Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/537

Rh manly adherence to principle and to his determination never to degrade the character of a representative. Although he gradually withdrew from general society, and was bored by the vacuity of country-houses and big dinners, he clung more closely to the intercourse of his relations and intimate friends; and meanwhile the history steadily, though slowly, advanced.

It is this period of Macaulay's life which offers the greatest interest to those of the present generation who enjoyed his society, and Mr. Trevelyan has fortunately preserved to us considerable portions of his daily journal at this time. The events recorded are indeed slight and few, but the picture of that animated and accomplished company of kindred minds is full of brilliancy and truth. It was an age of social breakfasts. Macaulay himself preferred a party of friends, assembled at a breakfast-table to eat muffins and broiled salmon, to any other mode of entertainment; and if he did not set the fashion, he certainly adopted it with great cordiality and gave it an unusual charm. Hallam, Sydney Smith, Lord Carlisle, Lord Stanhope, M. Van de Weyer, Senior, and Bishop Wilberforce shared this taste, and the breakfasts were incessant at their respective houses. Bright as those mornings always were, the brightest were the days on which Macaulay appeared, or on which he assembled the same party at the Albany or on Campden Hill. Rogers' breakfasts were a thing apart, for at them the chief object of the host seemed to be to exhibit himself and tell his own stories over again, with the well-known fall of the lip or the anticipated tear. But Macaulay's parties were perfectly natural and unaffected, the conversation was spontaneous and unprepared; yet involuntarily the circle found itself drawing closer round the magician's chair.

Not less congenial to Macaulay were the dinners of "The Club"—that remarkable society founded in 1764 by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr. Johnson, which has numbered amongst its members the best talkers of a century, but certainly none more brilliant than him who was elected on March 19, 1839. For twenty years Macaulay constantly attended these dinners, which are held on alternate Tuesdays during the session. He was there completely in his element. Each of the guests was ear and voice to the others. Lord Carlisle's journal has preserved a few shadowy records of these delightful meetings, but, whatever else the club may have retained, the spirit of Boswell has ceased to haunt it. Mr. Trevelyan speaks of "The Club" in the past tense, as if he supposed that after the dissolution of so brilliant a company, nothing survived. We beg to assure him that he is mistaken. "Esto perpetua" is the motto of the club, and we hope that the time will never arrive when English gentlemen are wanting to support its literary and social traditions.

Whatever fault might be found with Macaulay's gestures as an orator, his appearance and bearing in conversation were singularly effective. Sitting bolt upright, his hands resting on the arms of his chair or folded over the handle of his walking-stick;—knitting his great eyebrows if the subject was one which had to be thought out as he went along, or brightening from the forehead downwards when a burst of humour was coming;—his massive features and honest glance suited well with the manly sagacious sentiments which he set forth in his pleasant sonorous voice, and in his racy and admirably intelligible language. To get at his meaning people had never the need to think twice, and they certainly had seldom, the time. And with all his ardour, and with all his strength and energy of conviction, he was so truly considerate towards others, so delicately courteous with the courtesy which is of the essence and not only in the manner! However eager had been the debate, and however prolonged the sitting, no one in the company ever had personal reasons for wishing a word of his unsaid, or a look or a tone recalled. His good things were never long in the making. During the Caff re war, at a time when we were getting rather the worst of it, he opened the street door for a walk down Westbourne Terrace. "The blacks are flying," said his companion. "I wish they were in South Africa," was the instant reply. His quotations were always ready, and never off the mark. He was always willing to accept a friendly challenge to a feat of memory. One day, in the Board-room of the British Museum, Sir David Dundas saw him hand to Lord Aberdeen a sheet of foolscap covered with writing arranged in three parallel columns down each of the four pages. This document, of which the ink was still wet, proved to be a full list of the senior wranglers at Cambridge with their dates and colleges, for the hundred years during which the names of senior wranglers had been recorded in the university calendar. On another occasion Sir David asked: "Macaulay, do you know your popes?" "No," was the answer; "I always get wrong among the Innocents."

"But can you say your Archbishops of Canterbury?" "Any fool," said Macaulay, "could say his Archbishops of Canterbury LIVING AGE