We die by heart-beats; and Macaulay at fifty-nine had lived as much as most strong men do if they exist a hundred years.
It is easy to show where Lord Macaulay could have been greater. His life lies open to us as the ether. We complain because he did not read less and meditate more; we sigh at his lack of religion and mention the fact that he never loved a woman, seemingly waiving tautology and the fact that men who do not love are never religious.
We forget that it takes a good many men to make the Ideal Man.
If Macaulay had been different he would have been some one else. He was a brave, tender-hearted man who lived one day at a time, packing the moments with good-cheer, good work and an earnest wish to do better tomorrow than he had done today. That Nature occasionally produces such a man should be a cause for gratitude in the hearts of all the rest of us little folk who jig, mince, mouth, amble, run, peek about and criticize our betters.
LORD BYRON
I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs;
A palace and a prison on each hand:
I saw from out the wave her structures rise
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand:
A thousand years, their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
O'er the far times, when many a subject land
Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!
—Childe Harold