but quite sufficient to render me as perfectly independent as if I were the possessor of Burleigh or Chatsworth.” [Macaulay writes to Lord Mahon on the last day of December 1836:  “In another year I hope to leave this country, with a fortune which you would think ridiculously small, but which will make me as independent as if I had all that Lord Westminster has above the ground, and Lord Durham below it.  I have no intention of again taking part in politics; but I cannot tell what effect the sight of the old Hall and Abbey may produce on me.”]

“The rainy season of 1837 has been exceedingly unhealthy.  Our house has escaped as well as any; yet Hannah is the only one of us who has come off untouched.  The baby has been repeatedly unwell.  Trevelyan has suffered a good deal, and is kept right only by occasional trips in a steamer down to the mouth of the Hooghly.  I had a smart touch of fever, which happily stayed but an hour or two, and I took such vigorous measures that it never came again; but I remained unnerved and exhausted for nearly a fortnight.  This was my first, and I hope my last, taste of Indian maladies.  It is a happy thing for us all that we are not to pass another year in the reek of this deadly marsh.”  Macaulay wisely declined to set the hope of making another lac of rupees against the risk, to himself and others of such a fate as subsequently befell Lord Canning and Mr. James Wilson.  He put the finishing stroke to his various labours; resigned his seat in the Council, and his Presidentships of the Law Commission and the Committee of Public Instruction; and, in company with the Trevelyans, sailed for England in the first fortnight of the year 1838.

To Mr Thomas Flower Ellis.

Calcutta:  December 16, 1834.

Dear Ellis,—­Many thanks for your letter.  It is delightful in this strange land to see the handwriting of such a friend.  We must keep up our spirits.  We shall meet, I trust, in little more than four years, with feelings of regard only strengthened by our separation.  My spirits are not bad; and they ought not to be bad.  I have health; affluence; consideration; great power to do good; functions which, while they are honourable and useful, are not painfully burdensome; leisure for study; good books; an unclouded and active mind; warm affections; and a very dear sister.  There will soon be a change in my domestic arrangements.  My sister is to be married next week.  Her lover, who is lover enough to be a knight of the Round Table, is one of the most distinguished of our young Civilians.

I have the very highest opinion of his talents both for action and for discussion.  Indeed, I should call him a man of real genius.  He is also, what is even more important, a man of the utmost purity of honour, of a sweet temper, and of strong principle.  His public virtue has gone through very severe trials, and has come out resplendent.  Lord William, in congratulating me the other day, said that he thought my destined brother-in-law the ablest young man in the service.  His name is Trevelyan.  He is a nephew of Sir John Trevelyan, a baronet; in Cornwall I suppose, by the name; for I never took the trouble to ask.