Trinity College, Cambridge:  October 1, 1824.

My dear Father,—­I was elected Fellow this morning, shall be sworn in to-morrow, and hope to leave Cambridge on Tuesday for Rothley Temple.  The examiners speak highly of the manner in which I acquitted myself, and I have reason to believe that I stood first of the candidates.

I need not say how much I am delighted by my success, and how much I enjoy the thought of the pleasure which it will afford to you, my mother, and our other friends.  Till I become a Master of Arts next July the pecuniary emolument which I shall derive will not be great.  For seven years from that time it will make me almost an independent man.

Malden is elected.  You will take little interest in the rest of our Cambridge successes and disappointments.

Yours most affectionately,

T. B. M.

CHAPTER III.

1824-30.

Macaulay is called to the bar—­Does not make it a serious profession—­Speech before the Anti-Slavery Society—­Knight’s Quarterly Magazine—­The Edinburgh Review and the Essay on Milton--Macaulay’s personal appearance and mode of existence—­His defects and virtues, likings and antipathies—­Croker Sadler—­ Zachary Macaulay’s circumstances—­Description of the family habits of life in Great Ormond Street—­Macaulay’s sisters—­Hannah Macaulay—­the Judicious Poet—­Macaulay’s humour in conversation—­ His articles in the Review—­His attacks on the Utilitarians and on Southey—­Blackwood’s Magazine—­Macaulay is made Commissioner of Bankruptcy—­Enters Parliament—­Letters from Circuit and Edinburgh.

Macaulay was called to the bar in 1826, and joined the Northern circuit.  On the evening that he first appeared at mess, when the company were retiring for the night, he was observed to be carefully picking out the longest candle.  An old King’s Counsel, who noticed that he had a volume under his arm, remonstrated with him on the danger of reading in bed, upon which he rejoined with immense rapidity of utterance “I always read in bed at home; and, if I am not afraid of committing parricide, and matricide, and fratricide, I can hardly be expected to pay any special regard to the lives of the bagmen of Leeds.”  And, so saying, he left his hearers staring at one another, and marched off to his room, little knowing that, before many years were out, he would have occasion to speak much more respectfully of the Leeds bagmen.

Under its social aspect Macaulay heartily enjoyed his legal career.  He made an admirable literary use of the Saturnalia which the Northern circuit calls by the name of “Grand Night,” when personalities of the most pronounced description are welcomed by all except the object of them, and forgiven even by him.  His hand may be recognised in a macaronic poem, written in Greek and English, describing the feast at which Alexander murdered Clitus.  The death of the victim is treated with an exuberance of fantastic drollery, and a song, put into the mouth of Nearchus, the admiral of the Macedonian fleet, and beginning with the lines