the
eyes which were to have read them had been closed for ever. The fate
of so young a wife and mother touched deeply all who had known her, and
some who knew her only by name. [Moultrie made Mrs. Cropper's death
the subject of some verses on which her relatives set a high value. He
acknowledges his little poem to be the tribute of one who had been a
stranger to her whom it was written to commemorate:

"And yet methinks we are not strange: so many claims there be
Which seem to weave a viewless band between my soul and thee.
Sweet sister of my early friend, the kind, the singlehearted,
Than whose remembrance none more bright still gilds the days departed!
Beloved, with more than sister's love, by some whose love to me
Is now almost my brightest gem in this world's treasury."]

When the melancholy news arrived in India, the young couple were
spending their honeymoon in a lodge in the Governor-General's park
at Barrackpore. They immediately returned to Calcutta, and, under the
shadow of a great sorrow, began their sojourn in their brother's house,
who, for his part, did what he might to drown his grief in floods of
official work. ["April 8. Lichfield. Easter Sunday. After the service
was ended we went over the Cathedral. When I stood before the famous
children by Chantrey, I could think only of one thing; that, when last I
was there, in 1832, my dear sister Margaret was with me and that she was
greatly affected. I could not command my tears and was forced to leave
our party, and walk about by myself."--Macaulay's Journal for the year
1849.]

The narrative of that work may well be the despair of Macaulay's
biographer. It would be inexcusable to slur over what in many important
respects was the most honourable chapter of his life; while, on the
other hand, the task of interesting Englishmen in the details of Indian
administration is an undertaking which has baffled every pen except his
own. In such a dilemma the safest course is to allow that pen to
tell the story for itself; or rather so much of the story as, by
concentrating the attention of the reader upon matters akin to those
which are in frequent debate at home, may enable him to judge whether
Macaulay, at the council-board and the bureau, was the equal of Macaulay
in the senate and the library.

Examples of his Minute-writing may with some confidence be submitted to
the criticism of those whose experience of public business has taught
them in what a Mi