and footmen sneered at Napoleon for dating
from Schonbrunn. But that miserable "Windsor Castle" outcry is an echo
out of fast-retreating old-world remembrances. The place of such a
natural chief was amongst the first of the land; and that country
is best, according to our British notion at least, where the man of
eminence has the best chance of investing his genius and intellect.

If a company of giants were got together, very likely one or two of the
mere six-feet-six people might be angry at the incontestable superiority
of the very tallest of the party; and so I have heard some London wits,
rather peevish at Macaulay's superiority, complain that he occupied too
much of the talk, and so forth. Now that wonderful tongue is to speak
no more, will not many a man grieve that he no longer has the chance
to listen? To remember the talk is to wonder: to think not only of the
treasures he had in his memory, but of the trifles he had stored there,
and could produce with equal readiness. Almost on the last day I had the
fortune to see him, a conversation happened suddenly to spring up about
senior wranglers, and what they had done in after life. To the almost
terror of the persons present, Macaulay began with the senior wrangler
of 1801-2- 3-4, and so on, giving the name of each, and relating his
subsequent career and rise. Every man who has known him has his story
regarding that astonishing memory. It may be that he was not ill pleased
that you should recognize it; but to those prodigious intellectual
feats, which were so easy to him, who would grudge his tribute of
homage? His talk was, in a word, admirable, and we admired it.

Of the notices which have appeared regarding Lord Macaulay, up to the
day when the present lines are written (the 9th of January), the reader
should not deny himself the pleasure of looking especially at two. It
is a good sign of the times when such articles as these (I mean the
articles in The times and Saturday Review) appear in our public prints
about our public men. They educate us, as it were, to admire rightly.
An uninstructed person in a museum or at a concert may pass by without
recognizing a picture or a passage of music, which the connoisseur
by his side may show him is a masterpiece of harmony, or a wonder of
artistic skill. After reading these papers you like and respect more
the person you have admired so much already. And so with regard to
Macaulay's style there may be faults of course--