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Soon after his return to England Macaulay was elected to a seat in Parliament from Edinburgh, a city that he had scarcely so much as visited, but to whose interest he had been loyal in that, up to this time, nine-tenths of all he had written had been printed there.

To represent Edinburgh in the House of Commons was no small matter, and we know that Macaulay was not unmindful of the honor.

His next preferment was his appointment as Secretary of War, and a seat in the Cabinet.

During all these busy years he ever had on hand some piece of literary work.  In fact, all of the “Essays” on which his literary fame so largely rests, were composed on “stolen time” in the lull seized from the official and social whirl in which he lived.

If you want a piece of work well and thoroughly done, pick a busy man.  The man of leisure postpones and procrastinates, and is ever making preparations and “getting things in shape”; but the ability to focus on a thing and do it is the talent of the man seemingly o’erwhelmed with work.  Women in point lace and diamonds, club habitues and “remittance men”—­those with all the time there is—­can never be entrusted to carry the message to Gomez.

Pin your faith to the busy person.

Macaulay’s first and only political rebuff came with his defeat the second time he stood for election in Edinburgh.  His conscientious opposition to a measure in which the Scottish people were especially interested caused the tide to turn against him.

No doubt, though, the failure of re-election was a good thing for Macaulay—­and for the world.  He at once began serious work on his “History of England”—­that project which had been in his head and heart for a score of years.  All of his literary labors so far had been merely ephemeral—­at least he so regarded them.  The Essays he regarded only as so many newspaper articles, not worth the collecting.  It was America that first guessed their true value as literature, and it was not until the American editions were pouring into England that Macaulay allowed his scattered work to be collected, corrected and put into authorized book form.

This history was to be the thesis that would admit his name to the Roster of Fame.  But, alas, the history was destined to be only a fragment.  It covers scarce fifteen years, and is like that other splendid fragment, the work of Henry Thomas Buckle, a preface; Buckle’s preface is the greatest ever penned, with its author dead at forty.  The projected work of both of these men was too great for any one man to accomplish in a single lifetime.  A hundred years of unremitting toil could not have completed Macaulay’s task.

In Eighteen Hundred Forty-nine he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow; and at his speech of installation he took occasion to take formal leave of political life.  He would devote the remainder of his days to literature and abstract thought.