attentions as are in my power.

Within half a year after the time when you read this we shall be making
arrangements for our return. The feelings with which I look forward to
that return I cannot express. Perhaps I should be wise to continue
here longer, in order to enjoy during a greater number of months the
delusion,--for I know that it will prove a delusion,--of this delightful
hope. I feel as if I never could be unhappy in my own country; as if
to exist on English ground and among English people, seeing the old
familiar sights and hearing the sound of my mother tongue, would be
enough for me. This cannot be; yet some days of intense happiness I
shall surely have; and one of those will be the day when I again see my
dear father and sisters.

Ever yours most affectionately T. B. MACAULAY.

Calcutta: November 30, 1836.

Dear Ellis,--How the months run away! Here is another cold season;
morning fogs, cloth coats, green peas, new potatoes, and all the
accompaniments of a Bengal winter. As to my private life, it has glided
on, since I wrote to you last, in the most peaceful monotony. If it were
not for the books which I read, and for the bodily and mental growth of
my dear little niece, I should have no mark to distinguish one part of
the year from another. Greek and Latin, breakfast; business, an evening
walk with a book, a drive after sunset, dinner, coffee, my bed,--there
you have the history of a day. My classical studies go on vigorously.
I have read Demosthenes twice,--I need not say with what delight and
admiration. I am now deep in Isocrates and from him I shall pass to
Lysias. I have finished Diodorus Siculus at last, after dawdling over
him at odd times ever since last March. He is a stupid, credulous,
prosing old ass; yet I heartily wish that we had a good deal more of
him. I have read Arrian's expedition of Alexander, together with Quintus
Curtius. I have at stray hours read Longus's Romance and Xenophon's
Ephesiaca; and I mean to go through Heliodorus, and Achilles Tatius,
in the same way. Longus is prodigiously absurd; but there is often an
exquisite prettiness in the style. Xenophon's Novel is the basest thing
to be found in Greek. [Xenophon the Ephesian lived in the third or
fourth century of the Christian era. At the end of his work Macaulay has
written: "A most stupid worthless performance, below the lowest trash of
an English circulating library." Achilles Tatius he disposes of with
the words "Dete