of their hands at the rate of seventy complete copies a week. But a computation founded on this basis would give a very inadequate notion of the extent to which Macaulay's most important work is bought and read; for no account would have been taken of the years in which large masses of new and cheap editions were sold off in the course of a few months: 12,024 copies of a single volume of the "History" were put into circulation in 1858, and 22,925 copies of a single volume in 1864. During the nine years ending with the 25th of June, 1857, Messrs. Longman disposed of 30,478 copies of the first volume of the "History;" 50,783 copies during the nine years ending with June, 1866; and 52,392 copies during the nine years ending with June, 1875. Within a generation of its first appearance, upward of a hundred and forty thousand copies of the "History" will have been printed and sold in the United Kingdom alone.

But the influence of the work and the fame of its author were not confined to the United Kingdom. "I have," writes Macaulay, "a most intoxicating letter from Everett. He says that no book has ever had such a sale in the United States, except (note the exception) the Bible and one or two schoolbooks of universal use. This, he says, he has been assured by book-sellers of the best authority."* On the continent of Eu

* With reference to the first two volumes of the "History," Macaulay wrote to Mr. Everett: "It would be mere affectation in me not to own that I am greatly pleased by the success of my 'History' in America. But I am almost as much puzzled as pleased; for the book is quite insular in spirit. There is nothing cosmopolitan about it. I can well understand that it might have an interest for a few highly educated men in your country; but I do not at all understand how it should be acceptable to the body of a people who have no king, no lords, no Established Church, no Tories, nay (I might say), no Whigs in the English sense of the word. The dispensing power, the ecclesiastical supremacy, the doctrines of Divine right and passive obedience, must all, I should have thought, seemed strange, unmeaning things to the vast majority of the inhabitants of Boston and Philadelphia. Indeed, so very English is my book, that some Scotch critics, who have praised me far beyond my deserts, have yet complained that I have said so much of the crotchets of the Anglican High-churchmen-crotchets which scarcely any Scotchman seems able to comprehend.”

rope, within six months after the third and fourth volumes appeared, Baron Tauchnitz had sold near ten thousand copies; "which proves," writes Macaulay, "that the number of persons who read English in France and Germany is very great." "The incomparable man" (says of him Professor Von Ranke), "whose works have a European, or rather a world-wide, circulation, to a degree unequaled by any of his contemporaries." Six rival translators were engaged at one and the same time on the work of turning the "History" into German. It has been published in the Polish, the Danish, the Swedish, the Italian, the French, the Dutch, the Spanish, the Hungarian, the Russian, the Bohemian languages, and is at this moment in course of translation into Persian.

Macaulay received frequent and flattering marks of the respect and admiration with which he was regarded by the foreigner. He was made a member of the Academies of Utrecht, Munich, and Turin. The King of Prussia named him a Knight of the Order of Merit, on the presentation of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin; and his nomination was communicated to him in a letter from the Baron Von Humboldt, the chancellor of the order.* Guizot wrote to inform him that he had himself proposed him for the Institute of France. On one and the same day of February, 1853, the official announcement of his election came from Paris, and his badge of the Order of Merit from Berlin.

* The Prussian Order of Merit is, to other honors, what its founder Frederic the Great was to other kings. The following paragraph appeared lately in The Academy:

"It has excited some surprise that Mr. Carlyle should have declined the Grand Cross of the Bath, after having accepted the Ordre pour le Mérite. There is, however, a great difference between the two. The Ordre pour le Mérite is not given by the sovereign or the minister, but by the knights themselves. The king only confirms their choice. The number of the knights of the Ordre pour le Mérite is strictly limited (there are no more than thirty German and thirty foreign knights), so that every knight knows who will be his peers. In Germany, not even Bismarck is a knight of the Ordre pour le Mérite. Moltke was elected simply as the best representative of military science; nor does he rank higher as a knight of that order than Bunsen, the representative of physical science, or Ranke, the historian."

