in one of those immense libraries that we saw together at the universities, and never pass a waking hour without a book before me.”  So little was Macaulay aware that, during the years which were to come, his thoughts and cares would be less than ever for himself, and more for others, and that his existence would be passed amidst a bright atmosphere of affectionate domestic happiness, which, until his own death came, no accident was thenceforward destined to overcloud.

But, before his life assumed the equable and prosperous tenor in which it continued to the end, one more trouble was in store for him.  Long before the last letters to his sister Margaret had been written, the eyes which were to have read them had been closed for ever.  The fate of so young a wife and mother touched deeply all who had known her, and some who knew her only by name. [Moultrie made Mrs. Cropper’s death the subject of some verses on which her relatives set a high value.  He acknowledges his little poem to be the tribute of one who had been a stranger to her whom it was written to commemorate: 

 “And yet methinks we are not strange:  so many claims there be
  Which seem to weave a viewless band between my soul and thee. 
  Sweet sister of my early friend, the kind, the singlehearted,
  Than whose remembrance none more bright still gilds the days departed! 
  Beloved, with more than sister’s love, by some whose love to me
  Is now almost my brightest gem in this world’s treasury.”]

When the melancholy news arrived in India, the young couple were spending their honeymoon in a lodge in the Governor-General’s park at Barrackpore.  They immediately returned to Calcutta, and, under the shadow of a great sorrow, began their sojourn in their brother’s house, who, for his part, did what he might to drown his grief in floods of official work. ["April 8.  Lichfield.  Easter Sunday.  After the service was ended we went over the Cathedral.  When I stood before the famous children by Chantrey, I could think only of one thing; that, when last I was there, in 1832, my dear sister Margaret was with me and that she was greatly affected.  I could not command my tears and was forced to leave our party, and walk about by myself.”—­Macaulay’s Journal for the year 1849.]

The narrative of that work may well be the despair of Macaulay’s biographer.  It would be inexcusable to slur over what in many important respects was the most honourable chapter of his life; while, on the other hand, the task of interesting Englishmen in the details of Indian administration is an undertaking which has baffled every pen except his own.  In such a dilemma the safest course is to allow that pen to tell the story for itself; or rather so much of the story as, by concentrating the attention of the reader upon matters akin to those which are in frequent debate at home, may enable him to judge whether Macaulay, at the council-board and the bureau, was the equal of Macaulay in the senate and the library.