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Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. Volume 1

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Title: Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. Volume 1

Author: George Otto Trevelyan


        
Release date: May 1, 2001 [eBook #2647]
                Most recently updated: November 12, 2009

Language: English

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LIFE AND LETTERS OF LORD MACAULAY

Volume I


By Sir George Otto Trevelyan




PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

WHEN publishing the Second Edition of Lord MACAULAY'S Life and Letters,
I may be permitted to say that no pains were spared in order that the
First Edition should be as complete as possible. But, in the course of
the last nine months, I have come into possession of a certain quantity
of supplementary matter, which the appearance of the book has elicited
from various quarters. Stray letters have been hunted up. Half-forgotten
anecdotes have been recalled. Floating reminiscences have been reduced
to shape;--in one case, as will be seen from the extracts from Sir
William Stirling Maxwell's letter, by no unskilful hand. I should have
been tempted to draw more largely upon these new resources, if it had
not been for the examples, which literary history only too copiously
affords, of the risk that attends any attempt to alter the form, or
considerably increase the bulk, of a work which, in its original shape,
has had the good fortune not to displease the public. I have, however,
ventured, by a very sparing selection from sufficiently abundant
material, slightly to enlarge, and, I trust, somewhat to enrich the
book.

If this Second Edition is not rigidly correct in word and substance,
I have no valid excuse to offer. Nothing more pleasantly indicates the
wide-spread interest with which Lord MACAULAY has inspired his readers,
both at home and in foreign countries, than the almost microscopic care
with which these volumes have been studied. It is not too much to say
that, in several instances, a misprint, or a verbal error, has been
brought to my notice by at least five-and-twenty different persons; and
there is hardly a page in the book which has not afforded occasion for
comment or suggestion from some friendly correspondent. There is no
statement of any importance throughout the two volumes the accuracy of
which has been circumstantially impugned; but some expressions, which
have given personal pain or annoyance, have been softened or removed.

There is another class of criticism to which I have found myself
altogether unable to defer. I have frequently been told by reviewers
that I should "have better consulted MACAULAY'S reputation," or "done
more honour to MACAULAY'S memory," if I had omitted passages in the
letters or diaries which may be said to bear the trace of intellectual
narrowness, or political and religious intolerance. I cannot but think
that strictures, of this nature imply a serious misconception of the
biographer's duty. It was my business to show my Uncle as he was, and
not as I, or any one else, would have had him. If a faithful picture of
MACAULAY could not have been produced without injury to his memory, I
should have left the task of drawing that picture to others; but, having
once undertaken the work, I had no choice but to ask myself, with regard
to each feature of the portrait, not whether it was attractive, but
whether it was characteristic. We who had the best opportunity of
knowing him have always been convinced that his character would stand
the test of an exact, and even a minute, delineation; and we humbly
believe that our confidence was not misplaced, and that the reading
world has now extended to the man the approbation which it has long
conceded to his hooks.

G. O. T.

December 1876.




PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

THIS work has been undertaken principally from a conviction that it
is the performance of a duty which, to the best of my ability, it is
incumbent on me to fulfil. Though even on this ground I cannot appeal
to the forbearance of my readers, I may venture to refer to a peculiar
difficulty which I have experienced in dealing with Lord MACAULAY'S
private papers.

To give to the world compositions not intended for publication may be
no injury to the fame of writers who, by habit, were careless and hasty
workmen; but it is far otherwise in the case of one who made it a
rule for himself to publish nothing which was not carefully planned,
strenuously laboured, and minutely finished. Now, it is impossible
to examine Lord MACAULAY'S journals and correspondence without being
persuaded that the idea of their being printed, even in part, never was
present to his mind; and I should not feel myself justified in laying
them before the public if it were not that their unlaboured and
spontaneous character adds to their biographical value all, and perhaps
more than all, that it detracts from their literary merit.

To the heirs and relations of Mr. Thomas Flower Ellis and Mr. Adam
Black, to the Marquis of Lansdowne, to Mr. Macvey Napier, and to the
executors of Dr. Whewell, my thanks are due for the courtesy with which
they have placed the different portions of my Uncle's correspondence at
my disposal. Lady Caroline Lascelles has most kindly permitted me to
use as much of Lord Carlisle's journal as relates to the subject of this
work; and Mr. Charles Cowan, my Uncle's old opponent at Edinburgh, has
sent me a considerable mass of printed matter bearing upon the elections
of 1847 and 1852. The late Sir Edward Ryan, and Mr. Fitzjames Stephen,
spared no pains to inform me with regard to Lord MACAULAY'S work at
Calcutta. His early letters, with much that relates to the whole
course of his life, have been preserved, studied, and arranged, by the
affectionate industry of his sister, Miss Macaulay; and material of high
interest has been entrusted to my hands by Mr. and the Hon. Mrs. Edward
Cropper. I have been assisted throughout the book by the sympathy, and
the recollections, of my sister Lady Holland, the niece to whose custody
Lord MACAULAY'S papers by inheritance descend.

G.O.T.

March 1876.





LIFE AND LETTERS OF LORD MACAULAY

By

Sir George Otto Trevelyan




CHAPTER I. 1800-1818.

     Plan and scope of the work--History of the Macaulay family--
     Aulay--Kenneth--Johnson and Boswell--John Macaulay and his
     children--Zachary Macaulay--His career in the West Indies
     and in Africa--His character--Visit of the French squadron
     to Sierra Leone--Zachary Macaulay's marriage--Birth of his
     eldest son--Lord Macaulay's early years--His childish
     productions--Mrs. Hannah More--General Macaulay--Choice of a
     school--Shelford--Dean Milner--Macaulay's early letters--
     Aspenden hall--The boy's habits and mental endowments--His
     home--The Clapham set--The boy's relations with his father--
     The political ideas amongst which he was brought up, and
     their influence on the work of his life.

HE who undertakes to publish the memoirs of a distinguished man may find
a ready apology in the custom of the age. If we measure the effective
demand for biography by the supply, the person commemorated need possess
but a very moderate reputation, and have played no exceptional part,
in order to carry the reader through many hundred pages of anecdote,
dissertation, and correspondence. To judge from the advertisements of
our circulating libraries, the public curiosity is keen with regard to
some who did nothing worthy of special note, and others who acted so
continuously in the face of the world that, when their course was
run, there was little left for the world to learn about them. It may,
therefore, be taken for granted that a desire exists to hear something
authentic about the life of a man who has produced works which are
universally known, but which bear little or no indication of the private
history and the personal qualities of the author.

This was in a marked degree the case with Lord Macaulay. His two famous
contemporaries in English literature have, consciously or unconsciously,
told their own story in their books. Those who could see between the
lines in "David Copperfield" were aware that they had before them a
delightful autobiography; and all who knew how to read Thackeray could
trace him in his novels through every stage in his course, on from the
day when as a little boy, consigned to the care of English relatives and
schoolmasters, he left his mother on the steps of the landing-place at
Calcutta. The dates and names were wanting, but the man was there; while
the most ardent admirers of Macaulay will admit that a minute study of
his literary productions left them, as far as any but an intellectual
knowledge of the writer himself was concerned, very much as it found
them. A consummate master of his craft, he turned out works which
bore the unmistakable marks of the artificer's hand, but which did not
reflect his features. It would be almost as hard to compose a picture of
the author from the History, the Essays, and the Lays, as to evolve an
idea of Shakespeare from Henry the Fifth and Measure for Measure.

But, besides being a man of letters, Lord Macaulay was a statesman, a
jurist, and a brilliant ornament of society, at a time when to shine
in society was a distinction which a man of eminence and ability might
justly value. In these several capacities, it will be said, he was known
well, and known widely. But in the first place, as these pages will
show, there was one side of his life (to him, at any rate, the most
important,) of which even the persons with whom he mixed most freely and
confidentially in London drawing-rooms, in the Indian Council chamber,
and in the lobbies and on the benches of the House of Commons, were only
in part aware. And in the next place, those who have seen his features
and heard his voice are few already and become yearly fewer; while, by a
rare fate in literary annals, the number of those who read his books
is still rapidly increasing. For everyone who sat with him in private
company or at the transaction of public business,--for every ten who
have listened to his oratory in Parliament or from the hustings,--there
must be tens of thousands whose interest in history and literature he
has awakened and informed by his pen, and who would gladly know what
manner of man it was that has done them so great a service.

To gratify that most legitimate wish is the duty of those who have the
means at their command. His lifelike image is indelibly impressed upon
their minds, (for how could it be otherwise with any who had enjoyed so
close relations with such a man?) although the skill which can reproduce
that image before the general eye may well be wanting. But his own
letters will supply the deficiencies of the biographer. Never did any
one leave behind him more copious materials for enabling others to
put together a narrative which might be the history, not indeed of his
times, but of the man himself. For in the first place he so soon showed
promise of being one who would give those among whom his early years
were passed reason to be proud, and still more certain assurance that
he would never afford them cause for shame, that what he wrote was
preserved with a care very seldom bestowed on childish compositions;
and the value set upon his letters by those with whom he corresponded
naturally enough increased as years went on. And in the next place he
was by nature so incapable of affectation or concealment that he could
not write otherwise than as he felt, and, to one person at least, could
never refrain from writing all that he felt; so that we may read in his
letters, as in a clear mirror, his opinions and inclinations, his
hopes and affections, at every succeeding period of his existence. Such
letters could never have been submitted to an editor not connected with
both correspondents by the strongest ties; and even one who stands in
that position must often be sorely puzzled as to what he has the heart
to publish and the right to withhold.

I am conscious that a near relative has peculiar temptations towards
that partiality of the biographer which Lord Macaulay himself so often
and so cordially denounced; and the danger is greater in the case of one
whose knowledge of him coincided with his later years; for it would not
be easy to find a nature which gained more by time than his, and lost
less. But believing, as I do, (to use his own words,) that "if he were
now living he would have sufficient judgment and sufficient greatness
of mind" to wish to be shown as himself, I will suppress no trait in
his disposition, or incident in his career, which might provoke blame
or question. Such in all points as he was, the world, which has been so
indulgent to him, has a right to know him; and those who best love him
do not fear the consequences of freely submitting his character and his
actions to the public verdict.

The most devout believers in the doctrine of the transmission of
family qualities will be content with tracing back descent through four
generations; and all favourable hereditary influences, both intellectual
and moral, are assured by a genealogy which derives from a Scotch
Manse. In the first decade of the eighteenth century Aulay Macaulay,
the great-grandfather of the historian, was minister of Tiree and Coll;
where he was "grievously annoyed by a decreet obtained after instance of
the Laird of Ardchattan, taking away his stipend." The Duchess of Argyll
of the day appears to have done her best to see him righted; "but his
health being much impaired, and there being no church or meeting-house,
he was exposed to the violence of the weather at all seasons; and
having no manse or plebe, and no fund for communion elements, and no
mortification for schools or any pious purpose in either of the islands,
and the air being unwholesome, he was dissatisfied;" and so, to the
great regret of the parishioners whom he was leaving behind, he migrated
to Harris, where he discharged the clerical duties for nearly half a
century.

