of that body in Bengal as his deputy, he was not able to make a quorum
until his new colleague arrived from England. A pressing summons to
attend his Lordship in the Hills placed Macaulay in some embarrassment
on account of his sister, who could not with safety commence her Eastern
experiences by a journey of four hundred miles up the country in the
middle of June. Happily the second letter which he opened proved to be
from Bishop Wilson, who insisted that the son and daughter of so eminent
an Evangelical as the Editor of the Christian Observer, themselves part
of his old congregation in Bedford Row, should begin their Indian
life nowhere except under his roof. Hannah, accordingly, continued her
voyage, and made her appearance in Calcutta circles with the Bishop's
Palace as a home, and Lady William Bentinck as a kind, and soon an
affectionate, chaperon; while her brother remained on shore at Madras,
somewhat consoled for the separation by finding himself in a country
where so much was to be seen, and where, as far as the English residents
were concerned, he was regarded with a curiosity at least equal to his
own.

During the first few weeks nothing came amiss to him. "To be on land
after three months at sea is of itself a great change. But to be in such
a land! The dark faces, with white turbans, and flowing robes; the trees
not our trees; the very smell of the atmosphere that of a hothouse, and
the architecture as strange as the vegetation." Every feature in that
marvellous scene delighted him both in itself, and for the sake of the
innumerable associations and images which it conjured up in his active
and well-stored mind. The salute of fifteen guns that greeted him, as
he set his foot on the beach, reminded him that he was in a region where
his countrymen could exist only on the condition of their being warriors
and rulers. When on a visit of ceremony to a dispossessed Rajah or
Nabob, he pleased himself with the reflection that he was face to
face with a prince who in old days governed a province as large as a
first-class European kingdom, conceding to his Suzerain, the Mogul,
no tribute beyond "a little outward respect such as the great Dukes of
Burgundy used to pay to the Kings of France; and who now enjoyed the
splendid and luxurious insignificance of an abdicated prince which fell
to the lot of Charles the Fifth or Queen Christina of Sweden," with a
court that preserved the forms of royalty, the right of keeping