ment, and the Revolution which brought the Parliament into harmony with the nation. But there are great and obvious objections to contemporary history. To be sure, if I live to be seventy, the events of George the Fourth's reign will be to me then what the American war and the Coalition are to me now.

Whether I shall continue to reside in London seems to me very uncertain. I used to think that I liked London; but, in truth, I liked things which were in London, and which are gone. My family is scattered. I have no Parliamentary or official business to bind me to the capital. The business to which I propose to devote myself is almost incompatible with the distractions of a town life. I am sick of the monotonous succession of parties, and long for quiet and retirement. To quit politics for letters is, I believe, a wise choice. To cease to be a Member of Parliament only to become a dinerout would be contemptible; and it is not easy for me to avoid becoming a mere diner-out if I reside here.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

London: September 15, 1838.

Dear Ellis, On Monday I shall set off for Liverpool by the railroad, which will then be opened for the whole way. I shall remain there about a week. The chief object of my visit is to see my little nephew, the son of my sister Margaret. It is no visit of pleasure, though I hear everything most hopeful and pleasing about the boy's talents and temper.1 Indeed, it is not without a great effort that I force myself to go. But I will say no more on this subject, for I cannot command myself when I approach it.

1 The boy died in 1847, having already shown as fair promise of remarkable ability, and fine character, as can be given at the age of thirteen. "I feel the calamity much," Macaulay wrote. "I had left the dear boy my library, little expecting that I should ever wear mourning for him."

Empson came to London yesterday night, with his lady in high beauty and good humour. It is, you know, quite a proverbial truth that wives never tolerate an intimacy between their husbands and any old friends, except in two cases: the one, when the old friend was, before the marriage, a friend of both wife and husband; the other, when the friendship is of later date than the marriage. I may hope to keep Empson's friendship under the former exception, as I have kept yours under the latter.

Empson brings a sad account of poor Napier: all sorts of disquiet and trouble, with dreadful, wearing, complaints which give his friends the gravest cause for alarm. And, as if this were not enough, Brougham is persecuting him with the utmost malignity. I did not think it possible for human nature, in an educated civilised man,—a man, too, of great intellect, to have become so depraved. He writes to Napier in language of the most savage hatred, and of the most extravagant vaunting. The Ministers, he says, have felt only his little finger. He will now put forth his red right hand. They shall have no rest. As to me, he says that I shall rue my baseness in not calling on him. But it is against Empson that he is most furious. He says that, in consequence of this new marriage,' he will make it the chief object of his life to prevent Jeffrey from ever being Lord President of the Court of Session. He thinks that there is some notion of making Empson editor of the Review. If that be done, he says, he will relinquish every other object in order to ruin the Review. He will lay out his last sixpence in that enterprise. He will make revenge on Empson the one business of the remaining years of his life. Empson says that nothing so demoniacal was ever written in the world. For my part, since he takes it into his head to be angry, I am pleased that he goes on in such a way; for he is much less formidable in such a state than he would be, if he kept his 1 Mr. Empson had married the daughter of Lord Jeffrey.

temper. I sent to Napier on Thursday a long article on Temple. It is superficial; but on that account, among others, I shall be surprised if it does not take.

Hayter has painted me for his picture of the House of Commons. I cannot judge of his performance. I can only say, as Charles the Second did on a similar occasion, "Odds fish, if I am like this, I am an ugly fellow."

Yours ever

T. B. M.

In the middle of October Macaulay started for a tour in Italy. Just past middle life, with his mind already full, and his imagination still fresh and his health unbroken,-it may be doubted whether any traveller had carried thither a keener expectation of enjoyment since Winckelmann for the first time crossed the Alps. A diary, from which extracts will be given in the course of this chapter, curiously illustrates the feelings with which he regarded the scenes around him. He viewed the works, both of man, and of nature, with the eyes of an historian, and not of an artist. The leading features of a tract of country impressed themselves rapidly and indelibly on his observation; all its associations and traditions swept at once across his memory; and every line of good poetry, which its fame, or its beauty, had inspired, rose almost involuntarily to his lips. But, compared with the wealth of phrases on which he could draw at will when engaged on the description of human passions, catastrophes, and intrigues, his stock of epithets applicable to mountains, seas, and clouds was singularly scanty; and he had no ambition to enlarge it. When he had recorded the fact that the leaves were green, the sky blue, the plain rich, and the hills clothed with wood, he had said all he had to say, and there was an end of it. He had neither the taste, nor the power, for rivalling those novelists who have more colours in their vocabulary than

