omatic gossip that fills so many volumes of memoirs
and correspondence. Macaulay's letters sufficiently indicate how
thoroughly he enjoyed the ease, the freedom, the hearty good-fellowship,
that reign within the precincts of our national senate; and how entirely
he recognised that spirit of noble equality, so prevalent among its
members, which takes little or no account of wealth, or title, or indeed
of reputation won in other fields, but which ranks a man according as
the value of his words, and the weight of his influence, bear the test
of a standard which is essentially its own.

In February 1831 he writes to Whewell: "I am impatient for Praed's
debut. The House of Commons is a place in which I would not promise
success to any man. I have great doubts even about Jeffrey. It is the
most peculiar audience in the world. I should say that a man's being
a good writer, a good orator at the bar, a good mob-orator, or a good
orator in debating clubs, was rather a reason for expecting him to fail
than for expecting him to succeed in the House of Commons. A place where
Walpole succeeded and Addison failed; where Dundas succeeded and Burke
failed; where Peel now succeeds and where Mackintosh fails; where
Erskine and Scarlett were dinner-bells; where Lawrence and Jekyll, the
two wittiest men, or nearly so, of their time, were thought bores, is
surely a very strange place. And yet I feel the whole character of the
place growing upon me. I begin to like what others about me like, and to
disapprove what they disapprove. Canning used to say that the House, as
a body, had better taste than the man of best taste in it, and I am very
much inclined to think that Canning was right."

The readers of Macaulay's letters will, from time to time, find reason
to wish that the young Whig of 1830 had more frequently practised that
studied respect for political opponents, which now does so much to
correct the intolerance of party among men who can be adversaries
without ceasing to regard each other as colleagues. But this honourable
sentiment was the growth of later days; and, at an epoch when the system
of the past and the system of the future were night after night in
deadly wrestle on the floor of St. Stephen's, the combatants were apt
to keep their kindliness, and even their courtesies, for those with whom
they stood shoulder to shoulder in the fray. Politicians, Conservative
and Liberal alike, who were themselves young during the Sessions of