It is all like a great
piece of legerdemain; your eyes cannot follow the processes, but your
mind is amazed and then convinced by the triumphant proof of the
conjuror's skill.
Macaulay had one of the most successful of lives. His early advantages
were ample. He had a memory which made everything he read his own,
ready to be drawn upon at a moment's notice. He was famous as an
author at the early age of twenty-five; he was already a distinguished
Parliamentary orator at thirty; at thirty-three he had gained a place
in the East Indian Council. He never married, but he had an ideal
domestic life in the home of his sister, and one of his nephews,
George Otto Trevelyan, wrote his biography, one of the best in the
language, which reveals the sweetness of nature that lay under the
hard surface of Macaulay's character. He made a fortune out of his
books, and in ten years' service in India he gained another fortune,
with the leisure for wide reading, which he utilized in writing his
history of England. He died at the height of his fame, before his
great mental powers had shown any sign of decay. Take it all in all,
his was a happy life, brimful of work and enjoyment.
Thomas Babington Macaulay was born October 25, 1800, the son of a
wealthy merchant who was active in securing the abolition of the slave
trade. His precocity is almost beyond belief. He read at three years
of age, gave signs of his marvelous memory at four, and when only
eight years old wrote a theological discourse.
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