historical thought. This speech of itself might seem to des ignate him to the Government as a member of the New Council which was to legislate for India. The offer was made. The vast field of India was of itself likely to seize on his imagination; he might aspire to be the legislator, as Heber the religious missionary, of that wonderful realm. He had many friends, the family of Grant especially (the pres ent Lord Glenelg was the President of the Board of Con trol), closely connected with India; how much he had read or thought on the subject, his papers on Clive and Hastings (writ ten later) may, nevertheless, bear testimony. Still, no doubt, prudential motives, and those of no ungenerous prudence, influenced his determination. By a few years of economy, careful but not illiberal, he might make a provision for his future life (he was a man with no expensive or prodigal habits) which might place him above dependence either on the servitude of office, or the servitude of literary labor. There was another incentive—his family had never been affluent. He might add to the comforts and assist in the advancement of those to whom he was attached by the strongest domestic affections, a duty which he discharged with unsparing generosity. In India he took his seat as Member of the Council and as President of the Law Commission. It has been supposed, and indeed asserted, that this legislative mission was barren and without result; now, however, it is bearing its mature fruits. After much, perhaps inevitable, delay, and repeated revisions, the Indian Criminal Code, in the formation of which he took a leading part, and which he had enriched with most valuable explanatory notes, will, with some alterations, and those not substantial, from January next have the force of law throughout British India. Macaulay's share in this great work, especially his notes, is declared by those who have a right to judge on such subjects, to have placed his reputation as a jurist on a solid foundation. It is the first, and therefore the most important, of a series of operations upon the judicial system of India, which will have a great effect upon the

state of society in that country; and will not be without influence upon the jurisprudence of England.

Soon after his return to England in 1838, in January 1840, he was elected by acclamation, representative of the city of Edinburgh; that seat he filled undisturbed til July 1847. He had already been named on the Privy Council, and had accepted the office of Secretary at War. He was Secretary at War, with a seat in the cabinet, about two years, from 1839 to 1841. On the return of his friends to power, he became, July 12, 1846, Paymaster of the Forces.

But throughout this period of his life the great inward struggle was going on within his mind between the ambition of public usefulness, of parliamentary and official distinction, and the love of letters, which will rarely brook a rival on the throne, the still higher ambition, as he thought, of adding some great work to the treasures of English thought and English literature. In the office at Whitehall or the Horse Guards, on the benches of the House of Commons, amid the applauses or admiring silence of the House, his heart was in his library, and among his books. He yearned for a place not so much among the great parliamentary leaders and the famous statesmen of the land, the Chathams, Burkes, Foxs, as among the immortal writers in verse and prose, the Miltons, Clarendons, Addisons, Gibbons. The auditory which he coveted was that vast expanding world throughout which the English language is spoken; the fame, that which will only die with the death of English letters. Throughout the whole time of his absence from England, on his voyage to India and on his return, in India, as far as leisure would allow, and during his parliamentary and official career, he was still with his indefatigable industry heaping up stores of knowledge, stores which could not overload his capacious and retentive memory, whose grasp and self-command seemed to expand with its accumulating treasures, memory which disdained nothing as beneath it, and was never perplexed or burdened by its incalculable possessions. As a curious instance of his range

- memory,

and activity of reading, among the books which he took with him to India, were the many huge volumes of St. Chrysostom's works. Their still almost pure and harmonious Greek, and their importance in the history of religious opinion (always a subject of deep interest), carried him through a task which has been achieved by few professional theologians. As an illustration of his powers of memory, he has said, and he was a most unboastful man, that if Milton's great poem were lost, he thought that he could accurately commit to writing at least all the first books of Paradise Lost.