ever Turner had on his palette; and who spend over the lingering phases of a single sunset as much ink as Richardson consumed in depicting the death of his villain, or the ruin of his heroine. "I have always thought," said Lady Trevelyan, "that your uncle was incomparable in showing a town, or the place where any famous event occurred; but that he did not care for scenery, merely as scenery. He enjoyed the country in his way. He liked sitting out on a lawn, and seeing grass and flowers around him. Occasionally a view made a great impression on him, such as the view down upon Susa, going over Mont Cenis; but I doubt whether any scene pleased his eye more than his own beloved Holly Lodge, or Mr. Thornton's garden at Battersea Rise. When we were recalling the delights of an excursion among the Surrey hills, or in the byeways at the English lakes, he would be inclined to ask What went ye out for to see?' Yet he readily took in the points of a landscape; and I remember being much struck by his description of the country before you reach Rome, which he gives in Horatius. When I followed him over that ground many years after, I am sure that I marked the very turn in the road where the lines struck him:

From where Cortona lifts to heaven

Her diadem of towers;

and so on through 'reedy Thrasymene,' and all the other localities of the poem."

"Chalons-sur-Saône. Tuesday, October 23, 1838.-The road from Autun is for some way more beautiful than anything I had yet seen in France; or, indeed, in that style, anywhere else, except, perhaps, the ascent to the table-land of the Neilgherries. I traversed a winding pass, near two miles in length, running by the side of a murmuring brook, and between hills covered with forest. The landscape appeared in the richest colouring of October, under a sun like that of an English June. The earth was the earth of autumn, but the sky was

the sky of summer. The foliage,-dark green, light green, purple, red, and yellow,-seen by the evening sun, produced the effect of the plumage of the finest eastern birds. I walked up the pass exceedingly pleased. To enjoy scenery you should ramble amidst it; let the feelings to which it gives rise mingle with other thoughts; look around upon it in intervals of reading; and not go to it as one goes to see the lions fed at a fair. The beautiful is not to be stared at, but to be lived with. I have no pleasure from books which equals that of reading over for the hundredth time great productions which I almost know by heart; and it is just the same with scenery."

"Lyons. Thursday, October 25.-My birthday. Thirtyeight years old. Thought of Job, Swift, and Antony. Dressed, and went down to the steamer. I was delighted by my first sight of the blue, rushing, healthful-looking Rhone. I thought, as I wandered along the quay, of the singular love and veneration which rivers excite in those who live on their banks; of the feeling of the Hindoos about the Ganges; of the Hebrews about the Jordan; of the Egyptians about the Nile; of the Romans,

Cuique fuit rerum promissa potentia Tibrin;

of the Germans about the Rhine. Is it that rivers have, in a greater degree than almost any other inanimate object, the appearance of animation, and something resembling character? They are sometimes slow and dark-looking; sometimes fierce and impetuous; sometimes bright, dancing, and almost flippant. The attachment of the French for the Rhone may be explained into a very natural sympathy. It is a vehement, rapid, stream. It seems cheerful, and full of animal spirits, even to petulance. But this is all fanciful."

"October 26.-On board the steamer for Avignon. Saw the famous junction of the two rivers, and thought of Lord Chatham's simile.1 But his expression languid, though of no

1 "One fragment of this celebrated oration remains in a state of tolerable preservation. It is the comparison between the coalition of Fox and Newcastle, and the junction of the Rhone and the Saône. At Lyons,' said Pitt, ‘I was taken to see the place where the two rivers meet; the one gentle, feeble, languid, and, though languid, yet of no depth; the other a boisterous and