in mind I have suffered much, and the more because I have had to put a force upon myself in order to appear cheerful. It is at last settled that Hannah and Alice are to go to Madras in February. I cannot deny that it is right; and my duty is to avoid whatever can add to the pain which they suffer. But I am very unhappy. However, I read, and write, and contrive to forget my sorrow for whole hours. But it recurs, and will recur."

The trial which now at no distant date awaited Macaulay was one of the heaviest that could by any possibility have been allotted to him, and he summoned all his resources in order to meet it with firmness and resignation. He henceforward made it a duty to occupy his mind, and fortify his powers of selfcontrol, by hard and continuous intellectual exertion. "I must drive away," he says, "these thoughts by writing ;" and with diminished strength he returned to his labours, purposing not to relax them until he had completed another section of the History. In October he tells Mr. Longman that he is working regularly, and that he designs to publish the next volume by itself. On the 14th of December he writes: "Finished at last the session of 1699-1700. There is a good deal in what I have written that is likely to interest readers. At any rate, this employment is a good thing for myself, and will be a better soon when I shall have little else left." Influenced by the same settled determination forcibly to divert the current of his reflections from the sombre channel in which they were now prone to run, Macaulay, even during his hours of leisure, began to read on system. On the second day after he had received the unwelcome announcement of my mother's plans with regard to India, he commenced the perusal of Nichols's Literary Anecdotes,-a ponderous row of nine volumes, each containing seven or eight hundred closelyprinted pages. He searched and sifted this vast repertory of eighteenth century erudition and gossip with a minute diligence such as few men have the patience to bestow upon a book which they do not intend to re-edit;-correcting blunders, supplying omissions, stigmatising faults in taste and grammar, and enriching every blank space, which invited his pencil, with

a profusion of valuable and entertaining comments. Progressing steadily at the rate of a volume a week, he had read and annotated the entire work between the 17th day of October and the 21st of December.

During this period of his life Macaulay certainly was least unhappy when alone in his own library; for, in the society of those whom he was about to lose, the enjoyment of the moment could not fail to be overclouded by sad presentiments. "I could almost wish," he writes, "that what is to be were to be immediately. I dread the next four months more than even the months which will follow the separation. This prolonged parting, this slow sipping of the vinegar and the gall,-is terrible." The future was indeed dark before him; but God, who had so blessed him, dealt kindly with him even to the end, and his burden was not permitted to be greater than his strength could bear.

"Friday, December 16.—From this morning I reckon some of the least agreeable days of my life. The physic was necessary, but I believe it brought me very low. The frost was more intense than ever, and arrested my circulation.2 Bating the irregularity of the pulse, I suffered all that I suffered when, in 1852, I was forced to go to Clifton. The depression, the weakness, the sinking of the heart, the incapacity to do anything that required steady exertion, were very distressing. To write, though but a few words, is disagreeable to me. However, I read German, Latin, and English, and got through the day tolerably."

"December 17.—Very hard frost. The weather has seldom been colder in this latitude. I sent for Martin, and told him my story. He says that there is no organic affection of the heart, but that the heart is weak."

3

"December 19.-Still intense frost. I could hardly use my razor for the palpitation of the heart. I feel as if I were twenty years older since last Thursday ;-as if I were dying of old age. I am perfectly ready, and shall never be readier. A month more of such days as I have been passing of late would make me impatient to get to my little narrow crib, like a weary factory child."

1 On the 16th of October he notes in his diary: "I read, and found, as I have always found, that an interesting book acted as an anodyne."

Macaulay's habitual ill health had been aggravated by a walk which he took in a bitter east wind, from the British Museum to the Athenæum Club. 3 Sir Ranald Martin had been Macaulay's physician in Calcutta.