Just before the general election Hyde Villiers died, and the Secretaryship to the Board of Control became vacant.  Macaulay succeeded his old college friend in an office that gave him weighty responsibility, defined duties, and, as it chanced, exceptional opportunities for distinction.  About the same time, an event occurred which touched him more nearly than could any possible turn of fortune in the world of politics.  His sisters Hannah and Margaret had for some months been almost domesticated among a pleasant nest of villas which lie in the southern suburb of Liverpool, on Dingle Bank; a spot whose natural beauty nothing can spoil, until in the fulness of time its inevitable destiny shall convert it into docks.  The young ladies were the guests of Mr. John Cropper, who belonged to the Society of Friends, a circumstance which readers who have got thus far into the Macaulay correspondence will doubtless have discovered for themselves.  Before the visit was over, Margaret became engaged to the brother of her host, Mr. Edward Cropper, a man in every respect worthy of the personal esteem and the commercial prosperity which have fallen to his lot.

There are many who will be surprised at finding in Macaulay’s letters, both now and hereafter, indications of certain traits in his disposition with which the world, knowing him only through his political actions and his published works, may perhaps be slow to credit him; but which, taking his life as a whole, were predominant in their power to affect his happiness and give matter for his thoughts.  Those who are least partial to him will allow that his was essentially a virile intellect.  He wrote, he thought, he spoke, he acted, like a man.  The public regarded him as an impersonation of vigour, vivacity, and self-reliance; but his own family, together with one, and probably only one, of his friends, knew that his affections were only too tender, and his sensibilities only too acute.  Others may well be loth to parade what he concealed; but a portrait of Macaulay, from which these features were omitted, would be imperfect to the extent of misrepresentation; and it must be acknowledged that, where he loved, he loved more entirely, and more exclusively, than was well for himself.  It was improvident in him to concentrate such intensity of feeling upon relations who, however deeply they were attached to him, could not always be in a position to requite him with the whole of their time, and the whole of their heart.  He suffered much for that improvidence; but he was too just and too kind to permit that others should suffer with him; and it is not for one who obtained by inheritance a share of his inestimable affection to regret a weakness to which he considers himself by duty bound to refer.