placid retirement of the House of Lords. His death occurred two years later, on December 28, 1859. He was verging on sixty. As he was unmarried the title died with him.

His death, though hardly unexpected, for he was known to be failing, was in a certain sense sudden. His nephew, the present distinguished statesman, Sir George Trevelyan, called just before he passed away, and found him sitting in his study, his head resting on his chest. It was difficult to arouse him, and the attempt, perhaps ill-judged, recalled some painful incidents of his career, and overcame his self-control, which he did not regain without an effort. He quietly passed away, just as he had always desired, preceding most of his friends and relatives, and leaving an honoured reputation and an irreproachable character. He shed lustre on the Upper House, and thoroughly deserved a peerage, although his acceptance of a title exposed him to a charge of inconsistency. One could not imagine John Bright or Joseph Chamberlain, even from political considerations, taking a peerage. He was not the first, and certainly he will not be the last, who has gratefully accepted a peer's coronet after expressing magnificent contempt for such a useless and foolish distinction. It is curious that though history has never, in Macaulay's own words, degraded Francis Bacon into Viscount St. Albans, no name is more often mentioned, with its title prefixed, than Lord Macaulay's, making one half suspect that though Bacon could receive no additional dignity from a title, Macaulay was not above such an equivocal honour.

There is something so obviously objectionable in the retention of an hereditary Upper Chamber and of the order of hereditary knighthood, that it was a shock to many people when Tennyson was raised to the peerage. The peculiar sting lies in the hereditary character of the Chamber, opposed as it is to the sense of justice and to the best instincts of an enlightened age. As well have hereditary judges, hereditary bishops, and hereditary university professors! A second Chamber, in some form or another, is useful in practice, and as long as the House of Lords continues to be hereditary it is only saved from utter contempt by being yearly recruited from great contemporary statesmen, authors, and thinkers. Were the heirs of peers generally honourable and able, less objection would be urged; but when the dignity of the peerage descends, as it too frequently does, to some scapegrace, or roué, or under-bred knave, whose worthlessness is only saved from universal execration and detestation by the halo investing a coronet, one cannot help wondering how long such an anomaly will last, how long will the age continue to regard the

worst vices of men of rank as mere amiable weaknesses? The appellate functions of the Upper Chamber have now been abrogated in practice; while, as regards any real effective control over the destinies and government of the country, the Lower House, as it is styled with curious infelicity, has a thousand times more weight. Whenever the House of Lords ventures to exercise its nominal power and throws out a popular Bill, the storm of disapproval is menacing and unmistakable, while the fate of the measure is in no degree imperilled; a few weeks or months later, and the defeated Bill is a second time introduced and forced through the House, the Lords either reversing their former decision, or the majority, by withdrawing from the division, permitting the Bill to pass. The only function the Upper House can legitimately exercise is to criticise and amend Bills. At the same time the greater dignity and éclat of a peer over those of a member of the governing and all-powerful Chamber, are above question.

Macaulay was in early life far from affluent-that is, for an habitué of the gilded drawing-rooms of the West-end-and for some time he had not more than £600 a year. This, in the circles in which he moved, was little short of beggary, and he was compelled to dispose of his University gold medals to pay his debts. But debt he abominated, and as much as possible avoided; and, fortunately, he was still young when the proceeds of his works and his official salary secured him an ample income. In middle life he received in a single year, an exceptional one, £20,000 from literature; "pretty well," as he remarks, "for a man who twenty years earlier had not a penny remaining after paying his debts, and who only inherited a slender legacy from his uncle the General."

The remuneration which Macaulay received from the Edinburgh Review was large and useful. At first it looks as though his merits were fully appreciated, and that the money reward they secured very fairly gauged their worth. But when one remembers that the intellectual powers of Macaulay surpassed those of ordinary men in the ratio of hundreds to one, and that those brilliant and fascinating essays helped to give the Edinburgh the commanding position which it so long held at the head of national reviews, one is compelled to admit that the remuneration did not represent the literary worth of his contributions, though it might their market value. At the same time. it is not easy to understand how in those times, when the difficulties of intercommunication were still considerable, and the circulation of the Review must have been confined within comparatively narrow limits, the proprietors could afford and venture to pay £250 for a

single article.

That is, however, the most convincing proof of Macaulay's popularity and reputation.

