a chance of making them yield to his will. MACAULAY'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. _December 17th._--This morning the two new volumes of Macaulay's History came forth. The circumstances of this publication are, I believe, unprecedented in literary history; 25,000 copies are given out, and the weight of the books is fifty-six tons. The interest and curiosity which it excites are prodigious, and they afford the most complete testimony to his immense popularity and the opinion entertained by the world of his works already published. His profits will be very great, and he will receive them in various shapes. But there is too much reason to apprehend that these may be the last volumes of his history that the world will see, still more that they are the last that will be read by me and people of my standing. Six years have elapsed since the appearance of the first volumes, and these two only advance about ten years. He announced at the outset that he meant to bring down the history of England to a period within the memory of persons still living, but his work has already so much expanded, and of course will do so still more from the accumulation of materials as he advances, that at his present rate of progress he must live much beyond the ordinary duration of human life, and retain all his faculties as long, to have any chance of accomplishing his original design; and he is now in such a precarious state of health that in all human probability he will not live many years. It is melancholy to think that so gifted an intellect should be arrested by premature decay, and such a magnificent undertaking should be overthrown by physical infirmities, and be limited to the proportions of a splendid fragment. He is going to quit Parliament and to reside in the neighbourhood of London.