ned with Ryan and me, in subscribing to put up a plain marble
tablet in the cathedral, for which I have written an inscription. [This
inscription appears in Lord Macaulay's Miscellaneous Works.]

My departure is now near at hand. This is the last letter which I shall
write to you from India. Our passage is taken in the Lord Hungerford;
the most celebrated of the huge floating hotels which run between London
and Calcutta. She is more renowned for the comfort and luxury of her
internal arrangements than for her speed. As we are to stop at the Cape
for a short time, I hardly expect to be with you till the end of May, or
the beginning of June. I intend to make myself a good German scholar by
the time of my arrival in England. I have already, at leisure moments
broken the ice. I have read about half of the New Testament in Luther's
translation, and am now getting rapidly, for a beginner, through
Schiller's History of the Thirty Years' War. My German library consists
of all Goethe's works, all Schiller's works, Muller's History of
Switzerland, some of Tieck, some of Lessing, and other works of less
fame. I hope to despatch them all on my way home. I like Schiller's
style exceedingly. His history contains a great deal of very just and
deep thought, conveyed in language so popular and agreeable that dunces
would think him superficial.

I lately took it into my head to obtain some knowledge of the Fathers,
and I read therefore a good deal of Athanasius, which by no means raised
him in my opinion. I procured the magnificent edition of Chrysostom, by
Montfaucon, from a public library here, and turned over the eleven huge
folios, reading wherever the subject was of peculiar interest. As to
reading him through, the thing is impossible. These volumes contain
matter at least equal to the whole extant literature of the best times
of Greece, from Homer to Aristotle inclusive. There are certainly some
very brilliant passages in his homilies. It seems curious that, though
the Greek literature began to flourish so much earlier than the Latin,
it continued to flourish so much later. Indeed, if you except the
century which elapsed between Cicero's first public appearance and
Livy's death, I am not sure that there was any time at which Greece had
not writers equal or superior to their Roman contemporaries. I am sure
that no Latin writer of the age of Lucian is to be named with Lucian;
that no Latin writer of the age of Longinus is to be named