Aulay was the father of fourteen children, of whom one, Kenneth, the
minister of Ardnamurchan, still occupies a very humble niche in the
temple of literature. He wrote a History of St. Kilda which happened to
fall into the hands of Dr. Johnson, who spoke of it more than once with
favour. His reason for liking the book is characteristic enough. Mr.
Macaulay had recorded the belief prevalent in St. Kilda that, as soon as
the factor landed on the island, all the inhabitants had an attack
which from the account appears to have partaken of the nature both
of influenza and bronchitis. This touched the superstitious vein in
Johnson, who praised him for his "magnanimity" in venturing to
chronicle so questionable a phenomenon; the more so because,--said
the Doctor,--"Macaulay set out with a prejudice against prejudice, and
wanted to be a smart modern thinker." To a reader of our day the History
of St. Kilda appears to be innocent of any trace of such pretension;
unless it be that the author speaks slightingly of second-sight, a
subject for which Johnson always had a strong hankering. In 1773 Johnson
paid a visit to Mr. Macaulay, who by that time had removed to Calder,
and began the interview by congratulating him on having produced "a very
pretty piece of topography,"--a compliment which did not seem to the
taste of the author. The conversation turned upon rather delicate
subjects, and, before many hours had passed, the guest had said to the
host one of the very rudest things recorded by Boswell! Later on in the
same evening he atoned for his incivility by giving one of the boys of
the house a pocket Sallust, and promising to procure him a servitorship
at Oxford. Subsequently Johnson pronounced that Mr. Macaulay was not
competent to have written the book that went by his name; a decision
which, to those who happen to have read the work, will give a very poor
notion of my ancestor's abilities.

The eldest son of old Aulay, and the grandfather of Lord Macaulay, was
John, born in the year 1720. He was minister successively of Barra,
South Uist, Lismore, and Inverary; the last appointment being a proof
of the interest which the family of Argyll continued to take in the
fortunes of the Macaulays. He, likewise, during the famous tour in
the Hebrides, came across the path of Boswell, who mentions him in an
exquisitely absurd paragraph, the first of those in which is described
the visit to Inverary Castle. ["Monday, Oct. 25.--My acquaintance, the
Rev. Mr. John M'Aulay, one of the ministers of Inverary, and brother to
our good friend at Calder, came to us this morning, and accompanied us
to the castle, where I presented Dr. Johnson to the Duke of Argyll. We
were shown through the house; and I never shall forget the impression
made upon my fancy by some of the ladies' maids tripping about in neat
morning dresses. After seeing for a long time little but rusticity,
their lively manner, and gay inciting appearance, pleased me so much,
that I thought for a moment I could have been a knight-errant for
them."] Mr. Macaulay afterwards passed the evening with the travellers
at their inn, and provoked Johnson into what Boswell calls warmth, and
anyone else would call brutality, by the very proper remark that he
had no notion of people being in earnest in good professions if their
practice belied them. When we think what well-known ground this was to
Lord Macaulay, it is impossible to suppress a wish that the great talker
had been at hand to avenge his grandfather and grand-uncle. Next morning
"Mr. Macaulay breakfasted with us, nothing hurt or dismayed by his last
night's correction. Being a man of good sense he had a just admiration
of Dr. Johnson." He was rewarded by seeing Johnson at his very best, and
hearing him declaim some of the finest lines that ever were written in a
manner worthy of his subject.

There is a tradition that, in his younger days, the minister of Inverary
proved his Whiggism by giving information to the authorities which
almost led to the capture of the young Pretender. It is perhaps a matter
of congratulation that this item was not added to the heavy account that
the Stuarts have against the Macaulay family. John Macaulay enjoyed
a high reputation as a preacher, and was especially renowned for his
fluency. In 1774 he removed to Cardross in Dumbartonshire, where, on the
bank of the noble estuary of the Clyde, he spent the last fifteen years
of a useful and honoured life. He was twice married. His first wife died
at the birth of his first child. Eight years afterwards, in 1757, he
espoused Margaret, daughter of Colin Campbell of Inveresragan, who
survived him by a single year. By her he had the patriarchal number of
twelve children, whom he brought up on the old Scotch system,--common
to the households of minister, man of business, farmer, and peasant
alike,--on fine air, simple diet, and a solid training in knowledge
human and divine. Two generations after, Mr. Carlyle, during a visit to
the late Lord Ashburton at the Grange, caught sight of Macaulay's face
in unwonted repose, as he was turning over the pages of a book. "I
noticed," said he, "the homely Norse features that you find everywhere
in the Western Isles, and I thought to myself 'Well! Anyone can see that
you are an honest good sort of fellow, made out of oatmeal.'"

Several of John Macaulay's children obtained position in the world.
Aulay, the eldest by his second wife, became a clergyman of the Church
of England. His reputation as a scholar and antiquary stood high, and in
the capacity of a private tutor he became known even in royal circles.
He published pamphlets and treatises, the list of which it is not worth
while to record, and meditated several large works that perhaps never
got much beyond a title. Of all his undertakings the one best deserving
commemoration in these pages was a tour that he made into Scotland
in company with Mr. Thomas Babington, the owner of Rothley Temple in
Leicestershire, in the course of which the travellers paid a visit
to the manse at Cardross. Mr. Babington fell in love with one of the
daughters of the house, Miss Jean Macaulay, and married her in
1787. Nine years afterwards he had an opportunity of presenting his
brother-in-law Aulay Macaulay with the very pleasant living of Rothley.

Alexander, another son of John Macaulay, succeeded his father as
minister of Cardross. Colin went into the Indian army, and died a
general. He followed the example of the more ambitious among his brother
officers, and exchanged military for civil duties. In 1799 he acted as
secretary to a political and diplomatic Commission which accompanied
the force that marched under General Harris against Seringapatam. The
leading Commissioner was Colonel Wellesley, and to the end of General
Macaulay's life the great Duke corresponded with him on terms of
intimacy, and (so the family flattered themselves) even of friendship.
Soon after the commencement of the century Colin Macaulay was appointed
Resident at the important native state of Travancore. While on this
employment he happened to light upon a valuable collection of books, and
rapidly made himself master of the principal European languages, which
he spoke and wrote with a facility surprising in one who had acquired
them within a few leagues of Cape Comorin.

There was another son of John Macaulay, who in force and elevation of
character stood out among his brothers, and who was destined to make
for himself no ordinary career. The path which Zachary Macaulay chose
to tread did not lead to wealth, or worldly success, or indeed to much
worldly happiness. Born in 1768, he was sent out at the age of sixteen
by a Scotch house of business as bookkeeper to an estate in Jamaica, of
which he soon rose to be sole manager. His position brought him into
the closest possible contact with negro slavery. His mind was not
prepossessed against the system of society which he found in the West
Indies. His personal interests spoke strongly in its favour, while his
father, whom he justly respected, could see nothing to condemn in an
institution recognised by Scripture. Indeed, the religious world still
allowed the maintenance of slavery to continue an open question. John
Newton, the real founder of that school in the Church of England of
which in after years Zachary Macaulay was a devoted member, contrived to
reconcile the business of a slave trader with the duties of a Christian,
and to the end of his days gave scandal to some of his disciples, (who
by that time were one and all sworn abolitionists,) by his supposed
reluctance to see that there could be no fellowship between light and
such darkness.

But Zachary Macaulay had eyes of his own to look about him, a clear head
for forming a judgment on what he saw, and a conscience which would
not permit him to live otherwise than in obedience to its mandates. The
young Scotchman's innate respect for his fellows, and his appreciation
of all that instruction and religion can do for men, was shocked at the
sight of a population deliberately kept ignorant and heathen. His kind
heart was wounded by cruelties practised at the will and pleasure of a
thousand petty despots. He had read his Bible too literally to acquiesce
easily in a state of matters under which human beings were bred and
raised like a stock of cattle, while outraged morality was revenged
on the governing race by the shameless licentiousness which is the
inevitable accompaniment of slavery. He was well aware that these evils,
so far from being superficial or remediable, were essential to the
very existence of a social fabric constituted like that within which he
lived. It was not for nothing that he had been behind the scenes in that
tragedy of crime and misery. His philanthropy was not learned by the
royal road of tracts, and platform speeches, and monthly magazines. What
he knew he had spelt out for himself with no teacher except the aspect
of human suffering, and degradation, and sin.

He was not one of those to whom conviction comes in a day; and, when
convinced, he did nothing sudden. Little more than a boy in age,
singularly modest, and constitutionally averse to any course that
appeared pretentious or theatrical, he began by a sincere attempt to
make the best of his calling. For some years he contented himself with
doing what he could, (so he writes to a friend,) "to alleviate the
hardships of a considerable number of my fellow-creatures, and to render
the bitter cup of servitude as palatable as possible." But by the time
he was four-and-twenty he became tired of trying to find a compromise
between right and wrong, and, refusing really great offers from the
people with whom he was connected, he threw up his position, and
returned to his native country. This step was taken against the wishes
of his father, who was not prepared for the construction which his son
put upon the paternal precept that a man should make his practice square
with his professions.

But Zachary Macaulay soon had more congenial work to do. The young West
Indian overseer was not alone in his scruples. Already for some time
past a conviction had been abroad that individual citizens could not
divest themselves of their share in the responsibility in which the
nation was involved by the existence of slavery in our colonies. Already
there had been formed the nucleus of the most disinterested, and
perhaps the most successful, popular movement which history records. The
question of the slave trade was well before Parliament and the country.
Ten years had passed since the freedom of all whose feet touched the
soil of our island had been vindicated before the courts at Westminster,
and not a few negroes had become their own masters as a consequence
of that memorable decision. The patrons of the race were somewhat
embarrassed by having these expatriated freedmen on their hands;
an opinion prevailed that the traffic in human lives could never
be efficiently checked until Africa had obtained the rudiments of
civilisation; and, after long discussion, a scheme was matured for
the colonisation of Sierra Leone by liberated slaves. A company was
organised, with a charter from the Crown, and a board which included the
names of Granville Sharpe and Wilberforce. A large capital was speedily
subscribed, and the Chair was accepted by Mr. Henry Thornton, a leading
City banker and a member of Parliament, whose determined opposition to
cruelty and oppression in every form was such as might be expected in
one who had inherited from his father the friendship of the poet Cowper.
Mr. Thornton heard Macaulay's story from Thomas Babington, with whom he
lived on terms of close intimacy and political alliance. The Board, by
the advice of its Chairman, passed a resolution appointing the young man
Second Member in the Sierra Leone Council, and early in the year 1793
he sailed for Africa, where soon after his arrival he succeeded to the
position and duties of Governor.

