Lord W.Bentinck sailed this morning." On the last page of the "De Amicitia:" "March 5, 1836.

Yesterday Lord Auckland arrived at Government House, and was sworn in." Beneath an idyl of Moschus, of all places in the world, Macaulay notes the fact of Peel being First Lord of the Treasury; and he finds space, between two quotations in Athenaeus, to commemorate a Ministerial majority of 29 on the Second Reading of the Irish Church Bill.
A somewhat nearer approach to a formal diary may be found in his Catullus, which contains a catalogue of the English books that he read in the cold season of 1835-36; as for instance Gibbon's Answer to Davis.

November 6 and 7 Gibbon on Virgil's VI Aeneid November 7 Whately's Logic November 15 Thirlwall's Greece November 22 Edinburgh Review November 29 And all this was in addition to his Greek and Latin studies, to his official work, to the French that he read with his sister, and the unrecorded novels that he read to himself; which last would alone have afforded occupation for two ordinary men, unless this month of November was different from every other month of his existence since the day that he left Mr.Preston's schoolroom.

There is something refreshing, amidst the long list of graver treatises, to light upon a periodical entry of "Pikwikina"; the immortal work of a Classic who has had more readers in a single year than Statius and Seneca in all their eighteen centuries together.

Macaulay turned over with indifference, and something of distaste, the earlier chapters of that modern Odyssey.