"The jackals herd together."'" This conversation, to those who have heard Macaulay talk, bears unmistakable signs of having been committed to paper while the words,--or, at any rate, the outlines,--of some of the most important sentences were fresh in his sister's mind.

Nature had predestined the two men to mutual antipathy.

Macaulay, who knew his own range and kept within it, and who gave the world nothing except his best and most finished work, was fretted by the slovenly omniscience of Brougham, who affected to be a walking encyclopaedia, "a kind of semi-Solomon, half knowing everything from the cedar to the hyssop." [These words are extracted from a letter written by Macaulay.] The student, who, in his later years, never left his library for the House of Commons without regret, had little in common with one who, like Napoleon, held that a great reputation was a great noise; who could not change horses without making a speech, see the Tories come in without offering to take a judgeship, or allow the French to make a Revolution without proposing to naturalise himself as a citizen of the new Republic.

The statesman who never deserted an ally, or distrusted a friend, could have no fellowship with a free-lance, ignorant of the very meaning of loyalty; who, if the surfeited pen of the reporter had not declined its task, would have enriched our collections of British oratory by at least one Philippic against every colleague with whom he had ever acted.

The many who read this conversation by the light of the public history of Lord Melbourne's Administration, and still more the few who have access to the secret history of Lord Grey's Cabinet, will acknowledge that seldom was a prediction so entirely fulfilled, or a character so accurately read.
And that it was not a prophecy composed after the event is proved by the circumstance that it stands recorded in the handwriting of one who died before it was accomplished.
"January 3, 1832 .-- Yesterday Tom dined at Holland House, and heard Lord Holland tell this story.