The Directors had done well to secure a tried man. The colony was at
once exposed to the implacable enmity of merchants whose market the
agents of the new company spoiled in their capacity of traders,
and slave-dealers with whom they interfered in their character of
philanthropists. The native tribes in the vicinity, instigated by
European hatred and jealousy, began to inflict upon the defenceless
authorities of the settlement a series of those monkey-like
impertinences which, absurdly as they may read in a narrative, are
formidable and ominous when they indicate that savages feel their power.
These barbarians, who had hitherto commanded as much rum and gunpowder
as they cared to have by selling their neighbours at the nearest
barracoon, showed no appreciation for the comforts and advantages of
civilisation. Indeed, those advantages were displayed in anything but
an attractive shape even within the pale of the company's territory.
An aggregation of negroes from Jamaica, London, and Nova Scotia,
who possessed no language except an acquired jargon, and shared no
associations beyond the recollections of a common servitude, were
not very promising apostles for the spread of Western culture and the
Christian faith. Things went smoothly enough as long as the business of
the colony was mainly confined to eating the provisions that had been
brought in the ships; but as soon as the work became real, and the
commons short, the whole community smouldered down into chronic mutiny.

Zachary Macaulay was the very man for such a crisis. To a rare fund of
patience, and self-command, and perseverance, he united a calm courage
that was equal to any trial. These qualities were, no doubt, inherent
in his disposition; but no one except those who have turned over his
voluminous private journals can understand what constant effort, and
what incessant watchfulness, went to maintain throughout a long life a
course of conduct, and a temper of mind, which gave every appearance
of being the spontaneous fruit of nature. He was not one who dealt in
personal experiences; and few among even the friends who loved him like
father or brother, and who would have trusted him with all their fortune
on his bare word, knew how entirely his outward behaviour was the
express image of his religious belief. The secret of his character and
of his actions lay in perfect humility and an absolute faith. Events did
not discompose him, because they were sent by One who best knew his own
purposes. He was not fretted by the folly of others, or irritated
by their hostility, because he regarded the humblest or the worst of
mankind as objects, equally with himself, of the divine love and care.
On all other points he examined himself so closely that the meditations
of a single evening would fill many pages of diary; but so completely
in his case had the fear of God cast out all other fear that amidst
the gravest perils, and the most bewildering responsibilities, it never
occurred to him to question whether he was brave or not. He worked
strenuously and unceasingly, never amusing himself from year's end to
year's end, and shrinking from any public praise or recognition as from
an unlawful gratification, because he was firmly persuaded that, when
all had been accomplished and endured, he was yet but an unprofitable
servant, who had done that which was his duty to do. Some, perhaps, will
consider such motives as oldfashioned, and such convictions as out of
date; but self-abnegation, self-control, and self-knowledge that does
not give to self the benefit of any doubt, are virtues which are not
oldfashioned, and for which, as time goes on, the world is likely to
have as much need as ever. [Sir James Stephen writes thus of his friend
Macaulay: "That his understanding was proof against sophistry, and
his nerves against fear, were, indeed, conclusions to which a stranger
arrived at the first interview with him. But what might be suggesting
that expression of countenance, at once so earnest and so monotonous--by
what manner of feeling those gestures, so uniformly firm and deliberate
were prompted--whence the constant traces of fatigue on those
overhanging brows and on that athletic though ungraceful figure--what
might be the charm which excited amongst his chosen circle a faith
approaching to superstition, and a love rising to enthusiasm, towards a
man whose demeanour was so inanimate, if not austere:--it was a riddle
of which neither Gall nor Lavater could have found the key."

That Sir James himself could read the riddle is proved by the concluding
words of a passage marked by a force and tenderness of feeling unusual
even in him: "His earthward affections,--active and all--enduring as
they were, could yet thrive without the support of human sympathy,
because they were sustained by so abiding a sense of the divine
presence, and so absolute a submission to the divine will, as raised
him habitually to that higher region where the reproach of man could not
reach, and the praise of man might not presume to follow him."]

Mr. Macaulay was admirably adapted for the arduous and uninviting task
of planting a negro colony. His very deficiencies stood him in good
stead; for, in presence of the elements with which he had to deal, it
was well for him that nature had denied him any sense of the ridiculous.
Unconscious of what was absurd around him, and incapable of being
flurried, frightened, or fatigued, he stood as a centre of order and
authority amidst the seething chaos of inexperience and insubordination.
The staff was miserably insufficient, and every officer of the Company
had to do duty for three in a climate such that a man is fortunate if he
can find health for the work of one during a continuous twelvemonth. The
Governor had to be in the counting-house, the law-court, the school, and
even the chapel. He was his own secretary, his own paymaster, his own
envoy. He posted ledgers, he decided causes, he conducted correspondence
with the Directors at home, and visited neighbouring potentates on
diplomatic missions which made up in danger what they lacked in dignity.
In the absence of properly qualified clergymen, with whom he would have
been the last to put himself in competition, he preached sermons
and performed marriages;--a function which must have given honest
satisfaction to one who had been so close a witness of the enforced
and systematised immorality of a slave-nursery. Before long, something
fairly resembling order was established, and the settlement began to
enjoy a reasonable measure of prosperity. The town was built, the fields
were planted, and the schools filled. The Governor made a point of
allotting the lightest work to the negroes who could read and write; and
such was the stimulating effect of this system upon education that he
confidently looked forward "to the time when there would be few in
the colony unable to read the Bible." A printing-press was in constant
operation, and in the use of a copying-machine the little community was
three-quarters of a century ahead of the London public offices.

But a severe ordeal was in store for the nascent civilisation of Sierra
Leone. On a Sunday morning in September 1794, eight French sail appeared
off the coast. The town was about as defensible as Brighton; and it is
not difficult to imagine the feelings which the sansculottes inspired
among Evangelical colonists whose last advices from Europe dated from
the very height of the Reign of Terror. There was a party in favour of
escaping into the forest with as much property as could be removed at so
short a notice; but the Governor insisted that there would be no chance
of saving the Company's buildings unless the Company's servants could
make up their minds to remain at their posts, and face it out. The
squadron moored within musket-shot of the quay, and swept the streets
for two hours with grape and bullets; a most gratuitous piece of
cruelty that killed a negress and a child, and gave one unlucky English
gentleman a fright which ultimately brought him to his grave. The
invaders then proceeded to land, and Mr. Macaulay had an opportunity of
learning something about the condition of the French marine during the
heroic period of the Republic.

A personal enemy of his own, the captain of a Yankee slaver, brought
a party of sailors straight to the Governor's house. What followed had
best be told in Mr. Macaulay's own words. "Newell, who was attended by
half-a-dozen sans-culottes, almost foaming with rage, presented a pistol
to me, and with many oaths demanded instant satisfaction for the slaves
who had run away from him to my protection. I made very little
reply, but told him he must now _take_ such satisfaction as he judged
equivalent to his claims, as I was no longer master of my actions. He
became so very outrageous that, after bearing with him a little while,
I thought it most prudent to repair myself to the French officer, and
request his safe-conduct on board the Commodore's ship. As I passed
along the wharf the scene was curious enough. The Frenchmen, who had
come ashore in filth and rags, were now many of them dressed out with
women's shifts, gowns, and petticoats. Others had quantities of cloth
wrapped about their bodies, or perhaps six or seven suits of clothes
upon them at a time. The scene which presented itself on my getting
on board the flag-ship was still more singular. The quarter-deck was
crowded by a set of ragamuffins whose appearance beggared every previous
description, and among whom I sought in vain for some one who looked
like a gentleman. The stench and filth exceeded anything I had ever
witnessed in any ship, and the noise and confusion gave me some idea of
their famous Mountain. I was ushered into the Commodore's cabin, who
at least received me civilly. His name was Citizen Allemand. He did not
appear to have the right of excluding any of his fellow-citizens even
from this place. Whatever might be their rank, they crowded into it,
and conversed familiarly with him." Such was the discipline of the fleet
that had been beaten by Lord Hove on the first of June; and such the raw
material of the armies which, under firm hands, and on an element more
suited to the military genius of their nation, were destined to triumph
at Rivoli and Hohenlinden.

Mr. Macaulay, who spoke French with ease and precision, in his anxiety
to save the town used every argument which might prevail on the
Commodore, whose Christian name, (if one may use such a phrase with
reference to a patriot of the year two of the Republic,) happened oddly
enough to be the same as his own. He appealed first to the traditional
generosity of Frenchmen towards a fallen enemy, but soon discerned that
the quality in question had gone out with the old order of things, if
indeed it ever existed. He then represented that a people, who professed
to be waging war with the express object of striking off the fetters of
mankind, would be guilty of flagrant inconsistency if they destroyed an
asylum for liberated slaves; but the Commodore gave him to understand
that sentiments, which sounded very well in the Hall of the Jacobins,
were out of place on the West Coast of Africa. The Governor returned
on shore to find the town already completely gutted. It was evident at
every turn that, although the Republican battalions might carry liberty
and fraternity through Europe on the points of their bayonets, the
Republican sailors had found a very different use for the edge of their
cutlasses. "The sight of my own and of the Accountant's offices almost
sickened me. Every desk, and every drawer, and every shelf, together
with the printing and copying presses, had been completely demolished
in the search for money. The floors were strewed with types, and papers,
and leaves of books; and I had the mortification to see a great part of
my own labour, and of the labour of others, for several years
totally destroyed. At the other end of the house I found telescopes,
hygrometers, barometers, thermometers, and electrical machines, lying
about in fragments. The view of the town library filled me with lively
concern. The volumes were tossed about and defaced with the utmost
wantonness; and, if they happened to bear any resemblance to Bibles,
they were torn in pieces and trampled on. The collection of natural
curiosities next caught my eye. Plants, seeds, dried birds, insects,
and drawings were scattered about in great confusion, and some of the
sailors were in the act of killing a beautiful musk-cat, which they
afterwards ate. Every house was full of Frenchmen, who were hacking, and
destroying, and tearing up everything which they could not convert to
their own use. The destruction of live stock on this and the following
day was immense. In my yard alone they killed fourteen dozen of fowls,
and there were not less than twelve hundred hogs shot in the town." It
was unsafe to walk in the streets of Freetown during the forty-eight
hours that followed its capture, because the French crews, with too much
of the Company's port wine in their heads to aim straight, were firing
at the pigs of the poor freedmen over whom they had achieved such a
questionable victory.

