as difficult to lay down as the most stirring and engrossing

romance.

Alas! that all this matchless power and skill should end in a torso, yet a torso if, as we fairly may, we take the revolution and the reign of William III. as a whole, nearly complete in its stature, and in all its limbs! It is deeply to be lamented that Macaulay allowed himself to be called off by generous and grateful friendship to write the lives in the Encyclopædia. All of these, even that of Pitt (as far as it goes, a perfect biography), we would willingly sacrifice if we could fill up the few chasms in his history. And what would we not give for his Queen Anne! William III., to whom he first did justice, and not more than justice, when looked upon from a European, not from an English point of view, was a labor of love: but what would have been the more congenial age of Anne, in which he knew every one, the Queen and her Court, Harley, St. John, Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, as if he had lived with them on the most intimate terms? That in the main Macaulay possessed the still higher qualities of an historian, truth and impartiality, we hesitate not to avow our opinion; of this posterity will judge, we quietly and confidently await its award. He spoke out too freely, too strongly, not to encounter some prejudices, some no doubt very honest political or religious feelings. He did not, perhaps, always nicely measure the strength of his own language; and he so abhorred meanness and dishonesty, that they appeared doubly mean and dishonest in men of great fame and high pretensions. As to Marlborough, we are content to place Mr. Hallam's even more condemnatory verdict by the side of Macaulay's; and Macaulay had not reached the brighter part of Marlborough's career; in the last volume that great man is already shaking off the slough of his baser life. Penn's double and conflicting character (assuredly no rare occurrence in history) must be viewed on all sides. In Pennsylvania, the wise, Christian legislator, worthy of all praise, he was, in England, a vain busy man, proud of his influence with the king, who found it his interest

to flatter him, and unable to keep himself out of the miserable intrigues of that miserable court.

A few sentences on Macaulay's conversational powers, on his private life still fewer. There is a common impression that in society he was engrossing and overpowering. Every one has heard the witty saying of his old friend (no two men could appreciate each other more highly or more justly) about "flashes of silence." But in the quiet intercourse with the single friend, no great talker was more free, easy and genial, than Macaulay. There was the most equable interchange of thought; he listened with as much courtesy, as he spoke with gentle and pleasant persuasiveness. In a larger circle, such as he delighted to meet and assemble around him to the close of his life, a few chosen intimates, some accomplished ladies, foreigners of the highest distinction, who were eager to make his acquaintance, his manners were frank and open. In conversation in such a circle, a commanding voice, high animal spirits, unrivalled quickness of apprehension, a flow of language as rapid as inexhaustible, gave him perhaps a larger share, but a share which few were not delighted to yield up to him. His thoughts were like lightning, and clothed themselves at once in words. While other men were thinking what they should say, and how they should say it, Macaulay had said it all, and a great deal more. And the stores which his memory had at instantaneous command! A wide range of Greek and Latin history and literature, English, French, Italian, Spanish; of German he had not so full a stock, but he knew the best works of the best authors; Dutch he learned for the purpose of his History. With these came anecdote, touches of character, drollery, fun, excellent stories excellently told. The hearer often longed for Macaulay's memory to carry off what he heard in a single morning, in an after-dinner colloquy, or in a few hours in a country-house.

Lord Macaulay was never married; his strong domestic affections were chiefly centred in his sister, happily married to his friend Sir Charles Trevelyan, and her family. Her

children were to him as his own, and cherished with almost parental tenderness. As a friend, he was singularly steadfast; he was impatient of anything disparaging of one for whom he entertained sincere esteem. In the war of political life, he made, we believe, no lasting enemy; he secured the unswerving attachment of his political friends, to whom he had been unswervingly true. No act inconsistent with the highest honor and integrity was ever whispered against him. In all his writings, however his opinions, so strongly uttered, may have given offence to men of different sentiments, no sentence has been impeached as jarring against the loftiest principles of honor, justice, pure morality, rational religion.

In early life he was robust and active; and though his friends at a later period could not but perceive the progress of some mysterious malady (he was long harassed by a distressing cough), yet he rallied so frequently, and seemed to have so much buoyancy of constitution, that they hoped he might have life to achieve his great work. He himself felt inward monitions; his ambition receded from the hope of reaching the close of the first Brunswicks; before his last illness he had reduced his plan to the reign of Queen Anne. His end, though not without warning to those who watched him with friendship and affection, was sudden and singularly quiet. On December 28, 1859, he fell asleep and woke not again.

He was buried, January 9, 1860, in Westminster Abbey, in Poets' Corner, his favorite haunt; and he was known to have expressed a modest hope that he might be thought worthy to repose there with the illustrious dead. He lies at the foot of Addison's statue, near to Johnson, and among many other of our most famous statesmen and men of letters.

H. H. MILMAN

SKETCH

OF THE

LIFE AND WRITINGS

OF

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY.

THE RIGHT HON. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, Baron Macaulay, of Rothley, in the county of Leicester, born in the year 1800, at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, is a son of the late eminent philanthropist, Zachary Macaulay, who died in 1838, and a grandson of the Rev. John Macaulay, a Presbyterian minister in the Scottish Highlands, descended from the Macaulays of the island of Lewis, the most northern and largest of the Outer Hebrides. The subject of our notice was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he soon distinguished himself by his extraordinary facility in the acquisition of knowledge, and the tenacity of memory which enabled him to recall it at will: in 1819, he gained the Chancellor's Medal for a poem (published at the time) entitled Pompeii; in 1821, he gained the same Chancellor's Medal for a poem (published at the time) entitled Evening; and in the same year he was, as a reward for his classical proficiency elected to the Craven Scholarship. In 1822, Mr. Macaulay graduated B. A., and was elected a Fellow of Trinity; and, in 1825, he graduated M. A. On leaving college, the successful student turned his attention to law and politics, and displayed the same zeal in these new fields of research as