This lifelong inward strife, which perhaps might have remained unreconciled till towards the close of his days, came to a sudden and unexpected issue. At the election in 1847, Macaulay was the rejected candidate for the city of Edinburgh. Nor can it be denied, though those who admire Macaulay will not admire him the less, that he was accessory to his own failure. The event turned on a religious question, in which Edinburgh, true to its old Scotch prejudices, adhered to the less liberal view. Macaulay could not be persuaded to humor, to temporize, even to conciliate. He took the loftiest tone, boldly, indignantly rebuked the voters for their narrow, in his estimation, discreditable bigotry. He felt, there can be no doubt, this blow at the time bitterly. He was perhaps not suited for, he had never be fore been tried in the rough and coarse work of the popular canvass and the hustings; he was distressed at the desertion or the lukewarmness of friends; he was ashamed, as he openly declared, of the disgrace which Edinburgh inflicted on herself. In a striking poem, recently published, in which are some of the finest stanzas in the language, he gave full vent to his feelings of indignation and sorrow. But at the same time, and in the same poem, he finds and expresses his lofty sense of consolation. The great debate was ended; he was released; he was emancipated from public, from parliamentary life. He might retire with dignity and honor to the undisturbed, undistracted cultivation of letters; henceforth his study was his scene of action; literary fame was to

be the undivided mistress of his affections, his earthly exceeding great reward. Edinburgh made a few years afterwards noble amends by returning Macaulay (at the election in 1852) without solicitation, without expense, even without the usual flattery of a personal canvass; he had but to appear, to accept, and return thanks for his ovation. He sat for Edinburgh from July 1852 to 1856. But he sat without the trammels, without the least desire of office: he spoke rarely, but never without effect. In 1856, failing health compelled him to resign that honorable post. Some other honors, but honors which belonged to a man of letters, awaited him and courted his acceptance. He was Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow in 1848; Trustee of the British Museum, February 1847 (an office which he highly esteemed, and to which he attended with much assiduity, and with great public advantage); Fellow of the Royal Society, November 1849; Foreign Member of the French Academy, May 1857, and of the Prussian Order of Merit (1857); High Steward of Cambridge (1857). In the same year he was raised to the peerage, a tribute to his high and blameless character and transcendent literary distinction, and an act of royal favor, quite unexpected, but highly approved by all whose approbation was of real value.

So far our imperfect sketch has exhibited Lord Macaulay as a public man, as a jurist, and a statesman; some words must follow as to his rank as an orator. It is remarkable how rarely in this country the famous and commanding public speaker, either in parliament or even at the bar, and the great writer, have met in the same person. Bolingbroke, Burke, and Macaulay (the unrivalled comedies of Sheridan, the State Papers and exquisite political satires of Canning are hardly in point) stand perhaps alone. If all the writings of Chatham, Pitt, Fox, Erskine, Peel, had been suppressed, the world would have suffered no great loss. Macaulay had no thought of resting his fame on his parlia mentary speeches; he would willingly have left them to the rarely visited cemetery of the parliamentary history. He

was placed under compulsion by the act of a piratical book seller, who printed many of them (insinuating that he did so by authority) bristling with blunders, bad English, loose argument, errors and mistakes about events and persons, everything most abhorrent to Macaulay's taste and judgment. He was under the necessity of publishing a more trustworthy edition. We confess some gratitude for this bad act of the unprincipled Curll of our days, for some of these speeches appear to us oratorical compositions of the highest order. By all accounts Macaulay's delivery was far too rapid to be impressive; it wanted also variety and flexibility of intonation. Even the most practised reporters panted after him in vain; how much more the slower intellects of country gentlemen and the mass of the House! This, however, only heightens our astonishment that speeches so full, so profoundly meditated, yet with so much freedom, with no appearance of being got by heart, with such prodigality of illustration and allusion, should be poured forth with such unhesitating flow, with such bewildering quickness of utterance. To read them with delight and profit, we read them rather slowly; we can hardly conceive that they were spoken less deliberately. It may be questioned, and has been questioned, whether Macaulay was, or could have become, a masterly debater. This accomplishment, except in rare examples, is acquired only by long use and practice. When Macaulay entered the House, the first places were filled by men of established influence and much parliamentary training. Even if he had felt called upon to make himself more prominent, it may be doubted whether he could have sufficiently curbed his impetuous energy, or checked his torrent of words. He would have found it difficult to assume the stately, prudent, reserved, compressed reply; he might have torn his adversaries' arguments to shreds, but he would not have been content without a host of other arguments, and so would have destroyed the effect of his own confutation. Still it is remarkable that on two occasions a speech of Macaulay's actually turned the vote of the House,