To readers of Erckmann-Chatrian it is unpleasant to be taken thus behind
the curtain on which those skilful artists have painted the wars of the
early Revolution. It is one thing to be told how the crusaders of '93
and '94 were received with blessings and banquets by the populations to
whom they brought freedom and enlightenment, and quite another to read
the journal in which a quiet accurate-minded Scotchman tells us how
a pack of tipsy ruffians sat abusing Pitt and George to him, over a
fricassee of his own fowls, and among the wreck of his lamps and mirrors
which they had smashed as a protest against aristocratic luxury.

"There is not a boy among them who has not learnt to accompany the name
of Pitt with an execration. When I went to bed, there was no sleep to be
had on account of the sentinels thinking fit to amuse me the whole night
through with the revenge they meant to take on him when they got him to
Paris. Next morning I went on board the 'Experiment.' The Commodore and
all his officers messed together, and I was admitted among them. They
are truly the poorest-looking people I ever saw. Even the Commodore
has only one suit which can at all distinguish him, not to say from the
officers, but from the men. The filth and confusion of their meals was
terrible. A chorus of boys usher in the dinner with the Marseilles hymn,
and it finishes in the same way. The enthusiasm of all ranks among them
is astonishing, but not more so than their blindness. They talk with
ecstasy of their revolutionary government, of their bloody executions,
of their revolutionary tribunal, of the rapid movement of their
revolutionary army with the Corps of justice and the flying guillotine
before it; forgetting that not one of them is not liable to its stroke
on the accusation of the greatest vagabond on board. They asked me with
triumph if yesterday had not been Sunday. 'Oh,' said they, 'the National
Convention have decreed that there is no Sunday, and that the Bible is
all a lie.'" After such an experience it is not difficult to account
for the keen and almost personal interest with which, to the very day of
Waterloo, Mr. Macaulay watched through its varying phases the rise
and the downfall of the French power. He followed the progress of the
British arms with a minute and intelligent attention which from a very
early date communicated itself to his son; and the hearty patriotism of
Lord Macaulay is perhaps in no small degree the consequence of what
his father suffered from the profane and rapacious sansculottes of the
revolutionary squadron.

Towards the middle of October the Republicans took their departure. Even
at this distance of time it is provoking to learn that they got back
to Brest without meeting an enemy that had teeth to bite. The African
climate, however, reduced the squadron to such a plight, that it was
well for our frigates that they had not the chance of getting its
fever-stricken crews under their hatches. The French never revisited
Freetown. Indeed, they had left the place in such a condition that
it was not worth their while to return. The houses had been carefully
burned to the ground, and the live stock killed. Except the clothes
on their backs, and a little brandy and flour, the Europeans had lost
everything they had in the world. Till assistance came from the mother
country they lived upon such provisions as could be recovered from the
reluctant hands of the negro settlers, who providentially had not been
able to resist the temptation of helping the Republicans to plunder the
Company's stores. Judicious liberality at home, and a year's hard work
on the spot, did much to repair the damage; and, when his colony was
again upon its feet, Mr. Macaulay sailed to England with the object
of recruiting his health, which had broken down under an attack of low
fever.

On his arrival he was admitted at once and for ever within the innermost
circle of friends and fellow-labourers who were united round Wilberforce
and Henry Thornton by indissoluble bonds of mutual personal regard and
common public ends. As an indispensable part of his initiation into that
very pleasant confederacy, he was sent down to be introduced to Hannah
More, who was living at Cowslip Green, near Bristol, in the enjoyment
of general respect, mixed with a good deal of what even those who admire
her as she deserved must in conscience call flattery. He there met
Selina Mills, a former pupil of the school which the Miss Mores kept
in the neighbouring city, and a lifelong friend of all the sisters. The
young lady is said to have been extremely pretty and attractive, as
may well be believed by those who saw her in later years. She was the
daughter of a member of the Society of Friends, who at one time was a
bookseller in Bristol, and who built there a small street called "Mills
Place," in which he himself resided. His grandchildren remembered him
as an old man of imposing appearance, with long white hair, talking
incessantly of Jacob Boehmen. Mr. Mills had sons, one of whom edited a
Bristol journal exceedingly well, and is said to have made some figure
in light literature. This uncle of Lord Macaulay was a very lively,
clever man, full of good stories, of which only one has survived. Young
Mills, while resident in London, had looked in at Rowland Hill's chapel,
and had there lost a new hat. When he reported the misfortune to his
father, the old Quaker replied: "John, if thee'd gone to the right place
of worship, thee'd have kept thy hat upon thy head." Lord Macaulay was
accustomed to say that he got his "joviality" from his mother's family.
If his power of humour was indeed of Quaker origin, he was rather
ungrateful in the use to which he sometimes put it.

Mr. Macaulay fell in love with Miss Mills, and obtained her affection
in return. He had to encounter the opposition of her relations, who were
set upon her making another and a better match, and of Mrs. Patty More,
(so well known to all who have studied the somewhat diffuse annals of
the More family,) who, in the true spirit of romantic friendship, wished
her to promise never to marry at all, but to domesticate herself as a
youngest sister in the household at Cowslip Green. Miss Hannah,
however, took a more unselfish view of the situation, and advocated Mr.
Macaulay's cause with firmness and good feeling. Indeed, he must have
been, according to her particular notions, the most irreproachable of
lovers, until her own Coelebs was given to the world. By her help he
carried his point in so far that the engagement was made and recognised;
but the friends of the young lady would not allow her to accompany him
to Africa; and, during his absence from England, which began in the
early months of 1796, by an arrangement that under the circumstances was
very judicious, she spent much of her time in Leicestershire with his
sister Mrs. Babington.

His first business after arriving at Sierra Leone was to sit in judgment
on the ringleaders of a formidable outbreak which had taken place in
the colony; and he had an opportunity of proving by example that negro
disaffection, from the nature of the race, is peculiarly susceptible
to treatment by mild remedies, if only the man in the post of
responsibility has got a heart and can contrive to keep his head. He had
much more trouble with a batch of missionaries, whom he took with him in
the ship, and who were no sooner on board than they began to fall out,
ostensibly on controversial topics, but more probably from the same
motives that so often set the laity quarrelling during the incessant and
involuntary companionship of a sea-voyage. Mr. Macaulay, finding that
the warmth of these debates furnished sport to the captain and other
irreligious characters, was forced seriously to exert his authority
in order to separate and silence the disputants. His report of these
occurrences went in due time to the Chairman of the Company, who excused
himself for an arrangement which had turned out so ill by telling a
story of a servant who, having to carry a number of gamecocks from one
place to another, tied them up in the same bag, and found on arriving at
his journey's end that they had spent their time in tearing each other
to pieces. When his master called him to account for his stupidity he
replied: "Sir, as they were all your cocks, I thought they would be all
on one side."

Things did not go much more smoothly on shore. Mr. Macaulay's official
correspondence gives a curious picture of his difficulties in the
character of Minister of Public Worship in a black community. "The
Baptists under David George are decent and orderly, but there is
observable in them a great neglect of family worship, and sometimes
an unfairness in their dealings. To Lady Huntingdon's Methodists, as a
body, may with great justice be addressed the first verse of the
third chapter of the Revelation. The lives of many of them are very
disorderly, and rank antinomianism prevails among them." But his sense
of religion and decency was most sorely tried by Moses Wilkinson, a
so-called Wesleyan Methodist, whose congregation, not a very respectable
one to begin with, had recently been swollen by a Revival which had been
accompanied by circumstances the reverse of edifying. [Lord Macaulay
had in his youth heard too much about negro preachers, and negro
administrators, to permit him to entertain any very enthusiastic
anticipations with regard to the future of the African race. He writes
in his journal for July 8 1858: "Motley called. I like him much. We
agree wonderfully well about slavery, and it is not often that I meet
any person with whom I agree on that subject. For I hate slavery from
the bottom of my soul; and yet I am made sick by the cant and the silly
mock reasons of the Abolitionists. The nigger driver and the negrophile
are two odious things to me. I must make Lady Macbeth's reservation:
'Had he not resembled--,'"] The Governor must have looked back
with regret to that period in the history of the colony when he was
underhanded in the clerical department.

But his interest in the negro could bear ruder shocks than an occasional
outburst of eccentric fanaticism. He liked his work, because he liked
those for whom he was working. "Poor people," he writes, "one cannot
help loving them. With all their trying humours, they have a warmth of
affection which is really irresistible." For their sake he endured all
the risk and worry inseparable from a long engagement kept by the lady
among disapproving friends, and by the gentleman at Sierra Leone. He
stayed till the settlement had begun to thrive, and the Company had
almost begun to pay; and until the Home Government had given marked
tokens of favour and protection, which some years later developed into a
negotiation under which the colony was transferred to the Crown. It was
not till 1799 that he finally gave up his appointment, and left a region
which, alone among men, he quitted with unfeigned, and, except in one
particular, with unmixed regret. But for the absence of an Eve, he
regarded the West Coast of Africa as a veritable Paradise, or, to use
his own expression, as a more agreeable Montpelier. With a temper which
in the intercourse of society was proof against being ruffled by any
possible treatment of any conceivable subject, to the end of his life he
showed faint signs of irritation if anyone ventured in his presence to
hint that Sierra Leone was unhealthy.

On his return to England he was appointed Secretary to the Company, and
was married at Bristol on the 26th of August, 1799. A most close union
it was, and, (though in latter years he became fearfully absorbed in
the leading object of his existence, and ceased in a measure to be the
companion that he had been,) his love for his wife, and deep trust and
confidence in her, never failed. They took a small house in Lambeth for
the first twelve months. When Mrs. Macaulay was near her confinement,
Mrs. Babington, who belonged to the school of matrons who hold that the
advantage of country air outweighs that of London doctors, invited her
sister-in-law to Rothley Temple; and there, in a room panelled from
ceiling to floor, like every corner of the ancient mansion, with oak
almost black from age,--looking eastward across the park and southward
through an ivy-shaded window into a little garden,--Lord Macaulay was
born. It was on the 25th of October 1800, the day of St. Crispin, the
anniversary of Agincourt, (as he liked to say,) that he opened his eyes
on a world which he was destined so thoroughly to learn and so intensely
to enjoy. His father was as pleased as a father could be; but fate
seemed determined that Zachary Macaulay should not be indulged in any
great share of personal happiness. The next morning the noise of a
spinning-jenny, at work in a cottage, startled his horse as he was
riding past. He was thrown, and both arms were broken; and he spent in
a sick-room the remainder of the only holiday worth the name which, (as
far as can be traced in the family records,) he ever took during his
married life. Owing to this accident the young couple were detained
at Rothley into the winter; and the child was baptised in the private
chapel which formed part of the house, on the 26th November 1800, by the
names of Thomas Babington;--the Rev. Aulay Macaulay, and Mr. and Mrs.
Babington, acting as sponsors.

