Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/530

522 India. But no woman appears ever to have exercised over him that irresistible charm, from which no other man of genius and feeling was ever, we believe, exempt. His heart, as it is termed, was given to his sisters alone; when Margaret died during his residence at Calcutta, he pours forth all the passionate grief of a lover, and declares he had almost lost his reason; henceforth Hannah and her children became and remained the sole objects of his affection.

The following passage describes his own intense feeling on this subject:—

The attachment between brothers and sisters [he writes in November 1832], blameless, amiable, and delightful as it is, is so liable to be superseded by other attachments that no wise man ought to suffer it to become indispensable to him. That women shall leave the home of their birth, and contract ties dearer than those of consanguinity, is a law as ancient as the first records of the history of our race, and as unchangeable as the constitution of the human body and mind. To repine against the nature of things, and against the great fundamental law of all society, because, in consequence of my own want of foresight, it happens to bear heavily on me, would be the basest and most absurd selfishness.

I have still one more stake to lose. There remains one event for which, when it arrives, I shall, I hope, be prepared. From that moment, with a heart formed, if ever any man's heart was formed, for domestic happiness, I shall have nothing left in this world but ambition. There is no wound, however, which time and necessity will not render endurable: and, after all, what am I more than my fathers,—than the millions and tens of millions who have been weak enough to pay double price for some favourite number in the lottery of life, and who have suffered double disappointment when their ticket came up a blank?

And he wrote in this strain at thirty-two!

These years, then, spent in Great Ormond Street, were chiefly employed in the duties of the Bankruptcy Court or on the Northern Circuit, where he held no brief, in writing a series of articles for this journal, some purely literary, and some directed with great force against the utilitarians of Queen Square, and in the keenest enjoyment of domestic life. The society of the Macaulay family was restricted to a few friends of the old Clapham set; their means were small; and genius had not yet broken through the wall which early habits had built round it. He had been obliged to sell the gold medals he won at Trinity, and even later he would sup on a bit of cheese sent him by a Wiltshire constituent, with a glass of audit ale from the old college. But at one of the most critical moments of his life, and, as it turned out, of English history, all this changed. The Marquis of Lansdowne, quick above all men to discern indications of ability in literature or in art beyond the circle in which his rank and age placed him, and not less kind than prompt in raising young aspirants from obscurity to fame, discerned the genius of Macaulay in his writings, even before he knew the man.

Public affairs [writes Lady Trevelyan] were become intensely interesting to him. Canning's accession to power, then his death, the repeal of the Test Act, the emancipation of the Catholics, all in their turn filled his heart and soul. He himself longed to be taking his part in Parliament, but with a very hopeless longing.

In February 1830 I was staying at Mr. Wilberforce's at Highwood Hill when I got a letter from your uncle, enclosing one from Lord Lansdowne, who told him that he had been much struck by the articles on Mill, and that he wished to be the means of first introducing their author to public life, by proposing to him to stand for the vacant seat at Calne. Lord Lansdowne expressly added that it was your uncle's high moral and private character which had determined him to make the offer, and that he wished in no respect to influence his votes, but to leave him quite at liberty to act according to his conscience. I remember flying into Mr. Wilberforce's study, and, absolutely speechless, putting the letter into his hands. He read it with much emotion, and returned it to me, saying: "Your father has had great trials, obloquy, bad health, many anxieties. One must feel as if Tom were given him for a recompense." He was silent for a moment, and then his mobile face lighted up, and he clapped his hand to his ear, and cried: "Ah! I hear that shout again. Hear! hear! What a life it was."

And so on the eve of the most momentous conflict that ever was fought out by speech and vote within the walls of a senate-house, the young recruit went gaily to his post in the ranks of that party whose coming fortunes he was prepared loyally to follow, and the history of whose past he was destined eloquently, and perhaps imperishably, to record.

We know no second argument for borough influence so practical as this, that Calne, under the guidance of Lord Lansdowne, sent to the House of Commons within thirty years two such men as Thomas Macaulay and Robert Lowe, who might, and probably would, otherwise, have sought for seats in vain, or not ventured to seek for them at all.

On entering Parliament, in April 1830, Macaulay addressed the House on a bill