When fortune smiled on him, he, like Canon Liddon, gave lavishly and generously right and left, and bestowed in charity a large portion of his income. It is said on good authority that the last letter he ever dictated, just before he died, enclosed a cheque for £25 to a worthy but poor curate. All accounts repeat the same tale of generosity and disinterestedness. His affection for children, like that of Dean Burgon, was touching. He never married, perhaps all the better for him, as had he had the distractions of a wife and family, he might not have found leisure for his work. When his nephew was a lad Macaulay used, the fortunate recipient of his uncle's generosity tells us, to send him, in contravention of post-office regulations, sovereigns concealed in the huge masses of wax with which he fastened his letters.

It is hardly possible to speak with sufficient admiration of Macaulay's immense and accurate learning, or to find words in which to convey an idea of his care and untiring industry; à propos of his high sense of honour and of his ardour for work the following extract from Mr. Greville's diary will be of interest: "Panizzi came in the evening, and there was a great deal of pleasant conversation. He had breakfasted the day before with Macaulay, whose history, the two next volumes, will not be ready for another year. Panizzi said Macaulay was very conscientious as to his authorities, and spared no pains to get at the truth, and willingly re-wrote any part of his book when he had any reason to believe that he had been in error as to facts. Of all living English historians, Panizzi considered Hallam to be the most accurate, and that his book on the 'Constitutional History of England' was not to be surpassed."

What praise can be too warm for a man who read a volume to find material for a single sentence or to verify a single fact, and who would travel hundreds of miles to describe with greater vividness a single scene? Yet this he did, not once only, but repeatedly. In his scrupulous care to verify quotations he acted up to the dying advice of old Dr. Routh, the President of Magdalen, who, when asked to leave some precept for the guidance of his friends, exclaimed, "Verify your quotations, gentlemen." He passed weeks at Weston Zoyland filling in every detail in the narrative of the Battle of Sedgemoor. Such labour could not but be crowned with success. The lifelike interest of the work, the accuracy of every statement, and the clearness of language commanded universal admiration and silenced opposition; and though his conclusions are sometimes objected to, his facts are, with few exceptions, allowed to be beyond

the reach of criticism. Unfortunately, of late his History has been impugned and its accuracy and impartiality questioned, while its reputation is undoubtedly waning, but not from any fault of the author, rather from our new reading of history and the constant bringing to light of fresh facts.

In 1849 the first two volumes appeared, and were welcomed with a burst of enthusiasm similar to that which greeted Edward Gibbon's "Decline and Fall." Six years later the third and fourth volumes were published, and were received with even louder applause. Thousands and tens of thousands of copies were sold, and they maintained, or rather added to, the illustrious author's fame. But death and disease were laying their hand on the overworked statesman, historian, and essayist, and before his great work was completed, England mourned Macaulay as she has seldom grieved for a writer. A fifth volume was in 1861 issued, containing fragments found in his study at Kensington, where, in the midst of his cherished books, his laborious life came to an end. The last passage which he lived to complete was the description of the death-bed of William of Orange, but breaks occur in the narrative immediately preceding that memorable event. These fragments, with a consideration that cannot be sufficiently praised, and which has not always in similar circumstances been imitated, it was decided to leave exactly as they were found. Had he lived, he proposed bringing down his History to the beginning of this century. It purports to commence with the accession of the Second James, but one or two preliminary chapters of exceeding beauty give a faithful and brilliant picture of earlier times.

No space remains to speak of Macaulay's poems, which would have made any other man famous; but he who claims the distinction of being England's greatest historian established a reputation on works even more imperishable and worthy of note than those spirit-stirring poems, "The Lays of Ancient Rome."

One is tempted to wonder whether the distinguished lawyer and author whom Macaulay takes to task in his essay on Bacon was the gentleman who figures in the following anecdote: "An amusing story is told of Charles Lamb (à propos of someone asking if his wit and that of Sydney Smith were alike). One day, when he was playing at whist with his friend Basil Montagu, he said to him, 'Basil, if dirt were trumps, what hands you would hold !'"

It remains to add that when Macaulay passed away only one place was worthy to receive his body. In the glorious Abbey of Westminster, by the side of heroes and scholars who have invested

their native land with unfading glory, amidst writers as brilliant, statesmen as illustrious, poets as memorable, generals as victorious, philanthropists as devoted, thinkers as profound, hearts as true and sterling as any he described, or the world has known in its most favoured climes, happiest ages, and most gorgeous scenes-in that proud sanctuary which only receives the noblest spirits of the day, was laid the illustrious historian and critic. Over for him, as for them, the harassing labour and wearing strife of existence, peacefully he and they sleep; though their work be done, their memory lives for

evermore.

ALFRED J. H. CRESPI.