The two years which followed were passed in a house in Birchin Lane,
where the Sierra Leone Company had its office. The only place where the
child could be taken for exercise, and what might be called air, was
Drapers' Gardens, which (already under sentence to be covered with
bricks and mortar at an early date) lies behind Throgmorton Street,
and within a hundred yards of the Stock Exchange. To this dismal yard,
containing as much gravel as grass, and frowned upon by a board of Rules
and Regulations almost as large as itself, his mother used to convoy the
nurse and the little boy through the crowds that towards noon swarmed
along Cornhill and Threadneedle Street; and thither she would return,
after a due interval, to escort them back to Birchin Lane. So strong
was the power of association upon Macaulay's mind that in after years
Drapers' Garden was among his favourite haunts. Indeed, his habit of
roaming for hours through and through the heart of the City, (a habit
that never left him as long as he could roam at all,) was due in part
to the recollection which caused him to regard that region as native
ground.

Baby as he was when he quitted it, he retained some impression of his
earliest home. He remembered standing up at the nursery window by his
father's side, looking at a cloud of black smoke pouring out of a tall
chimney. He asked if that was hell; an inquiry that was received with a
grave displeasure which at the time he could not understand. The kindly
father must have been pained, almost against his own will, at finding
what feature of his creed it was that had embodied itself in so very
material a shape before his little son's imagination. When in after days
Mrs. Macaulay was questioned as to how soon she began to detect in the
child a promise of the future, she used to say that his sensibilities
and affections were remarkably developed at an age which to her hearers
appeared next to incredible. He would cry for joy on seeing her after a
few hours' absence, and, (till her husband put a stop to it,) her power
of exciting his feelings was often made an exhibition to her friends.
She did not regard this precocity as a proof of cleverness; but, like
a foolish young mother, only thought that so tender a nature was marked
for early death.

The next move which the family made was into as healthy an atmosphere,
in every sense, as the most careful parent could wish to select. Mr.
Macaulay took a house in the High Street of Clapham, in the part now
called the Pavement, on the same side as the Plough inn, but some doors
nearer to the Common. It was a roomy comfortable dwelling, with a very
small garden behind, and in front a very small one indeed, which
has entirely disappeared beneath a large shop thrown out towards the
road-way by the present occupier, who bears the name of Heywood. Here
the boy passed a quiet and most happy childhood. From the time that he
was three years old he read incessantly, for the most part lying on the
rug before the fire, with his book on the ground, and a piece of bread
and batter in his hand. A very clever woman, who then lived in the house
as parlour-maid, told how he used to sit in his nankeen frock, perched
on the table by her as she was cleaning the plate, and expounding to
her out of a volume as big as himself. He did not care for toys, but was
very fond of taking his walk, when he would hold forth to his companion,
whether nurse or mother, telling interminable stories out of his own
head, or repeating what he had been reading in language far above his
years. His memory retained without shout effort the phraseology of the
book which he had been last engaged on, and he talked, as the maid said,
"quite printed words," which produced an effect that appeared formal,
and often, no doubt, exceedingly droll. Mrs. Hannah More was fond
of relating how she called at Mr. Macaulay's, and was met by a fair,
pretty, slight child, with abundance of light hair, about four years of
age, who came to the front door to receive her, and tell her that his
parents were out, but that if she would be good enough to come in he
would bring her a glass of old spirits; a proposition which greatly
startled the good lady, who had never aspired beyond cowslip wine. When
questioned as to what he knew about old spirits, he could only say that
Robinson Crusoe often had some. About this period his father took him on
a visit to Lady Waldegrave at Strawberry Hill, and was much pleased, to
exhibit to his old friend the fair bright boy, dressed in a green coat
with red cellar and cuffs, a frill at the throat, and white trousers.
After some time had been spent among the wonders of the Orford
Collection, of which he ever after carried a catalogue in his head, a
servant who was waiting upon the company in the great gallery spilt some
hot coffee over his legs. The hostess was all kindness and compassion,
and when, after a while, she asked how he was feeling, the little fellow
looked up in her face and replied: "Thank you, madam, the agony is
abated."

But it must not be supposed that his quaint manners proceeded from
affectation or conceit; for all testimony declares that a more simple
and natural child never lived, or a more lively and merry one. He had at
his command the resources of the Common; to this day the most unchanged
spot within ten miles of St. Paul's, and which to all appearance
will ere long hold that pleasant preeminence within ten leagues.
That delightful wilderness of gorse bushes, and poplar groves, and
gravel-pits, and ponds great and small, was to little Tom Macaulay a
region of inexhaustible romance and mystery. He explored its recesses;
he composed, and almost believed, its legends; he invented for its
different features a nomenclature which has been faithfully preserved
by two generations of children. A slight ridge, intersected by deep
ditches, towards the west of the Common, the very existence of which no
one above eight years old would notice, was dignified with the title of
the Alps; while the elevated island, covered with shrubs, that gives
a name to the Mount pond, was regarded with infinite awe as being the
nearest approach within the circuit of his observation to a conception
of the majesty of Sinai. Indeed, at this period his infant fancy was
much exercised with the threats and terrors of the Law. He had a little
plot of ground at the back of the house, marked out as his own by a Tory
of oyster-shells, which a maid one day threw away as rubbish. He went
straight to the drawing-room, where his mother was entertaining some
visitors, walked into the circle, and said very solemnly: "Cursed be
Sally; for it is written, Cursed is he that removeth his neighbour's
land-mark."

While still the merest child he was sent as a day-scholar to Mr.
Greaves, a shrewd Yorkshireman with a turn for science, who had been
originally brought to the neighbourhood in order to educate a number
of African youths sent over to imbibe Western civilisation at the
fountain-head. The poor fellows had found as much difficulty in keeping
alive at Clapham as Englishmen experience at Sierra Leone; and, in the
end, their tutor set up a school for boys of his own colour, and at one
time had charge of almost the entire rising generation of the Common.
Mrs. Macaulay explained to Tom that he must learn to study without the
solace of bread and butter, to which he replied: "Yes, mama, industry
shall be my bread and attention my butter." But, as a matter of fact,
no one ever crept more unwillingly to school. Each several afternoon he
made piteous entreaties to be excused returning after dinner, and was
met by the unvarying formula: "No, Tom, if it rains cats and dogs, you
shall go."

His reluctance to leave home had more than one side to it. Not only did
his heart stay behind, but the regular lessons of the class took him
away from occupations which in his eyes were infinitely more delightful
and important; for these were probably the years of his greatest
literary activity. As an author he never again had mere facility, or
anything like so wide a range. In September 1808, his mother writes:
"My dear Tom continues to show marks of uncommon genius. He gets on
wonderfully in all branches of his education, and the extent of
his reading, and of the knowledge he has derived from it, are truly
astonishing in a boy not yet eight years old. He is at the same time as
playful as a kitten. To give you some idea of the activity of his mind
I will mention a few circumstances that may interest you and Colin. You
will believe that to him we never appear to regard anything he does as
anything more than a schoolboy's amusement. He took it into his head to
write a compendium of Universal History about a year ago, and he really
contrived to give a tolerably connected view of the leading events from
the Creation to the present time, filling about a quire of paper. He
told me one day that he had been writing a paper, which Henry Daly
was to translate into Malabar, to persuade the people of Travancore to
embrace the Christian religion. On reading it I found it to contain a
very clear idea of the leading facts and doctrines of that religion,
with some strong arguments for its adoption. He was so fired with
reading Scott's Lay and Marmion, the former of which he got entirely,
and the latter almost entirely, by heart, merely from his delight in
reading them, that he determined on writing himself a poem in six cantos
which he called the 'Battle of Cheviot.' After he had finished about
three of the cantos of about 120 lines each, which he did in a couple of
days, he became tired of it. I make no doubt he would have finished his
design, but, as he was proceeding with it, the thought struck him of
writing an heroic poem to be called 'Olaus the Great, or the Conquest
of Mona,' in which, after the manner of Virgil, he might introduce in
prophetic song the future fortunes of the family;--among others, those
of the hero who aided in the fall of the tyrant of Mysore, after having
long suffered from his tyranny; [General Macaulay had been one of Tippoo
Sahib's prisoners] and of another of his race who had exerted himself
for the deliverance of the wretched Africans. He has just begun it. He
has composed I know not how many hymns. I send you one, as a specimen,
in his own handwriting, which he wrote about six months ago on one
Monday morning while we were at breakfast."

The affection of the last generation of his relatives has preserved
all these pieces, but the piety of this generation will refrain from
submitting them to public criticism. A marginal note, in which Macaulay
has expressed his cordial approval of Uncle Toby's [Tristram Shandy,
chapter clxiii.] remark about the great Lipsius, indicates his own
wishes in the matter too clearly to leave any choice for those who come
after him. But there still may be read in a boyish scrawl the epitome of
Universal History, from "a new king who knew not Joseph,"--down through
Rameses, and Dido, and Tydeus, and Tarquin, and Crassus, and Gallienus,
and Edward the Martyr,--to Louis, who "set off on a crusade against the
Albigenses," and Oliver Cromwell, who "was an unjust and wicked man."
The hymns remain, which Mrs. Hannah More, surely a consummate judge of
the article, pronounced to be "quite extraordinary for such a baby."
To a somewhat later period probably belongs a vast pile of blank verse,
entitled "Fingal, a poem in xii books;" two of which are in a complete
and connected shape, while the rest of the story is lost amidst a
labyrinth of many hundred scattered lines, so transcribed as to suggest
a conjecture that the boy's demand for foolscap had outrun the paternal
generosity.

Of all his performances, that which attracted most attention at the time
was undertaken for the purpose of immortalising Olaus Magnus, King of
Norway, from whom the clan to which the bard belonged was supposed
to derive its name. Two cantos are extant, of which there are several
exemplars, in every stage of calligraphy from the largest round hand
downwards, a circumstance which is apparently due to the desire on the
part of each of the little Macaulays to possess a copy of the great
family epic. The opening stanzas, each of which contains more lines than
their author counted years, go swinging along with plenty of animation
and no dearth of historical and geographical allusion.

 Day set on Cumbria's hills supreme,
 And, Menai, on thy silver stream.
 The star of day had reached the West.
 Now in the main it sank to rest.
 Shone great Eleindyn's castle tall:
 Shone every battery, every hall:
 Shone all fair Mona's verdant plain;
 But chiefly shone the foaming main.

And again

 "Long," said the Prince, "shall Olave's name
 Live in the high records of fame.
 Fair Mona now shall trembling stand
 That ne'er before feared mortal hand.
 Mona, that isle where Ceres' flower
 In plenteous autumn's golden hour
 Hides all the fields from man's survey
 As locusts hid old Egypt's day."

