People tell me that it is a hard language; but I cannot easily believe that there is a language which I cannot master in four months, by working ten hours a day.

I promise myself very great delight and information from German literature; and, over and above, I feel a soft of presentiment, a kind of admonition of the Deity, which assures me that the final cause of my existence,--the end for which I was sent into this vale of tears,--was to make game of certain Germans.

The first thing to be done in obedience to this heavenly call is to learn German; and then I may perhaps try, as Milton says, "Frangere Saxonicas Britonum sub Marte phalanges." Ever yours affectionately T.B.MACAULAY.
The years which Macaulay spent in India formed a transition period between the time when he kept no journal at all, and the time when the daily portion of his journal was completed as regularly as the daily portion of his History.

Between 1834 and 1838, he contented himself with jotting down any circumstance that struck his fancy in the book which he happened to have in hand.

The records of his Calcutta life, written in half a dozen different languages, are scattered throughout the whole range of classical literature from Hesiod to Macrobius.