man, who won splendid success in many fields of labor. He was
prominent in public life as one of the leading orators and writers of
the Whig party. He sat many times in the House of Commons, as member for
Calne, for Leeds, and for Edinburgh, and took a distinguished part in
the debates on the Reform bill of 1832. He held office in several Whig
governments, and during his four years' service in British India, as
member of the Supreme Council of Calcutta, he did valuable work in
promoting education in that province, and in codifying the Indian penal
law. After his return to England, and especially after the publication
of his _History of England from The Accession of James II.,_ honors and
appointments of all kinds were showered upon him. In 1857 he was raised
to the peerage as Baron Macaulay of Rothley.

Macaulay's equipment, as a writer on historical and biographical
subjects, was, in some points, unique. His reading was prodigious, and
his memory so tenacious that it was said, with but little exaggeration,
that he never forgot any thing that he had read. He could repeat the
whole of _Paradise Lost_ by heart, and thought it probable that he could
rewrite _Sir Charles Grandison_ from memory. In his books, in his
speeches in the House of Commons, and in private conversation--for he
was an eager and fluent talker, running on often for hours at a
stretch--he was never at a loss to fortify and illustrate his positions
by citation after citation of dates, names, facts of all kinds, and
passages quoted _verbatim_ from his multifarious reading. The first of
Macaulay's writings to attract general notice was his article on
_Milton_, printed in the August number of the _Edinburgh Review_ for
1825. The editor, Lord Jeffrey, in acknowledging the receipt of the
manuscript, wrote to his new contributor, "The more I think, the less I
can conceive where you picked up that style." That celebrated
style--about which so much has since been written--was an index to the
mental character of its owner. Macaulay was of a confident, sanguine,
impetuous nature. He had great common sense, and he saw what he saw
quickly and clearly, but he did not see very far below the surface. He
wrote with the conviction of an advocate, and the easy omniscience of a
man whose learning is really nothing more than "general information"
raised to a very high power, rather than with the subtle penetration of
an original or truly philosophic intellect, like Coleridge