The passage containing a prophetic mention of his father and uncle
after the manner of the sixth book of the Aeneid, for the sake of
which, according to Mrs. Macaulay, the poem was originally designed, can
nowhere be discovered. It is possible that in the interval between the
conception and the execution the boy happened to light upon a copy of
the Rolliad. If such was the case, he already had too fine a sense
of humour to have persevered in his original plan after reading that
masterpiece of drollery. It is worthy of note that the voluminous
writings of his childhood, dashed off at headlong speed in the odds
and ends of leisure from school-study and nursery routine, are not only
perfectly correct in spelling and grammar, but display the same lucidity
of meaning, and scrupulous accuracy in punctuation and the other minor
details of the literary art, which characterise his mature works.

Nothing could be more judicious than the treatment that Mr. and Mrs.
Macaulay adopted towards their boy. They never handed his productions
about, or encouraged him to parade his powers of conversation or
memory. They abstained from any word or act which might foster in him
a perception of his own genius with as much care as a wise millionaire
expends on keeping his son ignorant of the fact that he is destined to
be richer than his comrades. "It was scarcely ever," writes one who knew
him well from the very first, "that the consciousness was expressed
by either of his parents of the superiority of their son over other
children. Indeed, with his father I never remember any such expression.
What I most observed myself was his extraordinary command of language.
When he came to describe to his mother any childish play, I took care
to be present, when I could, that I might listen to the way in which he
expressed himself, often scarcely exceeded in his later years. Except
this trifle, I remember him only as a good-tempered boy, always
occupied, playing with his sisters without assumption of any kind." One
effect of this early discipline showed itself in his freedom from vanity
and susceptibility,--those qualities which, coupled together in our
modern psychological dialect under the head of "self-consciousness," are
supposed to be the besetting defects of the literary character. Another
result was his habitual over-estimate of the average knowledge possessed
by mankind. Judging others by himself, he credited the world at large
with an amount of information which certainly few have the ability
to acquire, or the capacity to retain. If his parents had not been
so diligent in concealing from him the difference between his own
intellectual stores and those of his neighbours, it is probable that
less would have been heard of Lord Macaulay's Schoolboy.

The system pursued at home was continued at Barley Wood, the place where
the Misses More resided from 1802 onwards. Mrs. Macaulay gladly sent her
boy to a house where he was encouraged without being spoiled, and where
he never failed to be a welcome guest. The kind old ladies made a real
companion of him, and greatly relished his conversation; while at the
same time, with their ideas on education, they would never have allowed
him, even if he had been so inclined, to forget that he was a child.
Mrs. Hannah More, who had the rare gift of knowing how to live with both
young and old, was the most affectionate and the wisest of friends, and
readily undertook the superintendence of his studies, his pleasures, and
his health. She would keep him with her for weeks, listening to him as
he read prose by the ell, declaimed poetry by the hour, and discussed
and compared his favourite heroes, ancient, modern, and fictitious,
under all points of view and in every possible combination; coaxing him
into the garden under pretence of a lecture on botany; sending him from
his books to run round the grounds, or play at cooking in the kitchen;
giving him Bible lessons which invariably ended in a theological
argument, and following him with her advice and sympathy through his
multifarious literary enterprises. ["The next time," (my uncle once said
to us,) "that I saw Hannah More was in 1807. The old ladies begged my
parents to leave me with them for a week, and this visit was a great
event in my life. In parlour and kitchen they could not make enough of
me. They taught me to cook; and I was to preach, and they got in people
from the fields and I stood on a chair, and preached sermons. I might
have been indicted for holding a conventicle."] She writes to his father
in 1809: "I heartily hope that the sea air has been the means of setting
you up, and Mrs. Macaulay also, and that the dear little poet has caught
his share of bracing.... Tell Tom I desire to know how 'Olaus' goes on.
The sea, I suppose, furnished him with some new images."

The broader and more genial aspect under which life showed itself to the
boy at Barley Wood has left its trace in a series of childish squibs and
parodies, which may still be read with an interest that his Cambrian
and Scandinavian rhapsodies fail to inspire. The most ambitious of
these lighter efforts is a pasquinade occasioned by some local scandal,
entitled "Childe Hugh and the labourer, a pathetic ballad." The "Childe"
of the story was a neighbouring baronet, and the "Abbot" a neighbouring
rector, and the whole performance, intended, as it was, to mimic the
spirit of Percy's Reliques, irresistibly suggests a reminiscence of
John Gilpin. It is pleasant to know that to Mrs. Hannah More was due the
commencement of what eventually became the most readable of libraries,
as is shown in a series of letters extending over the entire period of
Macaulay's education. When he was six years old she writes; "Though you
are a little boy now, you will one day, if it please God, be a man; but
long before you are a man I hope you will be a scholar. I therefore
wish you to purchase such books as will be useful and agreeable to you
_then_, and that you employ this very small sum in laying a little tiny
corner-stone for your future library." A year or two afterwards she
thanks him for his "two letters, so neat and free from blots. By this
obvious improvement you have entitled yourself to another book. You must
go to Hatchard's and choose. I think we have nearly exhausted the Epics.
What say you to a little good prose? Johnson's Hebrides, or Walton's
Lives, unless you would like a neat edition of Cowper's poems or
Paradise Lost for your own eating? In any case choose something which
you do not possess. I want you to become a complete Frenchman, that
I may give you Racine, the only dramatic poet I know in any modern
language that is perfectly pure and good. I think you have hit off the
Ode very well, and I am much obliged to you for the Dedication." The
poor little author was already an adept in the traditional modes of
requiting a patron.

He had another Maecenas in the person of General Macaulay, who came back
from India in 1810. The boy greeted him with a copy of verses, beginning

 "Now safe returned from Asia's parching strand,
  Welcome, thrice welcome to thy native land."

To tell the unvarnished truth, the General's return was not altogether
of a triumphant character. After very narrowly escaping with his life
from an outbreak at Travancore, incited by a native minister who owed
him a grudge, he had given proof of courage and spirit during some
military operations which ended in his being brought back to the
Residency with flying colours. But, when the fighting was over, he
countenanced, and perhaps prompted, measures of retaliation which were
ill taken by his superiors at Calcutta. In his congratulatory effusion
the nephew presumes to remind the uncle that on European soil there
still might be found employment for so redoubtable a sword.

 "For many a battle shall be lost and won
  Ere yet thy glorious labours shall be done."

The General did not take the hint, and spent the remainder of his life
peacefully enough between London, Bath, and the Continental capitals.
He was accustomed to say that his travelling carriage was his only
freehold; and, wherever he fixed his temporary residence, he had
the talent of making himself popular. At Geneva he was a universal
favourite; he always was welcome at Coppet; and he gave the strongest
conceivable proof of a cosmopolitan disposition by finding himself
equally at home at Rome and at Clapham. When in England he lived much
with his relations, to whom he was sincerely attached. He was generous
in a high degree, and the young people owed to him books which they
otherwise could never have obtained, and treats and excursions which
formed the only recreations that broke the uniform current of their
lives. They regarded their uncle Colin as the man of the world of the
Macaulay family.

Zachary Macaulay's circumstances during these years were good, and
constantly improving. For some time he held the post of Secretary to the
Sierra Leone Company, with a salary of L500 per annum. He subsequently
entered into partnership with a nephew, and the firm did a large
business as African merchants under the names of Macaulay and Babington.
The position of the father was favourable to the highest interests of
his children. A boy has the best chance of being well brought up in
a household where there is solid comfort, combined with thrift and
simplicity; and the family was increasing too fast to leave any margin
for luxurious expenditure. Before the eldest son had completed his
thirteenth year he had three brothers and five sisters.

[It was in the course of his thirteenth year that the boy wrote his
"Epitaph on Henry Martyn."

 Here Martyn lies. In manhood's early bloom
 The Christian hero finds a Pagan tomb.
 Religion, sorrowing o'er her favourite son,
 Points to the glorious trophies that he won.
 Eternal trophies! not with carnage red,
 Not stained with tears by hapless captives shed,
 But trophies of the Cross. For that dear name,
 Through every form of danger, death, and shame,
 Onward he journeyed to a happier shore,
 Where danger, death and shame assault no more."]

In the course of 1812 it began to be evident that Tom had got beyond
the educational capabilities of Clapham; and his father seriously
contemplated the notion of removing to London in order to place him as a
day-scholar at Westminster. Thorough as was the consideration which the
parents gave to the matter, their decision was of more importance
than they could at the time foresee. If their son had gone to a public
school, it is more than probable that he would have turned out a
different man, and have done different work. So sensitive and homeloving
a boy might for a while have been too depressed to enter fully unto
the ways of the place; but, as he gained confidence, he could not have
withstood the irresistible attractions which the life of a great school
exercises over a vivid eager nature, and he would have sacrificed to
passing pleasures and emulations a part, at any rate, of those years
which, in order to be what he was, it was necessary that he should spend
wholly among his books. Westminster or Harrow might have sharpened his
faculties for dealing with affairs and with men; but the world at large
would have lost more than he could by any possibility have gained. If
Macaulay had received the usual education of a young Englishman, he
might in all probability have kept his seat for Edinburgh; but he
could hardly have written the Essay on Von Ranke, or the description of
England in the third chapter of the History.

Mr. Macaulay ultimately fixed upon a private school, kept by the Rev.
Mr. Preston, at Little Shelford, a village in the immediate vicinity
of Cambridge. The motives which guided this selection were mainly of
a religious nature. Mr. Preston held extreme Low Church opinions, and
stood in the good books of Mr. Simeon, whose word had long been law in
the Cambridge section of the Evangelical circle. But whatever had been
the inducement to make it, the choice proved singularly fortunate. The
tutor, it is true, was narrow in his views, and lacked the taste and
judgment to set those views before his pupils in an attractive form.
Theological topics dragged into the conversation at unexpected moments,
inquiries about their spiritual state, and long sermons which had to be
listened to under the dire obligation of reproducing them in an epitome,
fostered in the minds of some of the boys a reaction against the outward
manifestations of religion;--a reaction which had already begun under
the strict system pursued in their respective homes. But, on the other
hand, Mr. Preston knew both how to teach his scholars, and when to leave
them to teach themselves. The eminent judge, who divided grown men into
two sharply defined and most uncomplimentary categories, was accustomed
to say that private schools made poor creatures, and public schools sad
dogs; but Mr. Preston succeeded in giving a practical contradiction
to Sir William Maine's proposition. His pupils, who were limited to an
average of a dozen at a time, got far beyond their share of honours at
the university and of distinction in after life. George Stainforth,
a grandson of Sir Francis Baring, by his success at Cambridge was
the first to win the school an honourable name, which was more than
sustained by Henry Malden, now Greek Professor at University College,
London, and by Macaulay himself. Shelford was strongly under the
influence of the neighbouring university; an influence which Mr.
Preston, himself a fellow of Trinity, wisely encouraged. The boys were
penetrated with Cambridge ambitions and ways of thought; and frequent
visitors brought to the table, where master and pupils dined in common,
the freshest Cambridge gossip of the graver sort.

