cific against the jobbery and corruption which are fast undermining the efficiency of their administration, and debasing their standard of national virtue.*

When Macaulay had finished the business of preparing his speeches for the press, he returned to his "History," and continued to work upon it almost without intermission for two years, from November, 1853, onward. His labors, during this period of his life, were always too severe for his strength, and sometimes even for his happiness. He felt the strain most painfully during the early months of 1854.

"Sunday, January 18t, 1854.—This will, I hope, be a year of industry. I began pretty well. Chapter XIV. will require a good deal of work. I toiled on it some hours, and now and then felt dispirited. But we must be resolute, and work doggedly, as Johnson said. I read some of his Life with great delight, and then meditated a new arrangement of my 'History.' Arrangement and transition are arts which I value much, but which I do not flatter myself that I have attained. I amused myself with making out a Laponian New Testament by the help of a Norwegian dictionary. With time I could learn a good deal of the two languages in this way."

"February 6th.-I worked hard at altering the arrangement of the first three chapters of the third volume. What labor it is to make a tolerable book, and how little readers know how much trouble the ordering of the parts has cost the writer! I have now finished reading again most of Burke's works. Admirable! The greatest man since Milton."

"Thursday, February 16th.—I staid at home and did nothing. An unprofitable day. I tried to write, but had a feeling of impotence and despondency to which I am subject, but which I have not had now for some time. I sent twenty pounds to I thought that these high prices might pinch them. Then I sat down doggedly to work, and got on very tolerably-the state of England at the time of William's re

and

* The whole question of patronage as bearing upon the official system of the United States is most ably and frankly discussed in the North American Review of January, 1871. The author of the article, speaking of the proposal to introduce competition into his own country, says distinctly: "There should be no attempt to disguise the fact that it is the purpose of this theory of administration to prevent the public service from being used in any manner or to any extent as a means of party success." It is to be hoped that this is a case in which, instead of Americanizing our own institutions, we shall induce our transatlantic cousins to Anglicize theirs.

turn from the Continent in 1692. I read Monk Lewis's Life. A very odd fellow! One of the best of men, if he had not had a trick of writing profane and indecent books. Excellent son, excellent master; and in the most trying circumstances; for he was the son of a vile brace of parents, and the master of a stupid, ungrateful gang of negroes."

"March 3d.—I staid at home all day. In the morning there was a fog which affected my breath, and made me cough much. I was sad and desponding all day. I thought that my book would be a failure; that I had written myself out; that my reputation would go down in my life-time; and that I should be left, like Hayley and other such men, among people who would wonder why I had ever been thought much of. These clouds will pass away, no doubt."

They passed away when the warm weather came, and did not return with the returning winter. Macaulay's health was confirmed by a fine summer, spent under circumstances which exactly suited his notions of enjoyment; and, for a good while to come, he was a stronger man than he had been since his first great illness. His brother-in-law had taken a house in the village of Esher; and Macaulay accordingly settled himself, with infinite content, exactly in the middle of the only ugly square mile of country which can be found in that delightful neighborhood. "I am pretty well pleased," he says, "with my house. The cabin, for a cabin it is, is convenient." "Here I am," he writes to Mr. Ellis, "in a pleasant, small dwelling, surrounded by geraniums and roses; the house so clean that you might eat off the floor. The only complaint I have to make is that the view from my front windows is blocked by a railway embankment. The Trevelyans have a very pleasant place only a mile and a half off." Macaulay's cottage, which stood in Ditton Marsh, by the side of the high-road from Kingston to Esher, was called Greenwood Lodge. An occasional extract from his journal will show how smoothly ran the current of his days.

"July 23d, 1854.-Tremendous heat. I put the first volume of Wilberforce's Life into my pocket, went by ferry across the Thames to Hampton Court, and lounged under the shade of the palace gardens and of Bushey Park during some hours. A hot walk back. I don't know that I ever felt it hotter."

"August 12th.-I wrote to Longman. I think that I must take till Oc

tober next.* By that time the book may be not what I wish, but as good as I can hope to make it. I read Dickens's 'Hard Times.' One excessively touching, heart-breaking passage, and the rest sullen socialism. The evils which he attacks he caricatures grossly, and with little humor. Another book of Pliny's letters. Read 'Northanger Abbey;' worth all Dickens and Pliny together. Yet it was the work of a girl. She was certainly not more than twenty-six. Wonderful creature! Finished Pliny. Capital fellow, Trajan, and deserving of a better Panegyric.”

“September 22d.—I am glad that our troops have landed in the Chersonese. As I walked back from Esher a shower came on. Afraid for my chest, which at best is in no very good state, I turned into a small alehouse, and called for a glass of ginger-beer. I found there a party of hoppickers, come back from the neighborhood of Farnham. They had had but a bad season, and were returning, nearly walked off their legs. I liked their looks, and thought their English remarkably good for their rank of life. It was in truth the Surrey English, the English of the suburbs of London, which is to the Somersetshire and Yorkshire what Castilian is to Andalusian, or Tuscan to Neapolitan. The poor people had a foaming pot before them; but as soon as they heard the price, they rose, and were going to leave it untasted. They could not, they said, afford so much. It was but fourpence-half-penny. I laid the money down; and their delight and gratitude quite affected me. Two more of the party soon arrived. I ordered another pot, and when the rain was over left them, followed by more blessings than, I believe, were ever purchased for ninepence. To be sure, the boon, though very small, was seasonable; and I did my best to play the courteous host."

