effects into his
house, and they did so, all living as one happy family. So the years
passed; and when children came Macaulay's joy was complete. His heart went
out to his sister's children as though they were his own. Occasionally the
good mother complained that the Legal Adviser of the Supreme Council undid
her discipline by indulging the youngsters in things that she had
forbidden. To all of which the Legal Adviser would only laugh, and
crawling under the settle would emit many tigerish growls, and the
children would scream with terror and delight, and other children,
brown-legged, wearing no clothes to speak of, would come trooping in, and
together they would manage, after an awful struggle, to capture the tiger,
and with some in front and others behind and two or three on his back,
would carry him away captive.

One of these children, grown to manhood, Sir George Trevelyan, was
destined to write, with the help of his mother, the best life of Macaulay
that has ever been written.

The exile did not prove quite so severe as was anticipated; but when in
Eighteen Hundred Thirty-eight it was necessary for Lord Trevelyan to
return to England, Macaulay, sick at the thought of being left behind,
resigned his office and sailed back with the family.

We are told that officeholders seldom die and never resign. This may be
true in the main; but surely there can not be found another instance in
history of a man throwing up an office with a fifty-thousand-dollar salary
attachment, simply because he could not bear the thought of being
separated from his sister's children.

* * * * *

Soon after his return to England Macaulay was elected to a seat in
Parliament from Edinburgh, a city that he had scarcely so much as visited,
but to whose interest he had been loyal in that, up to this time,
nine-tenths of all he had written had been printed there.

To represent Edinburgh in the House of Commons was no small matter, and we
know that Macaulay was not unmindful of the honor.

His next preferment was his appointment as Secretary of War, and a seat in
the Cabinet.

During all these busy years he ever had on hand some piece of literary
work. In fact, all of the "Essays" on which his literary fame so largely
rests, were composed on "stolen time" in the lull seized from the official
and social whirl in which he lived.

If you want a piece of work well and thoroughly done, pick a busy man. The
man of