How keenly Macaulay felt the separation from his sister it is impossible to do more than indicate.  He never again recovered that tone of thorough boyishness, which had been produced by a long unbroken habit of gay and affectionate intimacy with those younger than himself; indulged in without a suspicion on the part of any concerned that it was in its very nature transitory and precarious.  For the first time he was led to doubt whether his scheme of life was indeed a wise one; or, rather, he began to be aware that he had never laid out any scheme of life at all.  But with that unselfishness which was the key to his character and to much of his career, (resembling in its quality what we sometimes admire in a woman, rather than what we ever detect in a man,) he took successful pains to conceal his distress from those over whose happiness it otherwise could not have failed to cast a shadow.

“The attachment between brothers and sisters,” he writes in November 1832, “blameless, amiable, and delightful as it is, is so liable to be superseded by other attachments that no wise man ought to suffer it to become indispensable to him.  That women shall leave the home of their birth, and contract ties dearer than those of consanguinity, is a law as ancient as the first records of the history of our race, and as unchangeable as the constitution of the human body and mind.  To repine against the nature of things, and against the great fundamental law of all society, because, in consequence of my own want of foresight, it happens to bear heavily on me, would be the basest and most absurd selfishness.

“I have still one more stake to lose.  There remains one event for which, when it arrives, I shall, I hope, be prepared.  From that moment, with a heart formed, if ever any man’s heart was formed, for domestic happiness, I shall have nothing left in this world but ambition.  There is no wound, however, which time and necessity will not render endurable; and, after all, what am I more than my fathers,—­ than the millions and tens of millions who have been weak enough to pay double price for some favourite number in the lottery of life, and who have suffered double disappointment when their ticket came up a blank?”

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

Leeds:  December 12, 1832

My dear Sister,—­The election here is going on as well as possible. 
Today the poll stands thus: 

Marshall     Macaulay     Sadler
1,804        1,792        1,353

The probability is that Sadler will give up the contest.  If he persists, he will be completely beaten.  The voters are under 4,000 in number; those who have already polled are 3,100; and about five hundred will not poll at all.  Even if we were not to bring up another man, the probability is that we should win.  On Sunday morning early I hope to be in London; and I shall see you in the course of the day.