Little Macaulay received much kindness from Dean Milner, the President
of Queen's College, then at the very summit of a celebrity which is
already of the past. Those who care to search among the embers of that
once brilliant reputation can form a fair notion of what Samuel Johnson
would have been if he had lived a generation later, and had been
absolved from the necessity of earning his bread by the enjoyment of
ecclesiastical sinecures, and from any uneasiness as to his worldly
standing by the possession of academical dignities and functions. The
Dean who had boundless goodwill for all his fellow-creatures at every
period of life, provided that they were not Jacobins or sceptics,
recognised the promise of the boy, and entertained him at his college
residence on terms of friendliness, and almost of equality. After one of
these visits he writes to Mr. Macaulay; "Your lad is a fine fellow. He
shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men."

Shelford: February 22, 1813.

My dear Papa,--As this is a whole holiday, I cannot find a better time
for answering your letter. With respect to my health, I am very well,
and tolerably cheerful, as Blundell, the best and most clever of all the
scholars, is very kind, and talks to me, and takes my part. He is quite
a friend of Mr. Preston's. The other boys, especially Lyon, a Scotch
boy, and Wilberforce, are very good-natured, and we might have gone on
very well had not one, a Bristol fellow, come here. He is unanimously
alloyed to be a queer fellow, and is generally characterised as a
foolish boy, and by most of us as an ill-natured one. In my learning
I do Xenophon every day, and twice a week the Odyssey, in which I am
classed with Wilberforce, whom all the boys allow to be very clever,
very droll, and very impudent. We do Latin verses trice a week, and I
have not yet been laughed at, as Wilberforce is the only one who hears
them, being in my class. We are exercised also once a week in English
composition, and once in Latin composition, and letters of persons
renowned in history to each other. We get by heart Greek grammar or
Virgil every evening. As for sermon-writing, I have hitherto got off
with credit, and I hope I shall keep up my reputation. We have had the
first meeting of our debating society the other day, when a vote of
censure was moved for upon Wilberforce, but he getting up said, "Mr.
President, I beg to second the motion." By this means he escaped. The
kindness which Mr. Preston shows me is very great. He always assists
me in what I cannot do, and takes me to walk out with him every now
and then. My room is a delightful snug little chamber, which nobody can
enter, as there is a trick about opening the door. I sit like a king,
with my writing-desk before me; for, (would you believe it?) there is
a writing-desk in my chest of drawers; my books on one side, my box of
papers on the other, with my arm-chair and my candle; for every boy has
a candlestick, snuffers, and extinguisher of his own. Being pressed for
room, I will conclude what I have to say to-morrow, and ever remain,

Your affectionate son,

THOMAS B. MACAULAY.

The youth who on this occasion gave proof of his parentage by his
readiness and humour was Wilberforce's eldest son. A fortnight later
on, the subject chosen for discussion was "whether Lord Wellington or
Marlborough was the greatest general. A very warm debate is expected."

Shelford: April 20, 1813.

My dear Mama,--Pursuant to my promise I resume my pen to write to you
with the greatest pleasure. Since I wrote to you yesterday, I have
enjoyed myself more than I have ever done since I came to Shelford. Mr.
Hodson called about twelve o'clock yesterday morning with a pony for me,
and took me with him to Cambridge. How surprised and delighted was I
to learn that I was to take a bed at Queen's College in Dean Milner's
apartments! Wilberforce arrived soon after, and I spent the day very
agreeably, the Dean amusing me with the greatest kindness. I slept
there, and came home on horseback to-day just in time for dinner.
The Dean has invited me to come again, and Mr. Preston has given his
consent. The books which I am at present employed in reading to myself
are, in English, Plutarch's Lives, and Milner's Ecclesiastical History;
in French, Fenelon's Dialogues of the Dead. I shall send you back the
volumes of Madame de Genlis's petits romans as soon as possible, and I
should be very much obliged for one or two more of them. Everything now
seems to feel the influence of spring. The trees are all out. The lilacs
are in bloom. The days are long, and I feel that I should be happy
were it not that I want home. Even yesterday, when I felt more real
satisfaction than I have done for almost three months, I could not help
feeling a sort of uneasiness, which indeed I have always felt more or
less since I have been here, and which is the only thing that hinders me
from being perfectly happy. This day two months will put a period to my
uneasiness.

"Fly fast the hours, and dawn th' expected morn."

Every night when I lie down I reflect that another day is cut off from
the tiresome time of absence.

Your affectionate son,

THOMAS B. MACAULAY.

Shelford: April 26 1813.

My dear Papa,--Since I have given you a detail of weekly duties, I hope
you will be pleased to be informed of my Sunday's occupations. It is
quite a day of rest here, and I really look to it with pleasure through
the whole of the week. After breakfast we learn a chapter in the Greek
Testament that is with the aid of our Bibles, and without doing it with
a dictionary like other lessons. We then go to church. We dine almost
as soon as we come back, and we are left to ourselves till afternoon
church. During this time I employ myself in reading, and Mr. Preston
lends me any books for which I ask him, so that I am nearly as well
off in this respect as at home, except for one thing, which, though I
believe it is useful, is not very pleasant. I can only ask for one book
at a time, and cannot touch another till I have read it through. We then
go to church, and after we come hack I read as before till tea-time.
After tea we write out the sermon. I cannot help thinking that Mr.
Preston uses all imaginable means to make us forget it, for he gives us
a glass of wine each on Sunday, and on Sunday only, the very day when we
want to have all our faculties awake; and some do literally go to sleep
during the sermon, and look rather silly when they wake. I, however,
have not fallen into this disaster.

Your affectionate son,

THOMAS B. MACAULAY.

The constant allusions to home politics and to the progress of the
Continental struggle, which occur throughout Zachary Macaulay's
correspondence with his son, prove how freely, and on what an equal
footing, the parent and child already conversed on questions of public
interest. The following letter is curious as a specimen of the eagerness
with which the boy habitually flung himself into the subjects which
occupied his father's thoughts. The renewal of the East India Company's
charter was just then under the consideration of Parliament, and
the whole energies of the Evangelical party were exerted in order to
signalise the occasion by securing our Eastern dominions as a field for
the spread of Christianity. Petitions against the continued exclusion
of missionaries were in course of circulation throughout the island, the
drafts of which had been prepared by Mr. Macaulay.

Shelford: May 8, 1813.

My dear Papa,--As on Monday it will be out of my power to write, since
the examination subjects are to be given out I write to-day instead to
answer your kind and long letter.

I am very much pleased that the nation seems to take such interest in
the introduction of Christianity into India. My Scotch blood begins
to boil at the mention of the 1,750 names that went up from a single
country parish. Ask Mama and Selina if they do not now admit my argument
with regard to the superior advantages of the Scotch over the English
peasantry.

As to my examination preparations, I will if you please give you a
sketch of my plan. On Monday, the day on which the examination subjects
are given out, I shall begin. My first performance will be my verses and
my declamation. I shall then translate the Greek and Latin. The first
time of going over I shall mark the passages which puzzle me, and then
return to them again. But I shall have also to rub up my Mathematics,
(by the bye, I begin the second book of Euclid to-day,) and to study
whatever History may be appointed for the examination. I shall not be
able to avoid trembling, whether I know my subjects or not. I am however
intimidated at nothing but Greek. Mathematics suit my taste, although,
before I came, I declaimed against them, and asserted that, when I went
to College, it should not be to Cambridge. I am occupied with the hope
of lecturing Mama and Selina upon Mathematics, as I used to do upon
Heraldry, and to change Or, and Argent, and Azure, and Gules, for
squares, and points, and circles, and angles, and triangles, and
rectangles, and rhomboids, and in a word "all the pomp and circumstance"
of Euclid. When I come home I shall, if my purse is sufficient, bring a
couple of rabbits for Selina and Jane.

Your affectionate son,

THOMAS B. MACAULAY.

It will be seen that this passing fondness for mathematics soon changed
into bitter disgust.

Clapham May 28, 1813.

My dear Tom,--I am very happy to hear that you have so far advanced in
your different prize exercises, and with such little fatigue. I know you
write with great ease to yourself, and would rather write ten poems than
prune one; but remember that excellence is not attained at first. All
your pieces are much mended after a little reflection, and therefore
take some solitary walks, and think over each separate thing. Spare no
time or trouble to render each piece as perfect as you can, and then
leave the event without one anxious thought. I have always admired
a saying of one of the old heathen philosophers. When a friend was
condoling with him that he so well deserved of the gods, and yet that
they did not shower their favours on him, as on some others less worthy,
he answered, "I will, however, continue to deserve well of them." So do
you, my dearest. Do your best because it is the will of God you should
improve every faculty to the utmost now, and strengthen the powers of
your mind by exercise, and then in future you will be better enabled to
glorify God with all your powers and talents, be they of a more humble,
or higher order, and you shall not fail to be received into everlasting
habitations, with the applauding voice of your Saviour, "Well done, good
and faithful servant." You see how ambitious your mother is. She must
have the wisdom of her son acknowledged before Angels, and an assembled
world. My wishes can soar no higher, and they can be content with
nothing less for any of my children. The first time I saw your face, I
repeated those beautiful lines of Watts' cradle hymn,

 Mayst thou live to know and fear Him,
 Trust and love Him all thy days
 Then go dwell for ever near Him,
 See His face, and sing His praise.

and this is the substance of all my prayers for you. In less than a
month you and I shall, I trust, be rambling over the Common, which now
looks quite beautiful.

I am ever, my dear Tom,

Your affectionate mother,

SELINA MACAULAY.

The commencement of the second half-year at school, perhaps the darkest
season of a boy's existence, was marked by an unusually severe and
prolonged attack of home-sickness. It would be cruel to insert the first
letter written after the return to Shelford from the summer holidays.
That which follows it is melancholy enough.

Shelford: August 14. 1813.

My dear Mama,--I must confess that I have been a little disappointed
at not receiving a letter from home to-day. I hope, however, for one
to-morrow. My spirits are far more depressed by leaving home than
they were last half-year. Everything brings home to my recollection.
Everything I read, or see, or hear, brings it to my mind. You told me I
should be happy when I once came here, but not an hour passes in which
I do not shed tears at thinking of home. Every hope, however unlikely to
be realised, affords me some small consolation. The morning on which I
went, you told me that possibly I might come home before the holidays.
If you can confirm this hope, believe me when I assure you that there is
nothing which I would not give for one instant's sight of home. Tell
me in your next, expressly, if you can, whether or no there is any
likelihood of my coming home before the holidays. If I could gain Papa's
leave, I should select my birthday on October 25 as the time which I
should wish to spend at that home which absence renders still dearer to
me. I think I see you sitting by Papa just after his dinner, reading my
letter, and turning to him, with an inquisitive glance, at the end of
the paragraph. I think too that I see his expressive shake of the head
at it. O, may I be mistaken! You cannot conceive what an alteration a
favourable answer would produce in me. If your approbation of my request
depends upon my advancing in study, I will work like a cart-horse. If
you should refuse it, you will deprive me of the most pleasing illusion
which I ever experienced in my life. Pray do not fail to write speedily.

