ry false
notion of that statesman's relations with the Athenian public.]

Ever yours affectionately

T. B. MACAULAY.

That the enormous list of classical works recorded in the foregoing
letter was not only read through, but read with care, is proved by the
pencil marks, single, double, and treble, which meander down the margin
of such passages as excited the admiration of the student; and by the
remarks, literary, historical, and grammatical, with which the critic
has interspersed every volume, and sometimes every page. In the case
of a favourite writer, Macaulay frequently corrects the errors of the
press, and even the punctuation, as minutely as if he were preparing
the book for another edition. He read Plautus, Terence, and Aristophanes
four times through at Calcutta; and Euripides thrice. [See the Appendix
at the end.] In his copy of Quintus Calaber, (a versifier who is less
unknown by the title of Quintus Smyrnaeus,) appear the entries,

"September 22, 1833." "Turned over, July 13, 1837."

It may be doubted whether the Pandects would have attained the celebrity
which they enjoy, if, in the course of the three years during which
Justinian's Law Commission was at work, the president Tribonian had read
Quintus Smyrnaeus twice.

Calcutta; May 30, 1836.

Dear Ellis,--I have just received your letter dated December, 28; How
time flies! Another hot season has almost passed away, and we are daily
expecting the beginning of the rains. Cold season, hot season, and
rainy season are all much the same to me. I shall have been two years on
Indian ground in less than a fortnight, and I have not taken ten grains
of solid, or a pint of liquid, medicine during the whole of that time.
If I judged only from my own sensations, I should say that this climate
is absurdly maligned; but the yellow, spectral, figures which surround
me serve to correct the conclusions which I should be inclined to draw
from the state of my own health.

One execrable effect the climate produces. It destroys all the works of
man with scarcely one exception. Steel rusts; razors lose their edge;
thread decays; clothes fall to pieces; books moulder away, and drop out
of their bindings; plaster cracks; timber rots; matting is in shreds.
The sun, the steam of this vast alluvial tract, and the infinite armies
of white ants, make such havoc with buildings that a house requires
a complete repair every three years. Ours was in this situation about
three month