affection to warrant the entry in Margaret Macaulay's journal under the date of March 15, 1832, that "his name would go down to posterity linked with eventful times and great deeds." On June 25, 1824, Macaulay delivered his first public address before a meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society held at Freemasons' Tavern with the Duke of Gloucester in the chair. The Edinburgh Review described his speech as "a display of eloquence so signal for rare and matured excellence that the most practiced orator may well admire how it should have come from one who then for the first time addressed a public assembly."

His connection with the Edinburgh Review began in 1825, when he published the essay on Milton. His effort met with universal favor. Jeffrey, in acknowledging the manuscript, said, "The more I think the less I can conceive where you picked up that style." During the next seven years Macaulay contributed thirteen essays to the Edinburgh Review, including the well known studies of Machiavelli and Dryden and the articles on History and Mill's essay on Government. The position which the young author held among the able men of that day is indicated by his friendship with Samuel Rogers, the poet, Sydney Smith, the essayist and theologian, and Francis Jeffrey, the leading critic of the time. That these eminent writers, the youngest of whom had passed his fiftyeighth birthday, should seek the society of Macaulay was strong proof of the latter's genius.

In his twenty-eighth year Macaulay accepted the office of Commissioner of Bankruptcy offered him by Lord Lyndhurst. The position netted him an income of a thousand pounds per annum, a sum which aided him in providing for his own living and in retrieving the financial losses of his father. Friendship with Lord Landsdowne opportunely opened the way for his entrance into Parliament. In 1830 he was elected a member for Calne. The great triumph of his early years was soon to follow. The speech on the Reform Bill was delivered on the evening of March 2, 1831.

When he had finished the address, the Speaker sent for him and said that "in his prolonged experience he had never seen the House in such a state of excitement." The names of Fox, Burke, and Canning were during that evening in everybody's mouth. Macaulay was hailed as their equal.

The Reform Act was passed. Macaulay was rewarded for his powerful support of the measure by being made a Commissioner of the Board of Control, an organization which represented the Crown in its relations to the East India directors. No man in public life was more engrossed with the affairs of government, but in spite of his many duties he continued to write for the Edinburgh Review. Meanwhile the dreaded financial wreck had come to the family at home and Macaulay was paying over to his father's creditors every penny of his salary except what was spent in procuring a decent subsistence for himself. Means of relief appeared in the offer of the post of legal adviser to the Supreme Council of India at a salary of ten thousand pounds a year. Accompanied by his sister Hannah, he sailed from England February 15, 1834.

Macaulay's capacity for reading was never better exhibited than during this voyage to Madras. In less than the four months which were spent en route, he was able to read the Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil, Horace, Cæsar's Commentaries, Bacon's De Augmentis, Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, Don Quixote, Gibbon's Rome, Mill's India, all the seventy volumes of Voltaire, Sismondi's History of France, and the seven thick folios of the Biographia Britannica. "He seemed to read through the skin," said one who had often watched the operation, "and this speed was not in his case obtained at the expense of accuracy." Just two months after his arrival he wrote to those at home saying: "Money matters seem likely to go on capitally. My expenses, I find, will be smaller than I anticipated. At Christmas I shall send home a thousand or twelve hundred pounds for my father and you all. I cannot tell you what a comfort it is to me to find that I

shall be able to do this. It reconciles me to all the pains acute enough, sometimes, God knows of banishment."

The work which Macaulay performed in India was not confined to the duties of the Council. He proffered his services to two important committees the Committee of Public Instruction and the Law Commission. As president of the Committee of Public Instruction, he reorganized the whole educational system and established standards which were more efficient because they were more practical.

