After the second part of the History was published at the end of 1855 Macaulay was not quite prepared to say nunc dimittis. Despite his infirmities, he went on enjoying life, by which he meant the life of books, of friends, and of domestic affections. As he repeatedly puts it in his Journal, so long as his head was clear and his heart warm he was content. Macaulay the historian, however, seems not to have felt any further pressure to add to the monument he had constructed, incomplete though it was. Not until October of 1856 did he resume writing; a year later he speaks of the work as ‘hardly begun,’ and two years after that, only a few months before his death, he wrote that ‘it will be long before I shall be able to say with confidence when another portion of my history will be published.’ It is fair to say that in the last four years of his life, the History was no longer his main occupation, as it had been for a decade, but rather an occasional amusement.

There were two major novelties for Macaulay to enjoy in these years: a house of his own, and a peerage. It would not be easy to say which pleased him more.