I amuse myself, as I walk back from the House at two in the morning, with translating Virgil.  I am at work on one of the most beautiful episodes, and am succeeding pretty well.  You shall have what I have done when I come to Liverpool, which will be, I hope, in three weeks or thereanent.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

To Hannah M. Macaulay.

London:  July 31, 1833.

My dear Sister,—­Political affairs look cheeringly.  The Lords passed the Irish Church Bill yesterday, and mean, we understand, to give us little or no trouble about the India Bill.  There is still a hitch in the Commons about the West India Bill, particularly about the twenty millions for compensation to the planters; but we expect to carry our point by a great majority.  By the end of next week we shall be very near the termination of our labours.  Heavy labours they have been.

So Wilberforce is gone!  We talk of burying him in Westminster Abbey; and many eminent men, both Whigs and Tories, are desirous to join in paying him this honour.  There is, however, a story about a promise given to old Stephen that they should both lie in the same grave.  Wilberforce kept his faculties, and, except when he was actually in fits, his spirits, to the very last.  He was cheerful and full of anecdote only last Saturday.  He owned that he enjoyed life much, and that he had a great desire to live longer.  Strange in a man who had, I should have said, so little to attach him to this world, and so firm a belief in another; in a man with an impaired fortune, a weak spine, and a worn-out stomach!  What is this fascination which makes us cling to existence in spite of present sufferings and of religious hopes?  Yesterday evening I called at the house in Cadogan Place, where the body is lying.  I was truly fond of him; that is, “je l’aimais comme l’on aime.”  And how is that?  How very little one human being generally cares for another!  How very little the world misses anybody!  How soon the chasm left by the best and wisest men closes!  I thought, as I walked back from Cadogan Place, that our own selfishness when others are taken away ought to teach us how little others will suffer at losing us.  I thought that, if I were to die to-morrow, not one of the fine people, whom I dine with every week, will take a cotelette aux petits pois the less on Saturday at the table to which I was invited to meet them, or will smile less gaily at the ladies over the champagne.  And I am quite even with them.  What are those pretty lines of Shelley?

 Oh, world, farewell! 
 Listen to the passing bell. 
 It tells that thou and I must part
 With a light and heavy heart.

There are not ten people in the world whose deaths would spoil my dinner; but there are one or two whose deaths would break my heart.  The more I see of the world, and the more numerous my acquaintance becomes, the narrower and more exclusive my affection grows, and the more I cling to my sisters, and to one or two old tried friends of my quiet days.  But why should I go on preaching to you out of Ecclesiastes?  And here comes, fortunately, to break the train of my melancholy reflections, the proof of my East India Speech from Hansard; so I must put my letter aside, and correct the press.  Ever yours