has not changed me; that I am still the same John Macaulay who was his dearest friend, his more than brother; and that he means to come up, and live with me at Calcutta.  If he fulfils his intention, I will have him taken before the police-magistrates.”] These, in my opinion, are the flower of Calcutta society, and I often ask some of them to a quiet dinner.”  On the Friday of every week, these chosen few met round Macaulay’s breakfast table to discuss the progress which the Law Commission had made in its labours; and each successive point which was started opened the way to such a flood of talk,—­legal, historical, political, and personal,—­that the company would sit far on towards noon over the empty teacups, until an uneasy sense of accumulating despatch-boxes drove them, one by one, to their respective offices.

There are scattered passages in these letters which prove that Macaulay’s feelings, during his protracted absence from his native country, were at times almost as keen as those which racked the breast of Cicero, when he was forced to exchange the triumphs of the Forum, and the cozy suppers with his brother augurs, for his hateful place of banishment at Thessalonica, or his hardly less hateful seat of government at Tarsus.  The complaints of the English statesman do not, however, amount in volume to a fiftieth part of those reiterated out pourings of lachrymose eloquence with which the Roman philosopher bewailed an expatriation that was hardly one-third as long.  “I have no words,” writes Macaulay, very much under-estimating the wealth of his own vocabulary, “to tell you how I pine for England, or how intensely bitter exile has been to me, though I hope that I have borne it well.  I feel as if I had no other wish than to see my country again and die.  Let me assure you that banishment is no light matter.  No person can judge of it who has not experienced it.  A complete revolution in all the habits of life; an estrangement from almost every old friend and acquaintance; fifteen thousand miles of ocean between the exile and everything that he cares for; all this is, to me at least, very trying.  There is no temptation of wealth, or power, which would induce me to go through it again.  But many people do not feel as I do.  Indeed, the servants of the Company rarely have such a feeling; and it is natural that they should not have it, for they are sent out while still schoolboys, and when they know little of the world.  The moment of emigration is to them also the moment of emancipation; and the pleasures of liberty and affluence to a great degree compensate them for the loss of their home.  In a few years they become orientalised, and, by the time that they are of my age, they would generally prefer India, as a residence, to England.  But it is a very different matter when a man is transplanted at thirty-three.”