Soon after his return to England he was elected to Parliament as member for
Edinburgh, and for two years he was in the Cabinet. Somewhat later the
publication of his 'Lays of Ancient Rome' and of his collected essays
brought him immense fame as a writer, and in 1847 his defeat at Edinburgh
for reelection to Parliament gave him time for concentrated labor on the
'History of England' which he had already begun as his crowning work. To it
he thenceforth devoted most of his energies, reading and sifting the whole
mass of available source-material and visiting the scenes of the chief
historical events. The popular success of the five volumes which he
succeeded in preparing and published at intervals was enormous. In 1852 he
was reelected to Parliament at Edinburgh, but ill-health resulting from his
long-continued excessive expenditure of energy warned him that he had not
long to live. He was made a baron in 1857 and died in 1859, deeply mourned
both because of his manly character and because with him perished mostly
unrecorded a knowledge of the facts of English history more minute,
probably, than that of any one else who has ever lived.

Macaulay never married, but, warm-hearted as he was, always lived largely
in his affection for his sisters and for the children of one of them, Lady
Trevelyan. In his public life he displayed as an individual a fearless and
admirable devotion to principle, modified somewhat by the practical
politician's devotion to party. From every point of view, his character was
remarkable, though bounded by his very definite limitations.

Least noteworthy among Macaulay's works are his poems, of which the 'Lays
of Ancient Rome' are chief. Here his purpose is to embody his conception of
the heroic historical ballads which must have been current among the early
Romans as among the medieval English--to recreate these ballads for modern
readers. For this sort of verse Macaulay's temperament was precisely