that I heard for the first time from his lips the "Lays of Rome," which were not published until some time afterward. In fact, I heard them in the making. I never saw the hidden mechanism of his mind so clearly as in the course of these walks. He was very fond of discussing psychological and ethical questions; and sometimes, but more rarely, would lift the veil behind which he habitually kept his religious opinions."

On the 19th of August Parliament met to give effect to the verdict of the polling-booths. An amendment on the address, half as long as the address itself, the gist of which lay in a respectful representation to her majesty that her present advisers did not possess the confidence of the country, was moved simultaneously in both Houses. It was carried on the first night of the debate by a majority of seventy-two in the Lords, and on the fourth night by a majority of ninety-one in the Commons. Macaulay, of course, voted with his colleagues; but he did not raise his voice to deprecate a consummation which on public grounds he could not desire to see postponed, and which, as far as his private inclinations were concerned, he had for some time past anticipated with unfeigned and all but unmixed delight.

London, July 27th, 1841.

DEAR NAPIER,—I am truly glad that you are satisfied. I do not know what Brougham means by objecting to what I have said of the first Lord Holland. I will engage to find chapter and verse for it all. Lady Holland told me that she could hardly conceive where I got so correct a notion of him.

I am not at all disappointed by the elections. They have, indeed, gone very nearly as I expected. Perhaps I counted on seven or eight votes more; and even these we may get on petition. I can truly say that I have not, for many years, been so happy as I am at present. Before I went to India, I had no prospect in the event of a change of government, except that of living by my pen, and seeing my sisters governesses. In India I was an exile. When I came back, I was

before me the prospect of

for a time at liberty; but I had parting in a few months, probably forever, with my dearest

sister and her children. That misery was removed; but I found myself in office, a member of a government wretchedly weak, and struggling for existence. Now I am free. I am independent. I am in Parliament, as honorably seated as man can be. My family is comfortably off. I have leisure for literature, yet I am not reduced to the necessity of writing for money. If I had to choose a lot from all that there are in human life, I am not sure that I should prefer any to that which has fallen to me. I am sincerely and thoroughly contented. Ever yours, T. B. MACAULAY.

CHAPTER IX.

1841-1844.

Macaulay settles in The Albany.-Letters to Mr. Napier. -Warren Hastings, and "The Vicar of Wakefield.”—Leigh Hunt.-Macaulay's Doubts about the Wisdom of publishing his Essays.-Lord Palmerston as a Writer. The "Lays of Rome."-Handsome Conduct of Professor Wilson.-Republication of the Essays.-Miss Aikin's "Life of Addison.". Macaulay in Opposition.-The Copyright Question.-Recall of Lord Ellenborough.-Macaulay as a Public Speaker: Opinions of the Reporters' Gallery.-Tour on the Loire.-Letters to Mr. Napier.-Payment of the Irish Roman Catholic Clergy.— Barère.

THE change of government was any thing but a misfortune to Macaulay. He lost nothing but an income which he could well do without, and the value of which he was ere long to replace many times over by his pen; and he gained his time, his liberty, the power of speaking what he thought, writing when he would, and living as he chose. The plan of life which he selected was one eminently suited to the bent of his tastes and the nature of his avocations. Toward the end of the year 1840, Mr. and Mrs. Trevelyan removed to Clapham; and on their departure, Macaulay broke up his establishment in Great George Street, and quartered himself in a commodious set of rooms on a second floor in The Albany; that luxurious cloister, whose inviolable tranquillity affords so agreeable. a relief from the roar and flood of the Piccadilly traffic. His chambers, every corner of which was library, were comfortably, though not very brightly, furnished. The ornaments were few, but choice: half a dozen fine Italian engravings from his favorite great masters; a handsome French clock, provided with a singularly melodious set of chimes, the gift of his friend and publisher, Mr. Thomas Longman; and the

well-known bronze statuettes of Voltaire and Rousseau (neither of them heroes of his own),* which had been presented to him by Lady Holland as a remembrance of her husband.

