t drink two bottles at a sitting, but guarded his
health and preserved his simple habits. Though he speaks with gusto of
Lord Holland's turtle and turbot and venison and grouse, he was content
when alone with a mutton-chop and a few glasses of sherry, or the
October ale of Cambridge, which was a part of his perquisites as
Fellow. He was very exclusive, in view of the fact that he was a poor
man, without aristocratic antecedents or many powerful friends. Outside
the class of rank and fashion, his friends seem to have been leading
politicians of the Liberal school, the stanch Whigs who passed the
Reform Bill, to whom he was true. To his credit, his happiest hours were
spent with his sisters in the quiet seclusion of his father's modest
home. All his best letters were to them; and in these he detailed his
intercourse with the great, and the splendor of their banquets
and balls.

Macaulay's rise, after he had written his famous article on Milton, was
rapid. The article itself, striking as it is, must be confessed to be
disappointing in so far as it attempted to criticise the "Paradise Lost"
and Milton's other poems. Macaulay's genius was historical, not
critical; and the essay is notable rather for its review of the times of
Charles I. and Archbishop Laud, of the Puritans and the Royalists, than
for its literary flavor, except as a brilliant piece of composition. It
was, however, the picturesque style of the new writer which was the
chief attraction, and the fact that the essay came from so young a man.
Macaulay followed the Milton essay with others on Macchiavelli, Dryden,
Hallam's "Constitutional History," and on history in general, which
displayed to great advantage his unusual learning, his keen historic
instinct, and his splendor of style. He became the most popular
contributor to the Edinburgh Review, which was beginning to be dull and
heavy; and this kept him before the eyes of politicians and
professional men.

Macaulay's ambition was now divided between literature and politics. His
first appearance as a public speaker was at an annual anti-slavery
convention in London, in 1826, when he made a marked impression. He
eagerly embraced the offer of a seat in the House of Commons, which was
secured to him in 1830; and as soon as he entered Parliament he began to
make speeches, which were carefully composed and probably committed to
memory. At a single bound he became one of the leading orators of that
renowned assembly