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 made one remarkable speech on 1 June 1853, when he persuaded the House of Commons to throw out a bill for excluding the master of the rolls from the House of Commons. The bill would have been passed without difficulty had he not spoken, and the proposed change which he denounced was accepted without debate in 1873. In the same year he supported the India Bill. He had already in 1833 introduced clauses for throwing open the appointment of servants of the company to competition. The plan was then dropped; but it was now embodied in the bill introduced by Sir Charles Wood, and vigorously supported by Macaulay. Exhaustion forced him to cut his speech short, and he therefore excluded it from his collected speeches. In 1854 he was chairman of a committee for laying down the rules for examination of candidates. He drew the report, and his list of subjects and marks with other suggested regulations were adopted without modification. He desired the introduction of the same system into other public offices, but opinion was not yet ripe for the change.

Macaulay's last speech in the House of Commons was on 19 July 1853, in support of a bill desired by his constituents for altering the system of paying the stipends of Edinburgh ministers. In the same summer he prepared for publication a collection of his speeches, a spurious edition with innumerable errors having been brought out by Vizetelly. He then devoted himself steadily to his ‘History.’ Parliamentary labours were evidently becoming too much for him, and he accepted the Chiltern Hundreds in January 1856. The third and fourth volumes of the ‘History’ were published in December 1855. The success was as great as that of the first volumes. Everett told him that in the United States the sale had exceeded that of any book except the Bible and one or two school books. In ten weeks 26,500 copies had been sold, and Messrs. Longman paid him in March a cheque for 20,000l., which is still preserved by the firm as a curiosity in the history of publishing. The ‘History’ has been translated into German, Polish, Danish, Swedish, Italian, French, Dutch, Spanish, Hungarian, Russian, Bohemian, and Persian (ib. p. 622).

In the beginning of 1856 Macaulay bought Holly Lodge, Campden Hill, Kensington, a suburban house with a pleasant garden, which united the attractions of town and country. He began his occupation in May 1856. He became something of a gardener, entertained his friends hospitably, and was able to enjoy his autumn tour at home and abroad. In August 1857 Lord Palmerston offered him a peerage, and he took the title of Baron Macaulay of Rothley. In the same autumn he was elected high steward of the borough of Cambridge, and his last public speech was in acknowledgment of the honour, in May 1858. He prepared for a speech upon Indian affairs in the House of Lords about the same time, but the expected occasion did not occur. Meanwhile he was becoming sensible that his history could scarcely extend to the end of William III's reign. His friendship for Mr. Adam Black induced him to send to the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ a few excellent lives. He worked at his ‘History,’ still amusing his leisure hours by reading his old favourites. In 1859 his brother-in-law, Trevelyan, was appointed governor of Madras, and sailed from England in February, his family intending to follow him in a few months. Macaulay was much saddened by the approaching separation. He was strong enough to visit the Lakes and Scotland in the autumn, but after his return to Holly Lodge his weakness became more marked. He had fainting fits, and on 28 December 1859 died quietly, sitting in his library in an easy chair, with the first number of the ‘Cornhill Magazine’ lying open before him. He was buried in Westminster Abbey on 9 Jan. 1860. His grave is in the Poet's Corner, at the foot of Addison's statue.

Macaulay was short, stout, and upright, with homely but expressive features, and a fine brow. He was physically clumsy, and, though he took a simple delight in gorgeous waistcoats, never learnt to tie his neckcloth or wield a razor with moderate skill. He never cared for bodily exercises, and, when offered a horse at Windsor, said that if he rode it must be upon an elephant. He enjoyed pedestrian rambles till his health gave way, but often read as he walked, and preferred to country lanes streets abounding in bookstalls and historical associations. The most obvious of his intellectual qualities was his stupendous memory. He read voraciously, and forgot nothing, from the best classical literature to the most ephemeral rubbish. He learnt by heart ‘Paradise Lost’ and the ‘Cambridge Calendar,’ and maintained that every fool could say his archbishops of Canterbury backwards. His memory was the servant, sometimes perhaps the master, of a vivid imagination and vigorous understanding. He was incessantly ‘castle-building’ (ib. p. 133), reconstructing the past, whether in his library or in the streets; seeing Whitehall with the eyes of Pepys, and peopling Grub Street with old authors, as Scott peopled the Cheviots with moss-