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Just before the general election Hyde Villiers died, and the Secretaryship to the Board of Control became vacant. Macaulay succeeded his old college friend in an office that gave him weighty responsibility, defined duties, and, as it chanced, exceptional opportunities for distinction.
He remained their long enough to pick up a few curios, contract the opium habit and the name of 'Tankkee. He returned and began lecturing on China, but the dope was too much for his little encephalon. He took the Keeley cure for the opium habit, but he's as great a liar as ever. You know what Macaulay says about Bertrand Barere?
But now he was recognized as the one man for the new office, and the office sought the man. Comparatively, Macaulay was a poor man, and the acceptance of the office for the term of six years would place him for the rest of his life beyond the reach of want. He could live royally and retire at forty years of age, with at least thirty thousand pounds to his credit.
It cannot be disguised that Macaulay was worldly in his turn of mind, intensely practical, and ambitious of distinction as soon as he became conscious of his great powers, although in his school-days he was very modest and retiring. He was not religiously inclined, nor at all spiritually minded. An omnivorous reader seldom is narrow, and seldom is profound. Macaulay was no exception.
But it was the same abroad; as Ike Marvel has it, Rousseau and Diderot over in France, philosophers as they professed to be, "blubbered their admiring thanks for 'Clarissa Harlowe." Similarly, at a later day we find caustic critics like Jeffrey and Macaulay writing to Dickens to tell how they had cried over the death of Little Nell a scene the critical to-day are likely to stigmatize as one of the few examples of pathos overdone to be found in the works of that master.
To recur to my own study again, should we produce a historian or historical writer the equal of Gibbon, Mommsen, Carlyle, or Macaulay there would be a feeling of pride in our historical genius which would make itself felt at every academical and historical gathering. We have something of that sentiment in regard to Francis Parkman, our most original historian.
It is an encouraging sign of the times, that the cafe is being introduced in America. May it soon take the place of our gambling-halls and drinking-hells. See what Macaulay says of the Cafe, as he is quoted by Webster in his Unabridged Dictionary under the word Coffee-house. Champs Elysees,
We once joined a party that was arranged to see the statues in the Vatican by torchlight, at which Lord Macaulay astonished us by his correct knowledge and learning as we passed through the gallery of inscriptions. To me this evening was memorable; on this occasion I first met with John Gibson, the sculptor, who afterwards became a dear and valued friend.
Two men of very different kinds have thoroughly impressed the journalists of our time, Macaulay and Mr. Mill. Mr. Carlyle we do not add to them; he is, as the Germans call Jean Paul, der Einzige. And he is a poet, while the other two are in their degrees serious and argumentative writers, dealing in different ways with the great topics that constitute the matter and business of daily discussion.
But so lightly did he bear the burden that it is doubtful if he ever considered he was making any sacrifice. When his father died, Macaulay put entirely out of his mind the question of a household separate and apart from that of his mother and sisters. He devoted himself entirely to them; he wanted no other love than theirs.
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