was a remarkable man; but one not much to be esteemed or loved. I looked through the Memoirs of Wolfe Tone.' In spite of the fellow's savage, unreasonable hatred of England, there is something about him which I can not help liking. Why is it that an Irishman's, or Frenchman's, hatred of England does not excite in me an answering hatred? I imagine that my national pride prevents it. England is so great that an Englishman cares little what others think of her, or how they talk of her.”

"August 16th, 1849.-The express train reached Holyhead about seven in the evening. I read, between London and Bangor, the 'Lives of the Emperors,' from Maximin to Carinus inclusive, in the Augustan History, and was greatly amused and interested. It is a pity that Philip and Decius are wanting to the series. Philip's strange leaning toward Christianity, and the vigor and ability of Decius, and his inveterate hostility to the new religion, would be interesting even in the worst history; and certainly worse historians than Trebellius Capitolinus and Vopiscus are not easily to be found. Yet I like their silliest garrulity. It sometimes has a Pepyslike effect.

"We sailed as soon as we got on board. The breeze was fresh and adverse, and the sea rough. The sun set in glory, and then the starlight was like the starlight of the Trades. I put on my great-coat, and sat on deck during the whole voyage. As I could not read, I used an excellent substitute for reading. I went through 'Paradise Lost' in my head. I could still repeat half of it, and that the best half. I really never enjoyed it so much. In the dialogue at the end of the fourth book, Satan and Gabriel became to me quite like two of Shakspeare's men. Old Sharp once told me that Henderson, the actor, used to say to him that there was no better acting scene in the English drama than this. I now felt the truth of the criticism. How admirable is that hit in the manner of Euripides:

But wherefore thou alone? Wherefore with thee
Came not all hell broke loose?

I will try my hand on the passage in Greek iambics; or set Ellis to do it, who will do it better.

"I had got to the end of the conversation between Raphael and Adam, admiring more than ever the sublime courtesy of the Archangel, when I saw the lights of Dublin Bay. I love entering a port at night. The contrast between the wild, lonely sea, and the life and tumult of a harbor when a ship is coming in, have always impressed me much."

"August 17th.-Off to Dublin by railway. The public buildings, at this first glance, struck me as very fine, and would be considered fine even

at Paris. Yet the old Parliament House, from which I had expected most, fell below my expectations. It is handsome, undoubtedly; indeed, more than handsome; but it is too low. If it were twice as high as it is, it would be one of the noblest edifices in Europe. It is remarkable that architecture is the only art in which mere bulk is an element of sublimity. There is more grandeur in a Greek gem of a quarter of an inch diameter, than in the statue of Peter the Great at Petersburg. There is more grandeur in Raphael's 'Vision of Ezekiel' than in all West's and Barry's acres of spoiled canvas. But no building of very small dimensions can be grand, and no building as lofty as the Pyramids or the Colosseum can be mean. The Pyramids are a proof; for what on earth could be viler than a pyramid thirty feet high?

car.

"The rain was so heavy that I was forced to come back in a covered While in this detestable vehicle, I looked rapidly through the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan, and thought that Trajan made a most creditable figure. I saw the outside of Christ Church Cathedral, and felt very little inclination to see the inside. Not so with St. Patrick's. Ruinous, and ruinous in the worst way-undergoing repairs which there are not funds to make-it is still a striking church; but the interest which belongs to it is chiefly historical. In the choir I saw Schomberg's grave, and Swift's furious libel* written above. Opposite hang the spurs of St. Ruth, and the chain-ball which killed him; not a very Christian-like ornament for the neighborhood of an altar. In the nave Swift and Stella are buried. Swift's bust is much the best likeness of him that I ever saw; striking and full of character. Going away through Kevin Street I saw the Deanery; not Swift's house, though on the same site. Some of the hovels opposite must have been standing in his time; and the inmates were probably among the people who borrowed small sums of him, or took off their hats to him in the street."

"August 24th, Killarney.-A busy day. I found that I must either forego the finest part of the sight, or mount a pony. Ponies are not much in my way. However, I was ashamed to flinch, and rode twelve miles, with a guide, to the head of the Upper Lake, where we met the boat which had been sent forward with four rowers. One of the boatmen gloried in having rowed Sir Walter Scott and Miss Edgeworth, twenty-four years ago. It was, he said, a compensation to him for having missed a hanging which took place that very day. Nothing can exceed the beauty of the Upper

* The inscription on Schomberg's tablet relates, in most outspoken phrases, how the Dean and Chapter of St. Patrick's in vain importuned the duke's heirs to erect him a monument, and how at length they were induced to erect one themselves. The last line runs thus: "Plus potuit fama virtutis apud alienos, quam sanguinis proximitas apud suos."

Lake.* I got home after a seven hours' ramble, during which I went twelve miles on horseback, and about twenty by boat. I had not crossed a horse since in June, 1834, I rode with Captain Smith through the Mango Garden, near Arcot. I was pleased to find that I had a good seat; and my guide, whom I had apprised of my unskillfulness, professed himself quite an admirer of the way in which I trotted and cantered. His flattery pleased me more than many fine compliments which have been paid to my 'History.'t

After his fortnight in Ireland, Macaulay took another fortnight in France, and then applied himself, sedulously and continuously, to the completion of his twelfth chapter. For weeks together the account of each day ends or begins with the words: "My task;" "Did my task;" "My task, and something over."