During his residence in Surrey, Macaulay kept Mr. Ellis regularly informed of all that a friend would wish to know; but his letters contain little of general interest. On the 11th of July he writes: "I have been working four or five days at my report on the Indian Civil Service, and have at last finished it. It is much longer than I anticipated that it would be, and has given me great trouble. To-morrow I go vigorously to work on my 'History.' I have been so busy here with my report that I have read nothing but comedies of Goldoni and novels of Eugene Sue.

"I walked yesterday to Hampton Court along the Middlesex bank of the Thames, and lounged among the avenues and

*He underrated by fully three-quarters of a year the duration of the work which was still before him.

flower-beds about an hour. I wonder that no poet has thought of writing a descriptive poem on the Thames. Particular spots have been celebrated; but surely there is no finer subject of the sort than the whole course of the river from Oxford downward-the noble University; Clifden; Windsor; Chertsey, the retreat of Cowley; St. Anne's Hill, the retreat of Fox; Hampton Court, with all the recollections of Wolsey, Cromwell, William and Mary, Belinda's hair, the Cartoons, the Beauties; then Strawberry Hill; then Twickenham and Pope's grotto; then Richmond; and so on to the great City, the forest of masts, the Tower, Greenwich Hospital, Tilbury Fort, and the Armada. Is there any river in the world which, in so short a space, affords such subjects for poetry? Not the Tiber, I am sure, nor the Seine."

From the summer of 1854, until his third and fourth volumes were published, the composition of his "History" was to Macaulay a source of almost unmingled interest and delight; a work which never presses, and never ceases," as he called it in a letter to his sister; "a work which is the business and the pleasure of my life," as he described it in the preface to his speeches. By September, 1854, he was so far forward that he thought himself justified in saying, after a visit to the Windsor collection: "I was told that there was scarcely any thing of earlier date than George I. A good hearing. I have now got to a point at which there is no more gratifying discovery than that nothing is to be discovered." As the months went on he worked harder, and ever harder. His labor, though a labor of love, was immense. He almost gave up letter-writing; he quite gave up society; and at last he had not leisure

even for his diary.

"January 1st, 1855.-A new year. May it be as happy as the last! To me it will probably be more eventful, as it will see, if I live and am well, the publication of the second part of my 'History.""

"January 10th.-I find that I am getting out of the habit of keeping my journal. I have, indeed, so much to do with my 'History' that I have little inclination for any other writing. My life, too, is very uneventful. I am a prisoner to my room, or nearly so. I do nothing but write or read. I will, however, minute down interesting things from time to time. Some day the taste for journalizing may return."

VOL. II.-21

"January 29th, 1855.-I open this book again after an interval of near three weeks; three weeks passed by the fireside. Once I dined out; on Tuesday, the 16th, at Westbourne Terrace, to meet Gladstone. Nothing could be more lamentable than his account of affairs in the Crimea.

"To-night there will, I suppose, be a vote against the Government, and to-morrow a change of Administration.* I am content that it should be so, and well pleased that my illness dispenses me from voting. I have made great progress with my book of late, and see no reason to doubt that I shall go to press in the summer. I am now deep in Chapter XIX. Odd that here, within a few yards of all the bustle of politics, I should be as quiet as a hermit; as quiet as Cowper was at Olney; much more quiet, thank God, than my old friend Hannah More at Barley Wood; buried in old pamphlets and broadsides; turning away from the miseries of Balaklava to the battle of Steinkirk, on which I was busied to-day. The fates have spun me not the coarsest thread, as old Ben says. Hannah, Margaret, Alice, Trevelyan, and George are as kind as possible. I want no more; but I have other very kind visitors. I can not think that this can go on long. But I hope that I shall bring out my two volumes. I am conscious of no intellectual decay. My memory I often try, and find it as good as ever; and memory is the faculty which it is most easy to bring to decisive tests, and also the faculty which gives way first."

"November 6th, 1855.-After an interval of eight months I begin my journal again. My book is almost printed. It will appear before the middle of December, I hope. It will certainly make me rich, as I account riches. As to success I am less certain; but I have a good hope. I mean to keep my journal as regularly as I did seven years ago when the first part came out. To-day I went to call on poor Hallam. How much changed! In the evening a proof of Chapter XX. came from Spottiswoode's."

During the ensuing fortnight the entries in Macaulay's diary relate almost exclusively to the proof-sheets, which generally occupied him both morning and afternoon, and to the books which he turned over for his amusement after the appearance of the lamp had given him the signal to leave his desk, and draw his easy-chair to the hearth-rug. On the 13th of November, to take an instance, he read "Welsted's Life and Remains;' mostly trash. At dinner the 'Love Match.'

On the 29th of January Mr. Roebuck carried his motion for a Committee of Inquiry into the condition of our army before Sebastopol, by 305 votes to 148. Lord Aberdeen at once resigned.