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48 regard; 'the warm and genial qualities of his heart,' he says of him, 'were his crowning excellence.' In those years, too, he first became acquainted with Macaulay. 'The best way of seeing society here,' writes Macaulay to his sister, 'is to have very small parties. There is a little circle of people whose friendship I value; and in whose conversation I take pleasure: the Chief Justice, Sir Edward Ryan, my old friend Malkin; Cameron and Macleod, the Law Commissioners; Macnaghten among the older servants of the Company, and Mangles, Colvin. and John Peter Grant among the younger. These, in my opinion, are the flower of Calcutta society, and I often ask some of them to a quiet dinner.' One such dinner is recorded in a page of Mr. Colvin's Diary, where he notes a discussion on Pope's theory of the 'Ruling passion.'

On the Friday of every week, Sir George Trevelyan in his Life of his uncle tells us, a chosen few met round Macaulay's breakfast-table to discuss the progress which the Law Commission had made in its labours; and each successive point which was started opened the way to such a flood of talk, legal, historical, political, and personal, that the company would sit far onwards towards noon over the empty teacups, until an uneasy sense of accumulating despatch-boxes drove them, one by one, to their respective offices. Educational questions were, at that hour, being much discussed. There was war à outrance between parties which had ranged themselves under one or other of two banners.