Greek reminds me of Cambridge and of Thirlwall.  When you see Thirlwall, tell him that I congratulate him from the bottom of my soul on having suffered in so good a cause; and that I would rather have been treated as he has been treated, on such an account, than have the Mastership of Trinity. [The subjoined extract from the letter of a leading member of Trinity College explains Macaulay’s indignation.  “Thirlwall published a pamphlet in 1834, on the admission of Dissenters to the University.  The result was that he was either deprived of his Assistant Tutorship or had to give it up.  Thirlwall left Cambridge soon afterwards.  I suppose that, if he had remained, he would have been very possibly Wordsworth’s successor in the Mastership.”] There would be some chance for the Church, if we had more Churchmen of the same breed, worthy successors of Leighton and Tillotson.

From one Trinity Fellow I pass to another. (This letter is quite a study to a metaphysician who wishes to illustrate the Law of Association.) We have no official tidings yet of Malkin’s appointment to the vacant seat on the Bench at Calcutta.  I cannot tell you how delighted I am at the prospect of having him here.  An honest enlightened Judge, without professional narrowness, is the very man whom we want on public grounds.  And, as to my private feelings, nothing could be more agreeable to me than to have an old friend, and so estimable a friend, brought so near to me in this distant country.

Ever, dear Ellis,

Yours very affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

Calcutta:  February 8, 1835.

Dear Ellis,—­The last month has been the most painful that I ever went through.  Indeed, I never knew before what it was to be miserable.  Early in January, letters from England brought me news of the death of my youngest sister.  What she was to me no words can express.  I will not say that she was dearer to me than anything in the world; for my sister who was with me was equally dear; but she was as dear to me as one human being can be to another.  Even now, when time has begun to do its healing office, I cannot write about her without being altogether unmanned.  That I have not utterly sunk under this blow I owe chiefly to literature.  What a blessing it is to love books as I love them;—­ to be able to converse with the dead, and to live amidst the unreal!  Many times during the last few weeks I have repeated to myself those fine lines of old Hesiod: 

ei gar tis kai penthos egon neokedei thumo aksetai kradien akakhemenos, autar aoidos mousaon therapon kleia proteron anthropon umnese, makaras te theous oi Olumpon ekhousi, aips oge dusphroneon epilethetai oude ti kedeon memnetai takheos de paretrape dora theaon.

["For if to one whose grief is fresh as he sits silent with sorrow-stricken heart, a minstrel, the henchman of the Muses, celebrates the men of old and the gods who possess Olympus; straightway he forgets his melancholy, and remembers not at all his grief, beguiled by the blessed gift of the goddesses of song.”  In Macaulay’s Hesiod this passage is scored with three lines in pencil.]