Reformation, with more honesty than Cobbett, and more courage; but very like him in the character of his understanding." At the foot of a fine letter addressed by Ridley from his prison in "Bocardo, in Oxenford, to his former steward who had complied with the Romish religion," Macaulay notes "A stouthearted, honest, brave man." Grindal he more than once pronounces to be "the best Archbishop of Canterbury since the Reformation, except Tillotson." Indeed, it may safely be asserted that, in one corner or another of Macaulay's library, there is in existence his estimate of every famous or notorious English prelate from the beginning of the sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century. The most concise of these sketches of episcopal character may be found in his copy of the letters from Warburton to Hurd, the first of which is headed in pencil with the words, "Bully to Sneak."

Valuable, indeed, is the privilege of following Macaulay through his favorite volumes, where every leaf is plentifully besprinkled with the annotations of the most lively of scholiasts; but it would be an injustice toward his reputation to separate the commentary from the text, and present it to the public in a fragmentary condition. Such a process could give but a feeble idea of the animation and humor of that species of running conversation which he frequently kept up with his author for whole chapters together. Of all the memorials of himself which he has left behind him, these dialogues with the dead are the most characteristic. The energy of his remonstrances, the heartiness of his approbation, the contemptuous vehemence of his censure, the eagerness with which he urges and reiterates his own opinions, are such as to make it at times difficult to realize that his remarks are addressed to people who died centuries, or perhaps tens of centuries, ago. But the writer of a book which had lived was always alive for Macaulay. This sense of personal relation between himself and the men of the past increased as years went on-as he became less able and willing to mix with the world, and more and more thrown back upon the society which he found in his library. His way of life would have been deemed solitary by others, but it was not solitary to him. While he had a volume in his

hands he never could be without a quaint companion to laugh with or laugh at, an adversary to stimulate his combativeness, a counselor to suggest wise or lofty thoughts, and a friend with whom to share them. When he opened for the tenth or fifteenth time some history, or memoir, or romance every incident and almost every sentence of which he had by heart— his feeling was precisely that which we experience on meeting an old comrade, whom we like all the better because we know the exact lines on which his talk will run. There was no society in London so agreeable that Macaulay would have preferred it at breakfast or at dinner to the company of Sterne, or Fielding, or Horace Walpole, or Boswell; and there were many less distinguished authors with whose productions he was very well content to cheer his repasts. "I read," he says, "Henderson's Iceland at breakfast-a favorite breakfast book with me. Why? How oddly we are made! Some books which I never should dream of opening at dinner please me at breakfast, and vice versa." In choosing what he should take down from his shelves he was guided at least as much by whim as by judgment. There were certain bad writers whose vanity and folly had a flavor of peculiarity which was irresistibly attractive to Macaulay. In August, 1859, he says to Lady Trevelyan: "The books which I had sent to the binder are come; and Miss Seward's letters are in a condition to bear twenty more reperusals." But, amidst the infinite variety of lighter literature with which he beguiled his leisure, "Pride and Prejudice," and the five sister novels, remained without a rival in his affections. He never for a moment wavered in his allegiance to Miss Austen. In 1858 he notes in his journal: "If I could get materials, I really would write a short life of that wonderful woman, and raise a little money to put up a monument to her in Winchester Cathedral." Some of his old friends may remember how he prided himself on a correction of his own in the first page of "Persuasion," which he maintained to be worthy of Bentley, and which undoubtedly fulfills all the conditions required to establish the credit of an emendation; for, without the alteration of a word, or even of a letter, it turns into perfectly intelligible common-sense a passage

which has puzzled, or which ought to have puzzled, two generations of Miss Austen's readers.*

Of the feelings which he entertained toward the great minds of by-gone ages it is not for any one except himself to speak. He has told us how his debt to them was incalculable; how they guided him to truth; how they filled his mind with noble and graceful images; how they stood by him in all vicissitudes-comforters in sorrow, nurses in sickness, companions in solitude, "the old friends who are never seen with new faces; who are the same in wealth and in poverty, in glory and in obscurity." Great as were the honors and possessions which Macaulay acquired by his pen, all who knew him were well aware that the titles and rewards which he gained by his own works were as nothing in the balance as compared with the pleasure which he derived from the works of others. That knowledge has largely contributed to the tenderness with which he has been treated by writers whose views on books, and events, and politics past and present, differ widely from his own. It has been well said that even the most hostile of his critics can not help being "awed and touched by his wonderful devotion to literature." And, while his ardent and sincere passion for letters has thus served as a protection to his memory, it was likewise the source of much which calls for admiration in his character and conduct. The confidence with which he could rely upon intellectual pursuits for occupation and amusement assisted him not a little to preserve that dignified composure with which he met all the changes and chances of his public career, and that spirit of cheerful and patient endurance which sustained him through years of broken health and enforced seclusion. He had no pressing need to seek for excitement and applause abroad, when he had

* A slight change in the punctuation effects all that is required. According to Macaulay, the sentence was intended by its author to run thus: "There, any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed. This was the page at which the favorite volume opened—”

beneath his own roof a never-failing store of exquisite enjoyment. That "invincible love of reading," which Gibbon declared that he would not exchange for the treasures of India, was with Macaulay a main element of happiness in one of the happiest lives that it has ever fallen to the lot of a biographer to record.

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. Toward 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 heart-felt 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 forever. 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