“Friday, December 23d. —In the midst of life—this morning I had scarcely left my closet when down came the ceiling in large masses. I should certainly have been stunned, probably killed, if I had staid a few minutes longer. I staid by my fire, not exerting myself to write, but making Christmas calculations, and reading. An odd declaration by Dickens, that he did not mean Leigh Hunt by Harold Skimpole. Yet he owns that he took the light externals of the character from Leigh Hunt, and surely it is by those light externals that the bulk of mankind will always recognize character. Besides, it is to be observed that the vices of Harold Skimpole are vices to which Leigh Hunt had, to say the least, some little leaning, and which the world generally imputed to him most unsparingly. That he had loose notions of meum and tuum, that he had no high feeling of independence, that he had no sense of obligation, that he took money wherever he could get it, that he felt no gratitude for it, that he was just as ready to defame a person who had relieved his distress as a person who had refused him relief-these were things which, as Dickens must have known, were said, truly or falsely, about Leigh Hunt, and had made a deep impression on the public mind. Indeed, Leigh Hunt had said himself: 'I have some peculiar notions about money. They will be found to involve considerable difference of opinion with the community, particularly in a commercial country. I have not that horror of being under obligation which is thought an essential refinement in money matters.' This is Harold Skimpole all over. How, then, could D. doubt that H. S. would be supposed to be a portrait of L. H. ?"

At this point Macaulay's journal comes to an abrupt close. Two days afterward he wrote to Mr. Ellis: "The physicians think me better; but there is little change in my sensations. The day before yesterday I had a regular fainting-fit, and lay quite insensible. I wish that I had continued to be so; for if death be no more-. Up I got, however; and the doctors agree that the circumstance is altogether unimportant." Nevertheless, from this time forward there was a marked change for the worse in Macaulay. "I spent Christmas - day with him," my mother writes. "He talked very little, and was constantly dropping asleep. We had our usual Christmas dinner with him, and the next day I thought him better. Never, as long as I live, can I lose the sense of misery that I ever left him after Christmas-day. But I did not feel alarmed. I thought the accident to the ceiling had caused a shock to his nerves from which he was gradually recovering; and,

when we were alone together, he gave way to so much emotion, that, while he was so weak, I rather avoided being long with him." It may give occasion for surprise that Macaulay's relatives entertained no apprehension of his being in grave and immediate danger; but the truth is that his evident unhappiness (the outward manifestations of which, during the last few days of his life, he had no longer the force to suppress) was so constantly present to the minds of us all that our attention was diverted from his bodily condition. His silence and depression-due, in reality, to physical causes-were believed by us to proceed almost entirely from mental distress.

In a contemporary account of Macaulay's last illness* it is related that on the morning of Wednesday, the 28th of December, he mustered strength to dictate a letter addressed to a poor curate, inclosing twenty-five pounds; after signing which letter he never wrote his name again. Late in the afternoon of the same day I called at Holly Lodge, intending to propose myself to dinner; an intention which was abandoned as soon as I entered the library. My uncle was sitting, with his head bent forward on his chest, in a languid and drowsy reverie. The first number of the Cornhill Magazine lay unheeded before him, open at the first page of Thackeray's story of "Lovel the Widower." He did not utter a word, except in answer; and the only one of my observations that at this distance of time I can recall suggested to him painful and pathetic reflections which altogether destroyed his self-command.

On hearing my report of his state, my mother resolved to spend the night at Holly Lodge. She had just left the drawing-room to make her preparations for the visit (it being, I

* This account, which is very brief, but apparently authentic, is preserved among the Marquis of Lansdowne's papers. Macaulay writes, on the 19th of August, 1859: "I grieve to hear about my dear old friend, Lord Lansdowne. I owe more to him than to any man living; and he never seemed to be sensible that I owed him any thing. I shall look anxiously for the next accounts." Lord Lansdowne recovered from this illness, and survived Macaulay more than three years.

suppose, a little before seven in the evening), when a servant arrived with an urgent summons. As we drove up to the porch of my uncle's house, the maids ran, crying, out into the darkness to meet us, and we knew that all was over. We found him in the library, seated in his easy-chair, and dressed as usual; with his book on the table beside him, still open at the same page. He had told his butler that he should go to bed early, as he was very tired. The man proposed his lying on the sofa. He rose as if to move, sat down again, and ceased to breathe. He died as he had always wished to die— without pain; without any formal farewell; preceding to the grave all whom he loved; and leaving behind him a great and honorable name, and the memory of a life every action of which was as clear and transparent as one of his own sentences. It would be unbecoming in me to dwell upon the regretful astonishment with which the tidings of his death. were received wherever the English language is read; and quite unnecessary to describe the enduring grief of those upon whom he had lavished his affection, and for whom life had been brightened by daily converse with his genius, and ennobled by familiarity with his lofty and upright example. "We have lost" (so my mother wrote) "the light of our home, the most tender, loving, generous, unselfish, devoted of friends. What he was to me for fifty years how can I tell? What a world of love he poured out upon me and mine! The blank, the void, he has left-filling, as he did, so entirely both heart and intellect-no one can understand. For who ever knew such a life as mine passed as the cherished companion of such a man?"

He was buried in Westminster Abbey, on the 9th of January, 1860. The pall was borne by the Duke of Argyll, Lord John Russell, Lord Stanhope, Lord Carlisle, Bishop Wilberforce, Sir David Dundas, Sir Henry Holland, Dean Milman, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, the Lord Chancellor, and the Speaker of the House of Commons. "A beautiful sunrise," wrote Lord Carlisle. "The pall-bearers met in the Jerusalem Chamber. The last time I had been there on a like errand was at Canning's funeral. The whole service and ceremony

were in the highest degree solemn and impressive. All befitted the man and the occasion."

He rests with his peers in Poet's Corner, near the west wall of the south transept. There, amidst the tombs of Johnson, and Garrick, and Handel, and Goldsmith, and Gay, stands conspicuous the statue of Addison; and at the feet of Addison lies the stone which bears this inscription:

INDEX.

Auckland, Lord, arrival of, in India, i., 404.
Auckland's, Lord, congratulations, ii., 206.
Aulay Macaulay, i., 20, 23.

"Absentee," opinion of a scene in the, ii., Austen, Miss, respect for, ii., 394.