ourney hither,
and of the place, to Margaret, as the most stationary of our family;
desiring her to let you all see what I had written to her. I think that
I shall continue to take the same course. It is better to write one full
and connected narrative than a good many imperfect fragments.

Money matters seem likely to go on capitally. My expenses, I find, will
be smaller than I anticipated. The Rate of Exchange, if you know what
that means, is very favourable indeed; and, if I live, I shall get rich
fast. I quite enjoy the thought of appearing in the light of an old
hunks who knows on which side his bread is buttered; a warm man; a
fellow who will cut up well. This is not a character which the Macaulays
have been much in the habit of sustaining; but I can assure you that,
after next Christmas, I expect to lay up, on an average, about seven
thousand pounds a year, while I remain in India.

At Christmas I shall send home a thousand, or twelve hundred, pounds for
my father, and you all. I cannot tell you what a comfort it is to me
to find that I shall be able to do this. It reconciles me to all the
pains--acute enough, sometimes, God knows,--of banishment. In a few
years, if I live--probably in less than five years from the time at
which you will be reading this letter--we shall be again together in a
comfortable, though a modest, home; certain of a good fire, a good joint
of meat, and a good glass of wine; without owing obligations to anybody;
and perfectly indifferent, at least as far as our pecuniary interest is
concerned, to the changes of the political world. Rely on it, my dear
girls, that there is no chance of my going back with my heart cooled
towards you. I came hither principally to save my family, and I am not
likely while here to forget them.

Ever yours

T. B. M.

The months of July and August Macaulay spent on the Neilgherries, in a
climate equable as Madeira and invigorating as Braemar; where thickets
of rhododendron fill the glades and clothe the ridges; and where the
air is heavy with the scent of rose-trees of a size more fitted for an
orchard than a flower-bed, and bushes of heliotrope thirty paces round.
The glories of the forests and of the gardens touched him in spite of
his profound botanical ignorance, and he dilates more than once upon his
"cottage buried in laburnums, or something very like them, and geraniums
which grow in the open air." He had the more leisure for the natural
beauties of