zealous men who, with Mr. Wilberforce, led the way in the strong religious reaction which followed the French Revolution, and whom posterity will honor as among the earliest and most steady adversaries of the African Slave Trade, the advocates of the Emancipation of the Negroes in our Colonies. The perpetual agitation of such questions, involving the most sacred principles of human liberty, could not be without its effect on the precocious mind of the young Macaulay. Perhaps to his birth and training in that school. he owed in some degree his command of biblical illustration, which, however, his strong sense and sober judgment always kept within the limits of serious and respectful reverence. Family traditions, happily only traditions, of his early promise, of his childish attempts at composition in prose and verse, were not likely to be lost among a strong religious party, bound together by common sympathies, and maintaining an active correspondence throughout the country. The fame of young Macaulay reached the ears of Hannah More, and, after receiving a visit from him, the High Priestess of the brotherhood, in an agreeable letter, still extant, uttered an oracle predictive of his future greatness. After a few years of instruction at a small school in Clapham, at the age of twelve he was placed under the care of the Rev. Mr. Preston, first at Shelford, afterwards near Buntingford, in the neighborhood of Cambridge. Mr. Preston seems to have been a man of attainments and judgment. He must have taught the Latin and Greek authors extremely well, for under his instruction Macaulay became a sound and good scholar. He did more, he fostered that love for the great classical writers, without which all study is barren and without durable impression. He respected too that great maxim, that no one is so well taught as by himself. Having given or strengthened the impulse, he left the young scholar to his own insatiable avidity for learning, and for books of all kinds. The schoolboy sent an anonymous defence of novel reading to the serious journal of his father's friends, the "Christian Observer" which was inserted. This passion for novel read

ing adhered to him to the last; he swept the whole range, not only of English but of foreign fiction, not without great profit to the future historian. The higher tastes which he then imbibed were equally indelible; his admiration of the unrivalled writers of Greece and Rome grew deeper to the close of his life. Homer and Thucydides, and Tacitus, remained among his constant and familiar studies, and no doubt, without controlling him to servile imitation, exercised a powerful influence on his mode of composition and on his style. Among his father's friends holding the same religious opinions, was Isaac Milner, Dean of Carlisle, and Master of Queen's College, a man with a singular union of profound mathematical acquirements, strong evangelical views, and a peculiar broad humor. During his visits to Milner at Cambridge, Macaulay acquired that strong attachment to the University, which, like his other attachments, seemed to become more strong and fervent with the progress of years.

In his nineteenth year he began his residence at Trinity College, Cambridge. His career at Cambridge was not quite so brilliant as the sanguine expectations of his friends had foretold. He had a repugnance for mathematics, or rather he was under the jealous and absorbing spell of more congenial studies. That repugnance in after-life was a subject of much regret; he fully recognized the importance, almost the necessity, of such studies for perfect education. Even his scholarship, probably far more extensive, wanted that exquisite polish and nicety acquired only at our great public schools, from which came his chief rivals. He carried away, however, the Craven Scholarship, two prizes for English verse, and finally, the object of his highest ambition, a Fellowship of Trinity College. On this success he dwelt to the close of his life with pride. It gratified two of his strongest feelings, — attachment to Cambridge, and the desire of some independent provision which should enable him to enter on his professional career. On the inestimable advantages of such fellowships to young men of high promise and ability but of scanty means, he always insisted with great earnestness, and depre

cated any change in the academical system which should diminish the number of such foundations, held, as he would recount with his unfailing memory, by so many of our first public men.

