CLOSE OF EARLIER YEARS
53
have been in the course of his life one of those whose friendship Macaulay valued, is no small title to respect. From the pleasant breakfast parties and the little dinners of the Law Member of Council, as from intimacy with his own contemporaries, he was now to pass into more formal scenes and to breathe a colder and less genial atmosphere. With 1836 he was called on to undertake duties which necessarily drew between him and his friends an unwelcome veil of reserve. From that date till 1842 he stood in the fierce light which, beating on the central figure of the Government in India, searches out all who are grouped about it. The hour of leisure was over. The day of labour and of detail had come.
