During his stay at Mysore, Macaulay had an interview with the deposed Rajah; whose appearance, conversation, palace, furniture, jewels, soldiers, elephants, courtiers, and idols, he depicts in a letter, intended for family perusal, with a minuteness that would qualify him for an Anglo-Indian Richardson.  By the evening of the 24th June he was once more on the road; and, about noon on the following day, he began to ascend the Neilgherries, through scenery which, for the benefit of readers who had never seen the Pyrenees or the Italian slopes of an Alpine pass, he likened to “the vegetation of Windsor Forest, or Blenheim, spread over the mountains of Cumberland.”  After reaching the summit of the table-land, he passed through a wilderness where for eighteen miles together he met nothing more human than a monkey, until a turn of the road disclosed the pleasant surprise of an amphitheatre of green hills encircling a small lake, whose banks were dotted with red-tiled cottages surrounding a pretty Gothic church.  The whole station presented “very much the look of a rising English watering-place.  The largest house is occupied by the Governor-General.  It is a spacious and handsome building of stone.  To this I was carried, and immediately ushered into his Lordship’s presence.  I found him sitting by a fire in a carpeted library.  He received me with the greatest kindness, frankness, and hospitality.  He is, as far as I can yet judge, all that I have heard; that is to say, rectitude, openness, and good-nature, personified.”  Many months of close friendship and common labours did but confirm Macaulay in this first view of Lord William Bentinck.  His estimate of that singularly noble character survives in the closing sentence of the essay on Lord Clive; and is inscribed on the base of the statue which, standing in front of the Town Hall may be seen far and wide over the great expanse of grass that serves as the park, the parade-ground, and the race-course of Calcutta.

To Thomas Flower Ellis.

Ootacamund:  July 1, 1834.

Dear Ellis,—­You need not get your map to see where Ootacamund is; for it has not found its way into the maps.  It is a new discovery; a place to which Europeans resort for their health, or, as it is called by the Company’s servants—­blessings on their learning,—­a sanaterion.  It lies at the height of 7,000 feet above the sea.

While London is a perfect gridiron, here am I, at 13 degrees North from the equator, by a blazing wood fire, with my windows closed.  My bed is heaped with blankets, and my black servants are coughing round me in all directions.  One poor fellow in particular looks so miserably cold that, unless the sun comes out, I am likely soon to see under my own roof the spectacle which, according to Shakespeare, is so interesting to the English,—­a dead Indian. [The Tempest, act ii. scene 2.]