Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, Don Quixote, Gibbon's Rome, Mill's India, all the seventy volumes of Voltaire, Sismondi's History of France, and the seven thick folios of the Biographia Britannica." He had agreed to keep up his connection with the Edinburgh Review, stipulating, however, that his pay should be in books.

While in India he lived in a very modest style, and continued his enormous reading, though he accomplished an immense amount of other work. Besides his official duties as member of the Council, he gratuitously undertook the reorganization of the public instruction and the drawing up of a penal code. In both these tasks, he accomplished beneficial and lasting results. Mr. Justice Stephen says: "The Indian Penal Code is to the English Criminal law what a manufactured article ready for use is to the materials out of which it is made. It is to the French Code Pénal, and I may add the North German Code of 1871, what a finished picture is to a sketch. . . . Its practical success has been complete. The clearest proof of this is, that hardly any questions have arisen upon it which have had to be determined by the Courts, and that few and slight amendments have had to be made by the Legislature." In this work, Macaulay's unshakable honesty brought down upon him the opposition of many influential Anglo-Indians, who had profited by the old unjust laws; and so bitter were the attacks

that for some time he did not dare to let his sister see the morning papers. And yet, "he vigorously advocated and supported the freedom of the Press at the very moment when it was attacking him with the most rancorous invective."

In January, 1838, he set sail for England with the competence he had so much desired, to find that his father had died while he was on the ocean. His mother had passed away shortly after his great speeches in 1831.

Soon after his return, he made a tour in Italy, where he finished the Lays of Ancient Rome, which he had begun in India. These were published in 1842. Critics have denied them the merits of the highest poetry, either in thought or versification. But their unfading popularity with several generations of healthy and hearty schoolboys shows that Macaulay when he wrote of "brave Horatius, who kept the bridge so well," had something vital to say and said it in a vital manner. Trevelyan writes: "Eighteen thousand of the Lays of Ancient Rome were sold in ten years, forty thousand in twenty years, and by June, 1875, upwards of a hundred thousand copies had passed into the hands of readers."

Macaulay on his return had intended to devote himself to literature, and to write his History of England, which he had planned to extend from the accession of

James II. to the death of George IV. But the Whig ministry needed all the support they could get. He was returned to Parliament as member for Edinburgh in 1839, and soon after was made Secretary at War.

In 1841 the ministry went out of office, and though Macaulay retained his seat for Edinburgh, and attended the sittings of Parliament, he gave himself more and more to literature. In 1844, with The Earl of Chatham, he closed the great series of essays for the Edinburgh Review, in order to devote himself to the History, which he intended to make the chief work of his life. In 1847 he lost his seat in Parliament. His narrowminded Scotch constituents were unable to appreciate his lack of sectarianism shown by voting for the "Maynooth Grant" to support a Roman Catholic school in Ireland. Of this he wrote to his sister Hannah-now Lady Trevelyan: "I hope that you will not be much vexed, for I am not vexed, but as cheerful as ever I was in my life. I have been completely beaten. I will make no hasty resolutions; but everything seems to indicate that I ought to take this opportunity of retiring from public life." After careful consideration, he refused election from another borough and bent all his energies to bringing out the first part of his History.

The first two volumes of Macaulay's History of England appeared in November, 1848, and had an immediate success unequalled by any serious work in the

English language. The first edition of 3000 copies was sold out in ten days. In less than four months 13,000 were disposed of. In America, 40,000 copies were sold almost immediately, and the Harpers wrote. Macaulay that in all about 200,000 copies would be disposed of in six months. The next two volumes appeared in 1855 and had a still greater sale. The publishers were able to pay him in a few months $100,000" the greatest amount ever paid at one time for one edition of a book." The fifth volume which brought the History down to the death of William III. was published in 1860, after his death.

...

There is no space here to discuss adequately the merits and defects of this monumental work. It is sufficient to say that its enormous popularity was due to Macaulay's plan of writing history. And he has given us a clear statement of that plan. It was that history should be a true novel, "interesting the affections, and presenting pictures to the imagination. . . . It should invest with the reality of human flesh and blood beings whom we are too much inclined to consider as personified qualities in an allegory; call up our ancestors before us with all their peculiarities of language, manners, and garb; show us over their houses, seat us at their tables, rummage their old-fashioned wardrobes, explain the uses of their ponderous furniture." In a letter to Napier he wrote: "I have at last begun my historical

labors. The materials for an amusing narrative are immense. I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies." And no one understood his public better than Macaulay. His last years were darkened by disease and failing strength. The magnificent machine, worked for a full half century at its extreme capacity, at length broke down. In 1852 he had a severe attack of heart disease followed by asthma and fainting spells from which he never recovered. Yet, in spite of suffering and weakness, he still struggled on with his work. In the same year Edinburgh repented of its former treatment of him, and unasked returned him to Parliament. But though he managed to attend some of the sittings of Parliament, when his presence was needed, and made one or two speeches, the effort was too much for him, and he bent his failing powers to the furtherance of his History. "I should be glad to finish William before I go," he wrote. "But this is like the old excuses that were made to Charon." Still he found time to write five biographies which he had agreed to do for the Encyclopædia Britannica: Atterbury (1853), Bunyan (1854), Goldsmith and Johnson (1856), and William Pitt (1859). These are undoubtedly his very best works, having all the merits and but few of the faults of his early essays. The biography of Pitt, the last