olument which I shall derive will not be great. For
seven years from that time it will make me almost an independent man.

Malden is elected. You will take little interest in the rest of our
Cambridge successes and disappointments.

Yours most affectionately,

T. B. M.

CHAPTER III. 1824-30.

Macaulay is called to the bar--Does not make it a serious
profession--Speech before the Anti-Slavery Society--Knight's
Quarterly Magazine--The Edinburgh Review and the Essay on
Milton--Macaulay's personal appearance and mode of
existence--His defects and virtues, likings and antipathies--
Croker Sadler--Zachary Macaulay's circumstances--
Description of the family habits of life in Great Ormond
Street--Macaulay's sisters--Hannah Macaulay--the Judicious
Poet--Macaulay's humour in conversation--His articles in the
Review--His attacks on the Utilitarians and on Southey--
Blackwood's Magazine--Macaulay is made Commissioner of
Bankruptcy--Enters Parliament--Letters from Circuit and
Edinburgh.

MACAULAY was called to the bar in 1826, and joined the Northern circuit.
On the evening that he first appeared at mess, when the company were
retiring for the night, he was observed to be carefully picking out the
longest candle. An old King's Counsel, who noticed that he had a volume
under his arm, remonstrated with him on the danger of reading in bed,
upon which he rejoined with immense rapidity of utterance "I always read
in bed at home; and, if I am not afraid of committing parricide, and
matricide, and fratricide, I can hardly be expected to pay any special
regard to the lives of the bagmen of Leeds." And, so saying, he left
his hearers staring at one another, and marched off to his room, little
knowing that, before many years were out, he would have occasion to
speak much more respectfully of the Leeds bagmen.

Under its social aspect Macaulay heartily enjoyed his legal career.
He made an admirable literary use of the Saturnalia which the Northern
circuit calls by the name of "Grand Night," when personalities of the
most pronounced description are welcomed by all except the object
of them, and forgiven even by him. His hand may be recognised in a
macaronic poem, written in Greek and English, describing the feast at
which Alexander murdered Clitus. The death of the victim is treated with
an exuberance of fantastic drollery, and a song, put into the mouth of
Nearch