Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/532

524 I now had the pleasure of listening for an hour and a half to his conversation. He is certainly the greatest curiosity that I ever fell in with. His head is sunk down between two high shoulders. One of his feet is hideously distorted. His face is as pale as that of a corpse, and wrinkled to a frightful degree. His eyes have an odd glassy stare quite peculiar to them. His hair, thickly powdered and pomatumed, hangs down his shoulders on each side as straight as a pound of tallow candles. His conversation, however, soon makes you forget his ugliness and infirmities. There is a poignancy without effort in all he says, which reminded me a little of the character which the wits of Johnson's circle give of Beauclerk. For example, we talked about Metternich and Cardinal Mazarin. "J'y trouve beaucoup à redire. Le cardinal trompait; mais il ne mentait pas. Or, M. de Metternich ment toujours, et ne trompe jamais."

The same compliment, if it be one, that Talleyrand paid to the cardinal, might fairly be addressed to the most powerful and successful of living ministers. The portraits of the host and hostess are uncommonly like.

My dear Sister,—On Saturday evening I went to Holland House. There I found the Dutch ambassador, M. de Wessemburg, Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Smith, and Admiral Adam, a son of old Adam who fought the duel with Fox. We dined like emperors, and jabbered in several languages. Her ladyship, for an esprit fort, is the greatest coward that I ever saw. The last time that I was there she was frightened out of her wits by the thunder. She closed all the shutters, drew all the curtains, and ordered candles in broad day to keep out the lightning, or rather the appearance of the lightning. On Saturday she was in a terrible taking about the cholera; talked of nothing else; refused to eat any ice because somebody said that ice was bad for the cholera; was sure that the cholera was at Glasgow; and asked me why a cordon of troops was not instantly placed around that town to prevent all intercourse between the infected and the healthy spots. Lord Holland made light of her fears. He is a thoroughly good-natured, open, sensible man; very lively; very intellectual; well read in politics, and in the lighter literature both of ancient and modern times. He sets me more at ease than almost any person that I know, by a certain good-humoured way of contradicting that he has. He always begins by drawing down his shaggy eyebrows, making a face extremely like his uncle, wagging his head and saying: "Now do you know, Mr. Macaulay, I do not quite see that. How do you make it out?" He tells a story delightfully, and bears the pain of his gout and the confinement and privations to which it subjects him, with admirable fortitude and cheerfulness. Her ladyship is all courtesy and kindness to me: but her demeanour to some others, particularly to poor Allen, is such as it quite pains me to witness. He is really treated like a negro slave. "Mr. Allen, go into my drawing-room and bring my reticule." "Mr. Allen, go and see what can be the matter that they do not bring up dinner." "Mr. Allen, there is not enough turtle soup for you. You must take gravy soup or none." Yet I can scarcely pity the man. He has an independent income, and, if he can stoop to be ordered about like a footman, I cannot so much blame her for the contempt with which she treats him.

Lord Grey was not very prompt to recognize the services which had been rendered to his government by the zeal and eloquence of this youthful ally. Office was notoriously of importance to Macaulay, and the sooner he was engaged in the active service of the government the better. Yet he was only offered at first a commissionship at the Board of Control, and it was not till the autumn of 1832 that he succeeded his friend Hyde Villiers in the secretaryship of that office. No doubt it was fortunate, as it turned out, that an official connection with the government of India was his first step in the public service. The following session, moreover, witnessed the passing of a most important India bill, which threw open the China trade; extinguished slavery in the British territories in the East; and made a considerable step towards the transfer of the sovereignty of India from the company to the crown. This measure was introduced by Mr. Charles Grant, as president of the Board of Control.' But it had been in a great part prepared by Macaulay, and it was defended by him in the House with the most brilliant eloquence. The session of 1833, however, did not pass without many anxieties. Macaulay, himself, who sat for Leeds in the first Reform Parliament, was desponding. He saw " nothing before him but a frantic conflict of extreme opinions; then a short period of oppression; then a convulsive reaction; and then a tremendous crash of the funds, the Church, the peerage and the throne." Mr. Stanley's bill for the emancipation of the West-Indian negroes, based on a long period of apprenticeship, was strongly condemned by the zealous abolitionists, by Zachary Macaulay and by Macaulay himself. At this moment, with all his hopes of political power and influence bursting into life, whilst pecuniary embarrassments were gathering round his family to such an extent that for several years every penny Macaulay earned, beyond what the necessities of life