The new Penal Code, though ostensibly the product of the Law Commission, was for the most part Macaulay's own work. The value of this code of criminal law gave him his Ichief title to fame as an Indian statesman. Mr. Fitzjames Stephen, a lawyer of rare ability who was Macaulay's successor, in giving his opinion of this important digest, said: "The Indian Penal Code is to the English criminal law what a manufactured article ready for use is to the materials out of which it is made. It is far simpler, and much better expressed than Livingstone's Code for Louisiana and its practical success has been complete. Pocket editions of these codes (the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Penal Code) are published which may be carried about as easily as a pocket Bible; and I doubt whether even in Scotland, you would find many people who know their Bibles as Indian civilians know their codes."

In 1838 Macaulay returned to England. The income from his salary had been sufficient to save the credit of his father, but it could not stay the progress of disease. Zachary Macaulay's health failed rapidly, and he died while his son and daughter were on their homeward voyage.

After spending the winter in Italy, Macaulay in 1839 reviewed Mr. Gladstone's book, Church and State, and might have settled down to purely literary life; but once more he was drawn into politics. Elected as member for Edinburgh, he was soon admitted into the Cabinet as Secretary-at-War to the Whig ministry of Lord Melbourne. The position,

however, was no gain to Macaulay. He had purposed to write A History of England "from the accession of King James II, down to the times within the memory of men still living," but his official duties forced him to lay this project aside.

Lord Melbourne's ministry did not last long; it fell in 1841, and Macaulay was released from office. Though still retaining his seat for Edinburgh and speaking occasionally in the House, he was free to follow his natural bent. His leisure hours were given, as usual, to essay-work for the Edinburgh Review, and he wrote in succession Clive, Hastings, Frederick the Great, Addison, Chatham, etc. But in 1844 his connection with the Review came to an end, and he wrote no more for the Blue and Yellow, as it was called. In 1841 he put forth a volume of poems the Lays of Ancient Rome not without misgivings as to the result. But the fresh and vigorous language at once carried the work into popularity and it had an enormous sale.

On a change of government in 1846, Macaulay, at the request of Lord John Russell, again became a Cabinet minister, this time as Paymaster-General of the Army. Having to seek reëlection from his constituents, he went to Scotland for that purpose. After a severe contest, and in spite of a growing unpopularity, he was successful. But the candor and strict integrity of the man had engendered the enmity of the politicians, who created a stronger sentiment against him, and at the general election of the following year he was defeated.

This was the real end of Macaulay's political life. Although pressed to contest other seats, he resolutely declined, and for the next few years worked doggedly at his History. In 1848 appeared the first two volumes. Thirteen thousand copies were sold in England in less than four months. On April 4, 1849, Messrs. Harper & Brothers of New York wrote to Macaulay: "We beg you to accept herewith a copy of our cheap edition of your work. There have been three other

editions published by different houses, and another is now in preparation; so there will be six different editions in the market. We have already sold forty thousand copies, and we presume that over sixty thousand copies have been disposed of. Probably, within three months of this time, the sale will amount to two hundred thousand copies." In this same year Macaulay was elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University.

By 1852 the people of Edinburgh had repented the rejection of their famous member and took steps to reëlect him free of expense. So thoroughly was the scheme carried out that Macaulay, without having made a single speech and without having visited the city, was returned triumphantly at the top of the poll. The result was very flattering to Macaulay, but he never really entered actively into political life as in his younger days. Forty years of incessant intellectual labors had begun to undermine his health, and he was now unequal to the fatigues that formerly had been a pleasure to him. In 1857 he was created a Peer Baron Macaulay of Rothley, his birthplace. Still struggling on with his History in the intermissions of his malady, he died suddenly on December 28, 1859.

MACAULAY'S PERSONALITY

In Præd's Introduction to Knight's Quarterly Magazine there is the following description of Macaulay's appearance: "There came up a short manly figure marvelously upright with a bad neckcloth and one hand in his waist-coat pocket. Of regular beauty he had little to boast; but in faces where there is an expression of great power, or of great good-humor, or both, you do not regret its absence." Trevelyan writes: "He dressed badly but not cheaply. His clothes, though ill put on, were good, and his wardrobe was always enormously overstocked. When in the open air, he wore perfectly new