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The Law was the profession he chose; he was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn, February, 1826; he took chambers, he read, he joined the Northern Circuit. But literature was too strong for law. His legal studies were no doubt of infinite value; they were in truth indispensable for his historical writings, and were hereafter to bear fruit in a sphere which his wildest imagination could not anticipate. He had received, indeed, from the discerning judgment of Lord Lyndhurst, a Commissionership of Bankrupts, 1827. No doubt his Cambridge fame and general promise recommended him for that office. But it was to letters that he was to owe his first opening to public life. In letters he had begun with modest contributions to a magazine, “Knight's Quarterly," of no great circulation, but which was mainly supported by some of his Cambridge friends in this appeared some of his finest ballads. On a sudden he broke out with an article on Milton in the "Edinburgh Review,” which perhaps excited greater attention than any article which had ever appeared, not immediately connected with the politics of the day. Taking the field in the same pages with the brilliant copiousness of Jeffrey, the vigorous and caustic versatility of Brougham, the inimitable wit and droll ery and sound sense of Sydney Smith, to say nothing of the writers in the rival " Quarterly Journal," the young reviewer had struck out his own path. In eomprehensiveness of knowledge, in the originality and boldness of his views, in mastery over the whole history and the life of the eventful times of Milton, in variety and felicity of illustration, in vigor, fulness, and vivacity of style, he seemed to make an epoch and a revolution in review-writing. Up to this time, with some excellent exceptions, the articles in reviews had confined themselves to notices, more or less excursive, of new books, and to discussions of the political or polemic questions

of the day. The article now aspired to be a full dissertation on the history of any great period, on the life of any great man of any time, on the writings, on the influence, on the merits of authors of the highest fame. From a review it became an historical, biographical, philosophical essay.

This paper was followed by others of equal, some perhaps of superior excellence, each opening a new view into the vast range of the author's reading, showing his boldness and independence of judgment, the wonderful stores of his memory, his prodigality, sometimes perhaps uncontrolled, of allusion, illustration, similitude. A young Whig, of high and blameless character, popular with his friends, with the reputation of oratorical power in the debating rooms at Cambridge (he delivered one speech in London, we believe, at an AntiSlavery Meeting, which made some noise), and the acknowledged author of such articles in one of the two popular journals of the day, could not but command the attention, and awaken the hopes of his party. If ever there was a nobleman a patron of letters from a deep and genuine and discriminating love of letters, it was Lord Lansdowne. Lord Lansdowne offered a seat in Parliament to the author of the admirable articles in the "Edinburgh Review." On the acceptance of this offer there could be no hesitation; his political opinions were in the strictest unison with Lord Lansdowne's. Few public men have been so calmly, deliberately true to their first political opinions as Macaulay. Unquestionably, change of political opinions, on full, unselfish conviction, according to change of circumstances, may be the noblest act of moral courage, especially in the face of obloquy and misrepresentation. The best men may become wiser as they grow older. But to this trial Macaulay was never subjected, he was never called upon to this effort of self-sacrifice. He was a liberal in the highest and widest sense; some may think that he carried these views too far, some not far enough. But during life he was unswerving, without vacillation. The line which he drew between constitutional liberty and democracy in his early speeches on

Reform and on the Charter, was precisely the same with that which he drew late in life, in a remarkable letter on the prospects and probable destiny of the United States of

America.

Four years after he had been called to the bar, in 1830, Macaulay was returned to Parliament for Calne. His public life had now commenced. That public life it may be convenient briefly to survey in its several phases, as statesman, orator, poet, essayist, historian. Such was his remarkable variety and versatility. Very few men, indeed, have achieved great things in such different kinds of excellence.

In Parliament he had too much wisdom, too much selfrespect, too much respect for his auditory (an auditory just in the main but severe, sometimes capricious in its justice, and jealous above all even of merit, if obtrusive, importunate, or too self-confident), to thrust himself forward at once into the foremost ranks. Till the Reform Bill he was content to try his arms on rare occasions; he would not waste his power on desultory skirmishes and on trivial subjects. Upon that momentous question, the Reform of 1832, he first put forth his strength. But of his speeches hereafter. The reputation acquired during these debates secured him a seat in Parliament, independent even on generous and unexacting friendship; he was returned, December, 1832, for the wealthy and populous borough of Leeds, enfranchised by the Reform. Bill. In the year 1834, a great, and no doubt unexpected change took place in his prospects, it might seem in his destination. In 1832 he had accepted the office of Secretary to the Board of Control. In his official capacity (in 1834) he made a speech on the renewal of the Indian Charter, a speech which may be read with no unfavorable comparison with Burke's most splendid orations. In breadth and comprehensiveness of view it may compete, in fulness and accuracy surpass, in richness of diction rival the renowned orator; of course, as the occasion was so different, it had nothing of the passion, the terrible picturesqueness, the vituperation; but it had calm statesmanship, and philosophical, or rather, perhaps,