The first use which Macaulay made of his freedom was in the capacity of a reviewer. Mr. Gleig, who had served with distinction during the last years of the great French war as a regimental officer, after having been five times wounded in action, had carried his merit into the Church, and his campaigning experiences into military literature. The author of one book which is good, and of several which are not amiss, he flew at too high game when he undertook to compile the "Memoirs of Warren Hastings." In January, 1841, Macau

*

Macaulay says in a letter to Lord Stanhope: "I have not made up my mind about John, Duke of Bedford. Hot-headed he certainly was. That is a quality which lies on the surface of a character, and about which there can be no mistake. Whether a man is cold-hearted, or not, is a much more difficult question. Strong emotions may be hid by a stoical deportment. Kind and caressing manners may conceal an unfeeling disposition. Romilly, whose sensibility was morbidly strong, and who died a martyr to it, was by many thought to be incapable of affection. Rousseau, who was always soaking people's waistcoats with his tears, betrayed and slandered all his benefactors in turn, and sent his children to the Enfans Trouvés."

Macaulay's sentiments with regard to Voltaire are pretty fully expressed in his essay on Frederic the Great. In 1853 he visited Ferney. "The cabinet where Voltaire used to write looked, not toward Mont Blanc, of which he might have had a noble view, but toward a terrace and a grove of trees. Perhaps he wished to spare his eyes. He used to complain that the snow hurt them. I was glad to have seen a place about which I had read and dreamed so much; a place which, eighty years ago, was regarded with the deepest interest all over Europe, and visited by pilgrims of the highest rank and greatest genius. I suppose that no private house ever received such a number of illustrious guests during the same time as were entertained in Ferney between 1768 and 1778. I thought of Marmontel, and his 'ombre chevalier;' of La Harpe, and his quarrel with the Patriarch; of Madame de Genlis, and of all the tattle which fills 'Grimm's Correspondence.' Lord Lansdowne was much pleased. Ellis less so. He is no Voltairian; nor am I, exactly; but I take a great interest in the literary history of the last century." In his diary of the 28th of December, 1850, he writes, "Read the 'Physiology of Monkeys,' and Collins's account of Voltaire-as mischievous a monkey as any of them."

י

lay, who was then still at the War Office, wrote to the editor of the Edinburgh Review. in these terms: "I think the new 'Life of Hastings' the worst book that I ever saw. I should be inclined to treat it mercilessly, were it not that the writer, though I never saw him, is, as an army chaplain, in some sense placed officially under me; and I think that there would be something like tyranny and insolence in pouring contempt on a person who has a situation from which I could, for aught know, have him dismissed, and in which I certainly could make him very uneasy. It would be far too Crokerish a proceeding for me to strike a man who would find some difficulty in retaliating. I shall therefore speak of him much less sharply than he deserves; unless, indeed, we should be out, which is not improbable. In that case I should, of course, be quite at liberty."

Unfortunately for Mr. Gleig, the Whigs were relegated to private life in time to set Macaulay at liberty to make certain strictures; which, indeed, he was under an absolute obligation to make if there was any meaning in the motto of the Edinburgh Review. The first two paragraphs of the "Essay on Warren Hastings" originally ran as follows:

"This book seems to have been manufactured in pursuance of a contract, by which the representatives of Warren Hastings, on the one part, bound themselves to furnish papers, and Mr. Gleig, on the other part, bound himself to furnish praise. It is but just to say that the covenants on both sides have been most faithfully kept; and the result is before us in the form of three big bad volumes, full of undigested, correspondence and undiscerning panegyric.

"If it were worth while to examine this performance in detail, we could easily make a long article by merely pointing out inaccurate statements, inelegant expressions, and immoral doctrines. But it would be idle to waste criticism on a book-maker; and, whatever credit Mr. Gleig may have justly earned by former works, it is as a book-maker, and nothing more, that he now comes before us. More eminent men than Mr. Gleig have written nearly as ill as he, when they have stooped to similar drudgery. It would be unjust to estimate Goldsmith by 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' or Scott by the 'Life of Napoleon.' Mr. Gleig is neither a Goldsmith nor a Scott; but it would be unjust to deny that he is capable of some

* "Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur."