t enthusiasm. In the session of 1840 and 1841, during the angry
discussions pertaining to the registration of votes in Ireland, he gave
proof of having profited by the severe legal training he had received
from his labors in India. During these years he found time to write a
few reviews, the one on Lord Olive being the most prominent.

The great subject of political agitation at this period was the repeal
of the Corn Laws. The Whig leaders had lost the earnestness which had
marked their grand efforts when they carried the Reform Bill of 1832,
and were more indifferent to further reforms than suited their
constituents; so that, at a dangerous financial crisis in 1841, the
direction of public affairs fell into the hands of the Tories, under Sir
Robert Peel. This great man not only rescued the nation from its fiscal
embarrassments, but having been convinced by the arguments of Cobden of
the necessity of repealing the Corn Laws, he carried through that great
reform, to the disgust of his party and to his own undying fame. I have
treated of this period more at large in another volume of this
series.[2]

[Footnote 2: Beacon Lights of History: European Leaders.]

Macaulay was not much moved by the fall of the ministry to which he
belonged, and gladly resumed his literary labors,--the first fruits of
his leisure being an essay on Warren Hastings, a companion piece to the
one on Clive.

These East Indian essays constitute the most picturesque and graphic
account of British conquests in that ancient land that has been given
to the public. Macaulay's intimate knowledge of the ground, and his
literary resources, enabled him to picture the dazzling successes of
Clive and Hastings; so that the careers of those superb military
chieftains and commercial robber-statesmen, in securing for their
country the control of a distant province larger than France, and in
enriching the British Empire and themselves beyond all precedent in
conquest, stand splendidly portrayed forever.

Macaulay had now taken apartments in The Albany, on the second floor, to
which he removed his large library, and in which he comfortably lived
for fifteen years. His article on Warren Hastings was followed by that
on Frederic the Great. His numerous articles in the Edinburgh Review had
now become so popular that there was a great demand for them in a
separate form. Curiously enough, as in the case of Carlyle, it was in
America that the public appreciation of the