In the following June, Macaulay was presented to the degree of Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford, where he was welcomed enthusiastically by the crowd in the body of the theatre, and not unkindly even by the under-graduates, who almost forgot to enter a protest against the compliment that their university had thought fit to bestow on the great Whig writer. In 1854 he was chosen president of the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh, to the duties of which post he could give little of his time, though the Institution owes to his judgment and liberality some important additions to its stock of curious and valuable books. He showed himself, however, most assiduous in his attendance at the British Museum, both as a trustee and as a student. His habit was to work in the King's Library; partly for quiet, and partly in order to have George the Third's wonderful collection of pamphlets within an easy walk of his chair. He did his writing at one of the oak tables which stand in the centre of the room, sitting away from the outer wall, for the sake of the light. He availed himself of his official authority to search the shelves at pleasure without the intervention of a librarian; and (says the attendant) "when he had taken down a volume, he generally looked as if he had found something in it." A manuscript page of his "History," thickly scored with dashes and erasures—it is the passage in the twenty-fifth chapter where Sir Hans Sloane is mentioned as "the founder of the magnificent museum which is one of the glories of our country "is preserved at that museum in a cabinet, which may truly be called the place of honor; within whose narrow limits are gathered together a rare collection of objects such as Englishmen of all classes and parties regard with a common reverence and pride. There may be seen Nelson's hasty

* The batch of new doctors included Mr. Grote, Mr. Disraeli, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, and the present Lord Derby. "I congratulated Grote with special warmth," says Macaulay, "for, with all his faults of style, he has really done wonders....... I was pleased with Lord Derby's reception of his son. 'Fili mi dilectissime,' he called him. When I entered somebody called out 'History of England! Then came a great tumult of applause and hissing; but the applause greatly predominated."

sketch of the line of battle at the Nile; and the sheet of paper on which Wellington computed the strength of the cavalry regiments that were to fight at Waterloo; and the notebook of Locke; and the autographs of Samuel Johnson's "Irene," and Ben Jonson's "Masque of Queens;" and the rough copy of the translation of the "Iliad," written, as Pope loved to write, on the margin of frayed letters and the backs of tattered envelopes. It is pleasant to think what Macaulay's feelings would have been if, when he was rhyming and castlebuilding among the summer-houses at Barley Wood, or the laurel-walks at Aspenden, or under the limes and horse-chestnuts in the Cambridge Gardens, he could have been assured that the day would come when he should be invited to take his place in such a noble company.

CHAPTER XIV.

1856-1858.

Macaulay resigns his Seat for Edinburgh.-He settles Himself at Holly Lodge. His House and Garden.-His Notions of Hospitality.-"L'Almanach des Gourmands."-Country Visits.-Continental Tours.-Chateaubriand.-Macaulay as a Man of Business.-His Generosity in Money Matters. His Kindness to his Relations and toward Children.-Picture-galleries.-Macaulay as an Instructor.-He pays a Compliment to Lord Palmerston.-Macaulay is made a Peer.-His Attachment to his Old University.-He is elected Lord High Steward of the Borough of Cambridge.-Macaulay in the House of Lords.-French Politics.-The Indian Mutiny.-The National Fast-day.-The Capture of Delhi and Relief of Lucknow.-Professor Owen and the British Museum.-Literary Ease. The Fifth Volume of the "History."-Macaulay's Contributions to the "Encyclopædia Britannica."-His Habit of learning by Heart.-Foreign Languages.-Macaulay's Modes of amusing Himself.The Consequences of Celebrity.-Extracts from Macaulay's Journal.— His Literary Conservatism.-His Love for Theology and Church History. His Devotion to Literature.

MACAULAY's first care in the year 1856 was to make his arrangements for retiring from Parliament. He bid farewell to the electors of Edinburgh in a letter which, as we are told by his successor in the representation of the city, was received by them with "unfeigned sorrow." "The experience," he writes, "of the last two years has convinced me that I can not reasonably expect to be ever again capable of performing, even in an imperfect manner, those duties which the public has a right to expect from every member of the House of Commons. You meanwhile have borne with me in a manner which entitles you to my warmest gratitude. Had even a small number of my constituents hinted to me a wish that I would vacate my seat, I should have thought it my duty to comply with that wish. But from not one single elector have