66 Celestial Empire." And again: "We treated the Clifton Zoo much too contemptuously. I lounged thither, and found more than sixpennyworth of amusement." "After breakfast I went to the Tower," he writes in his journal of 1839. "I found great changes. The wild beasts were all gone. The Zoological Gardens have driven paved courts and dark narrow cages quite out of fashion. I was glad for the sake of the tigers and leopards." He was never so happy as when he could spend an afternoon in taking his nieces and nephews a round of London sights, until, to use his favourite expression, they "could not drag one leg after the other." If he had been able to have his own way, the treat would have recurred at least twice a week. On these occasions we drove into London in time for a sumptuous midday meal, at which everything that we liked best was accompanied by oysters, caviare, and olives, some of which delicacies he invariably provided with the sole object of seeing us reject them with contemptuous disgust. Then off we set under his escort, in summer to the bears and lions; in winter to the Panorama of Waterloo, to the Colosseum in Regent's Park, or to the enjoyment of the delicious terror inspired by Madame Tussaud's Chamber of Horrors. When the more attractive exhibitions had been exhausted by too frequent visits, he would enliven with his irrepressible fun the dreary propriety of the Polytechnic, or would lead us through the lofty corridors of the British Museum, making the statues live and the busts speak by the spirit and colour of his innumerable anecdotes paraphrased offhand from the pages of Plutarch and Suetonius. One of these expeditions is described in a letter to my mother in January 1845. "Fanny brought George and Margaret, with Charley Cropper, to the Albany at one yesterday. I gave them some dinner; fowl, ham, marrow-bones, tart, ice, olives, and champagne. I ness. found it difficult to think of any sight for the children however, I took them to the National Gallery, and was excessively amused with the airs of connoisseurship which Charley and Margaret gave themselves, and with Georgy's honestly avowed weari'Let us go. There is nothing here that I care for at all.' When I put him into the carriage, he said, half sulkily: 'I do not call this seeing sights. I have seen no sight to-day.' Many a man who has laid out thirty thousand pounds on paintings would, if he spoke the truth, own that he cared as little for the art as poor Georgy." Regularly every Easter, when the closing of the public offices drove my father from the Treasury for a brief holiday, Macaulay took our family on a tour among Cathedral-towns, varied by an occasional visit to the Universities. We started on the Thursday; spent Good Friday in one city and Easter Sunday in another, and went back to town on the Monday. This year it was Worcester and Gloucester; the next, York and Lincoln; then Lichfield and Chester, Norwich and Peterborough, Ely and Cambridge, Salisbury and Winchester. Now and then the routine was interrupted by a trip to Paris, or to the great churches on the Loire; but in the course of twenty years we had inspected at least once all the Cathedrals of England, or indeed of England and Wales, for we carried our researches after ecclesiastical architecture as far down in the list as Bangor. "Our party just filled a railway carriage," says Lady Trevelyan, "and the journey found his flow of spirits unfailing. It was a return to old times; a running fire of jokes, rhymes, puns, never ceasing. It was a peculiarity of his that he never got tired on a journey. As the day wore on he did not feel the desire to lie back and be quiet, and he liked to find his companions ready to be entertained to the last." may Any one who reads the account of Norwich and Bristol in the third chapter, or the account of Magdalen College in the eighth chapter, of the History, form an idea of Macaulay's merits as a Cicerone in an old English provincial capital. To walk with him round the walls of York, or through the Rows of Chester; to look up at the towers of Lichfield from the spot where Lord Brook received his deathwound, or down upon Durham from the brow of the hill behind Neville's Cross; to hear him discourse on Monmouth and Bishop Ken beneath the roof of Longleat Hall, or give the rein to all the fancies and reminiscences, political, personal, and historical, which were conjured up by a drive past Old Sarum to Stonehenge, were privileges which a child could appreciate, but which the most learned of scholars. might have envied. When we returned to our inn in the evening, it was only an exchange of pleasures. Sometimes he would translate to us choice morsels from Greek, Latin, Italian, or Spanish writers, with a vigour of language and vivacity of manner which communicated to his impromptu version not a little of the air and the charm of the original. Sometimes he would read from the works of Sterne, or Smollett, or Fielding those scenes to which ladies might listen, but which they could not well venture to pick out for themselves. And when we had heard enough of the siege of Carthagena in "Roderick Random," or of Lieutenant Le Fever's death in "Tristram Shandy," we would fall to capping verses, or stringing rhymes, or amusing ourselves with some game devised for the occasion which often made a considerable demand upon the memory or invention of the players. Of these games only a single trace remains. One of his nieces, unable to forecast the future of her sex, had expressed a regret that she could never hope to go in for a college examination. Macaulay thereupon pro duced what he was pleased to call a paper of questions in Divinity, the contents of which afford a curious proof how constantly the lighter aspects of English sectarianism were present to his thoughts. The first three questions ran as follows: 1. "And this is law, I will maintain That whatsoever king shall reign, "Then read Paul's epistles, To support your opinion." "When the lads of the village so merrily, ah! Thou and I will be first in the throng." To what sects did the three persons belong who express their sentiments in the three passages cited above? Is there anything in the third passage at variance with the usages of the sect to which it relates? Which of those three sects do you prefer? Which of the three bears the closest resemblance to Popery? Where is Bray? Through what reigns did the political life of the Vicar of Bray extend? 2. Define "Jumper," "Shaker,' " "Ranter," ""Dunker." 3. Translate the following passage into the Quakeric dialect: "You and Sir Edward Ryan breakfasted with me on Friday the eleventh of December." Like all other men who play with a will, and who work to a purpose, Macaulay was very well aware of the distinction between work and play. He did not carry on the business of his life by desultory efforts, or in the happy moments of an elegant inspiration. Men have disputed, and will long continue to dispute, whether or not his fame was deserved; but no one who himself has written books will doubt that at any rate it was hardly earned. "Take at. hazard," says Thackeray, "any three pages of the Essays or History: and, glimmering below the stream of the narrative, you, an average reader, see one, two, three, 'a half-score of allusions to other historic facts, characters, literature, poetry, with which you are acquainted. Your neighbour, who has his reading and his little stock of literature stowed away in his mind, shall detect more points, allusions, happy touches, indicating, not only the prodigious memory and vast learning of this master, but the wonderful industry, the honest, humble previous toil of this great scholar. He reads twenty books to write a sentence; he travels a hundred miles to make a line of description." That this praise, though high, was not excessive, is amply proved by that portion of Macaulay's papers which extends over the period when his History was in course of preparation. Justice demands that, even at the risk of being tedious, a specimen should be given of the scrupulous care and the unflagging energy with which he conducted his investigations. July 17, 1848. Dear Ellis, Many thanks for your kindness. Pray let Dr. Hook know, whenever you have an opportunity, how much I am obliged to him.1 The information which he has procured for me, I am sorry to say, is not such as I can use. But you need not tell him so. I feel convinced that he has made some mistake: for he sends me only a part of the Leeds burials in 1685; and yet the number is double that of the Manchester burials in the same year. If the ordinary rules of calculation are applied to these data, it will be found that Leeds must in 1685 have contained 16,000 souls or thereabouts. Now at the beginning 1 Mr. Ellis was Recorder of Leeds, and Dr. Hook its Vicar. |