*"Killarney is worth some trouble," Macaulay writes to Mr. Ellis. "I never in my life saw any thing more beautiful; I might say, so beautiful. Imagine a fairer Windermere in that part of Devonshire where the myrtle grows wild. The ash-berries are redder, the heath richer, the very feru more delicately articulated than elsewhere. The wood is everywhere. The grass is greener than any thing that I ever saw. There is a positive sensual pleasure in looking at it. No sheep is suffered to remain more than a few months on any of the islands of the lakes. I asked why not. I was told that they would die of fat; and, indeed, those that I saw looked like aldermen who had passed the chair."

In a letter written from Dublin on his way home, Macaulay says: "I was agreeably disappointed with what I saw of the condition of the people in Meath and Louth, when I went to the Boyne, and not much shocked by any thing that I fell in with in going by railway from Dublin to Limerick. But from Limerick to Killarney, and from Killarney to Cork, I hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. Hundreds of dwellings in ruins, abandoned by the late inmates, who have fled to America; the laboring people dressed literally, not rhetorically, worse than the scarecrows of England; the children of whole villages turning out to beg of every coach and car that goes by. But I will have done. I can not mend this state of things, and there is no use in breaking my heart about it. I am comforted by thinking that between the poorest English peasant and the Irish peasant there is ample room for ten or twelve well-marked degrees of poverty. As to political agitation, it is dead and buried. Never did I see a society apparently so well satisfied with its rulers. The queen made a conquest of all hearts."

"September 22d.--Wrote my regular quantity-six foolscap pages of my scrawl, which will be about two pages in print. I hope to hold on at this pace through the greater part of the year. If I do this, I shall, by next September, have rough-hewn my third volume. Of course, the polishing and retouching will be an immense labor."

“October 2d.—Wrote fast and long. I do not know that I ever composed with more ease and pleasure than of late. I have got far beyond my task. I will only mention days when I fall short of it; and I hope that it will be long before I have occasion to make such an entry."

"October 9th.-Sat down again to write, but not in the vein. I hope that I shall not break my wholesome practice to-day, for the first time since I came back from France. A Frenchman called on me, a sort of man of letters, who has translated some bits of my 'History.' When he went, I sat down doggedly, as Johnson used to say, and did my task, but somewhat against my will."

"October 25th, 1849.-My birthday. Forty-nine years old. I have no cause of complaint. Tolerable health; competence; liberty; leisure; very dear relations and friends; a great, I may say a very great, literary reputation.

Nil amplius oro,

Maiâ nate, nisi ut propria hæc mihi munera faxis.*

But how will that be? My fortune is tolerably secure against any thing but a great public calamity. My liberty depends on myself, and I shall not easily part with it. As to fame, it may fade and die; but I hope that mine has deeper roots. This I can not but perceive, that even the hasty and imperfect articles which I wrote for the Edinburgh Review are valued by a generation which has sprung up since they were first published. While two editions of Jeffrey's papers, and four of Sydney's, have sold, mine are reprinting for the seventh time. Then, as to my 'History,' there is no change yet in the public feeling of England. I find that the United States, France, and Germany confirm the judgment of my own country. I have seen not less than six German reviews, all in the highest degree laudatory. This is a sufficient answer to those detractors who attribute the success of my book here to the skill with which I have addressed myself to mere local and temporary feelings. I am conscious that I did not mean to address myself to such feelings, and that I wrote with a remote past, and a remote future, constantly in my mind. The applause of people at Charleston, people at Heidelberg, and people at Paris has reached me this very week; and this consent of men so differently situated leads me to hope that I have really achieved the high adventure which I undertook, and produced something which will live. What a long rigma

* "My only prayer is, O son of Maia, that thou wilt make these blessings my own."

role! But on a birthday a man may be excused for looking backward and forward.

"Not quite my whole task; but I have a grand purple patch to sew on,* and I must take time. I have been delighted to hear of Milman's appointment to St. Paul's-honestly delighted, as much as if a good legacy had been left me."

"December 5th.-In the afternoon to Westbourne Terrace. I read my Irish narrative to Hannah. Trevelyan came in the middle. After dinner

I read again. They seemed much, very much, interested. Hannah cried. I could not at all command my voice. I think that if I ever wrote well, I have done so here. But this is but a small part of my task. However, I was pleased at the effect which I produced; and the more so as I am sensible that I do not read my own compositions well."

"December 7th.-I bought Thiers's new volume, and read it in the street. He is fair enough about Vimiera and Corunna, and just to the English officers, but hardly so to the private soldiers. After dinner I read Thiers again, and finished him. I am afraid of saying to other people how much I miss in historians who pass for good. The truth is that I admire no historians much except Herodotus, Thucydides, and Tacitus. Perhaps, in his way, a very peculiar way, I might add Fra Paolo. The modern writers who have most of the great qualities of the ancient masters of history are some memoir writers; St. Simon, for example. There is merit, no doubt, in Hume, Robertson, Voltaire, and Gibbon. Yet it is not the thing. I have a conception of history more just, I am confident, than theirs. The execution is another matter. But I hope to improve."

In a letter of December 19th, 1849, Macaulay writes: "Lord Spencer has invited me to rummage his family papers; a great proof of liberality, when it is considered that he is the lineal descendant of Sunderland and Marlborough. In general, it is ludicrous to notice how sore people are at the truth being told about their ancestors. I am curious to see that noble library; the finest private library, I believe, in England."

"December 20th: Althorp.-This is a very early house. We had breakfast at nine, preceded by prayers in the chapel. I was just in time for them. After breakfast I went to the library. The first glance showed what a vast collection it was. Mr. Appleyard was cicerone. Though not much given to admire the merely curious parts of libraries, I was greatly pleased with the old block-printing; the very early specimens of the art at Mentz; the Caxtons; the Florence Homer; the Alduses; the famous

*The Relief of Londonderry.