Your dutiful and affectionate son,

T. B. MACAULAY.

His father answered him in a letter of strong religious complexion,
full of feeling, and even of beauty, but too long for reproduction in a
biography that is not his own.

Mr. Macaulay's deep anxiety for his son's welfare sometimes induced him
to lend too ready an ear to busybodies, who informed him of failings
in the boy which would have been treated more lightly, and perhaps more
wisely, by a less devoted father. In the early months of 1814 he writes
as follows, after hearing the tale of some guest of Mr. Preston whom
Tom had no doubt contradicted at table in presence of the assembled
household.

London: March 4, 1814.

My dear Tom,--In taking up my pen this morning a passage in Cowper
almost involuntarily occurred to me. You will find it at length in his
"Conversation."

 "Ye powers who rule the Tongue, if such there are,
  And make colloquial happiness your care,
  Preserve me from the thing I dread and hate,
  A duel in the form of a debate.
  Vociferated logic kills me quite.
  A noisy man is always in the right."

You know how much such a quotation as this would fall in with my
notions, averse as I am to loud and noisy tones, and self-confident,
overwhelming, and yet perhaps very unsound arguments. And you will
remember how anxiously I dwelt upon this point while you were at home.
I have been in hopes that this half-year would witness a great change
in you in this respect. My hopes, however, have been a little damped by
something which I heard last week through a friend, who seemed to have
received an impression that you had gained a high distinction among the
young gentlemen at Shelford by the loudness and vehemence of your tones.
Now, my dear Tom, you cannot doubt that this gives me pain; and it does
so not so much on account of the thing itself, as because I consider
it a pretty infallible test of the mind within. I do long and pray
most earnestly that the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit may be
substituted for vehemence and self-confidence, and that you may be as
much distinguished for the former as ever you have been for the latter.
It is a school in which I am not ambitious that any child of mine should
take a high degree.

If the people of Shelford be as bad as you represent them in your
letters, what are they but an epitome of the world at large? Are they
ungrateful to you for your kindnesses? Are they foolish, and wicked,
and wayward in the use of their faculties? What is all this but what
we ourselves are guilty of every day? Consider how much in our case the
guilt of such conduct is aggravated by our superior knowledge. We shall
not have ignorance to plead in its extenuation, as many of the people of
Shelford may have. Now, instead of railing at the people of Shelford, I
think the best thing which you and your schoolfellows could do would be
to try to reform them. You can buy and distribute useful and striking
tracts, as well as Testaments, among such as can read. The cheap
Repository and Religious Tract Society will furnish tracts suited to all
descriptions of persons; and for those who cannot read--why should you
not institute a Sunday school to be taught by yourselves, and in which
appropriate rewards being given for good behaviour, not only at school
but through the week, great effects of a moral kind might soon be
produced? I have exhausted my paper, and must answer the rest of your
letter in a few days. In the meantime,

I am ever your most affectionate father,

ZACHARY MACAULAY.

A father's prayers are seldom fulfilled to the letter. Many years were
to elapse before the son ceased to talk loudly and with confidence; and
the literature that he was destined to distribute through the world was
of another order from that which Mr. Macaulay here suggests. The answer,
which is addressed to the mother, affords a proof that the boy could
already hold his own. The allusions to the Christian Observer, of which
his father was editor, and to Dr. Herbert Marsh, with whom the ablest
pens of Clapham were at that moment engaged in hot and embittered
controversy, are thrown in with an artist's hand.

Shelford: April 11. 1814.

My dear Mama,--The news is glorious indeed. Peace! Peace with a Bourbon,
with a descendant of Henri Quatre, with a prince who is bound to us by
all the ties of gratitude. I have some hopes that it will be a lasting
peace; that the troubles of the last twenty years may make kings and
nations wiser. I cannot conceive a greater punishment to Buonaparte than
that which the allies have inflicted on him. How can his ambitious mind
support it? All his great projects and schemes, which once made every
throne in Europe tremble, are buried in the solitude of an Italian isle.
How miraculously everything has been conducted! We almost seem to hear
the Almighty saying to the fallen tyrant, "For this cause have I raised
thee up, that I might show in thee My power."

As I am in very great haste with this letter, I shall have but little
time to write. I am sorry to hear that some nameless friend of Papa's
denounced my voice as remarkably loud. I have accordingly resolved to
speak in a moderate key except on the undermentioned special occasions.
Imprimis, when I am speaking at the same time with three others.
Secondly, when I am praising the Christian Observer. Thirdly, when I
am praising Mr. Preston or his sisters I may be allowed to speak in my
loudest voice, that they may hear me.

I saw to-day that greatest of churchmen, that pillar of Orthodoxy,
that true friend to the Liturgy, that mortal enemy to the Bible
Society,--Herbert Marsh, D.D., Professor of Divinity on Lady Margaret's
foundation. I stood looking at him for about ten minutes, and shall
always continue to maintain that he is a very ill-favoured gentleman as
far as outward appearance is concerned. I am going this week to spend
a day or two at Dean Milner's, where I hope, nothing unforeseen
preventing, to see you in about two months' time.

Ever your affectionate son,

T.B. MACAULAY.

In the course of the year 1814 Mr. Preston removed his establishment to
Aspenden Hall near Buntingford, in Hertfordshire; a large old-fashioned
mansion, standing amidst extensive shrubberies, and a pleasant
undulating domain sprinkled with fine timber. The house has been rebuilt
within the last twenty years, and nothing remains of it except the dark
oak panelling of the hall in which the scholars made their recitations
on the annual speech day. The very pretty church, which stands hard by
within the grounds, was undergoing restoration in 1873 and by this time
the only existing portion of the former internal fittings is the family
pew, in which the boys sat on drowsy summer afternoons, doing what they
could to keep their impressions of the second sermon distinct from their
reminiscences of the morning. Here Macaulay spent four most industrious
years, doing less and less in the class-room as time went on, but
enjoying the rare advantage of studying Greek and Latin by the side of
such a scholar as Malden. The two companions were equally matched in age
and classical attainments, and at the university maintained a rivalry so
generous as hardly to deserve the name. Each of the pupils had his own
chamber, which the others were forbidden to enter under the penalty of
a shilling fine. This prohibition was in general not very strictly
observed; but the tutor had taken the precaution of placing Macaulay
in a room next his own;--a proximity which rendered the position of an
intruder so exceptionally dangerous that even Malden could not remember
having once passed his friend's threshold during the whole of their stay
at Aspenden.

In this seclusion, removed from the delight of family intercourse, (the
only attraction strong enough to draw him from his books,) the boy
read widely, unceasingly, more than rapidly. The secret of his immense
acquirements lay in two invaluable gifts of nature,--an unerring memory,
and the capacity for taking in at a glance the contents of a printed
page. During the first part of his life he remembered whatever caught
his fancy without going through the process of consciously getting it
by heart. As a child, during one of the numerous seasons when the social
duties devolved upon Mr. Macaulay, he accompanied his father on an
afternoon call, and found on a table the Lay of the Last Minstrel, which
he had never before met with. He kept himself quiet with his prize while
the elders were talking, and, on his return home, sat down upon his
mother's bed, and repeated to her as many cantos as she had the patience
or the strength to listen to. At one period of his life he was known to
say that, if by some miracle of Vandalism all copies of Paradise Lost
and the Pilgrim's Progress were destroyed off the face of the earth,
he would undertake to reproduce them both from recollection whenever
a revival of learning came. In 1813, while waiting in a Cambridge
coffee-room for a postchaise which was to take him to his school, he
picked up a county newspaper containing two such specimens of provincial
poetical talent as in those days might be read in the corner of any
weekly journal. One piece was headed "Reflections of an Exile;" while
the other was a trumpery parody on the Welsh ballad "Ar hyd y nos,"
referring to some local anecdote of an ostler whose nose had been bitten
off by a filly. He looked them once through, and never gave them a
thought for forty years, at the end of which time he repeated them both
without missing,--or, as far as he knew, changing,--a single word.

[Sir William Stirling Maxwell says, in a letter with which he has
honoured me: "Of his extraordinary memory I remember Lord Jeffrey
telling me an instance. They had had a difference about a quotation from
Paradise Lost, and made a wager about it; the wager being a copy of the
hook, which, on reference to the passage, it was found Jeffrey had won.
The bet was made just before, and paid immediately after, the Easter
vacation. On putting the volume into Jeffrey's hand, your uncle said,
'I don't think you will find me tripping again. I knew it, I thought,
pretty well before; but I am sure I know it now.' Jeffrey proceeded to
examine him, putting him on at a variety of the heaviest passages--the
battle of the angels--the dialogues of Adam and the archangels,--and
found him ready to declaim them all, till he begged him to stop. He
asked him how he had acquired such a command of the poem, and had for
answer: 'I had him in the country, and I read it twice over, and I
don't think that I shall ever forget it again.' At the same time he told
Jeffrey that he believed he could repeat everything of his own he had
ever printed, and nearly all he had ever written, 'except, perhaps, some
of my college exercises.'

"I myself had an opportunity of seeing and hearing a remarkable proof of
your uncle's hold upon the most insignificant verbiage that chance had
poured into his ear. I was staying with him at Bowood, in the winter
of 1852. Lord Elphinstone--who had been many years before Governor of
Madras,--was telling one morning at breakfast of a certain native barber
there, who was famous, in his time, for English doggrel of his own
making, with which he was wont to regale his customers. 'Of course,'
said Lord Elphinstone, 'I don't remember any of it; but was very funny,
and used to be repeated in society.' Macaulay, who was sitting a good
way off, immediately said: 'I remember being shaved by the fellow, and
he recited a quantity of verse to me during the operation, and here
is some of it;' and then he went off in a very queer doggrel about the
exploits of Bonaparte, of which I recollect the recurring refrain--

 But when he saw the British boys,
 He up and ran away.

It is hardly conceivable that he had ever had occasion to recall that
poem since the day when he escaped from under the poet's razor.]

As he grew older, this wonderful power became impaired so far that
getting by rote the compositions of others was no longer an involuntary
process. He has noted in his Lucan the several occasions on which he
committed to memory his favourite passages of an author whom he regarded
as unrivalled among rhetoricians; and the dates refer to 1836, when he
had just turned the middle point of life. During his last years, at his
dressing-table in the morning, he would learn by heart one or another
of the little idylls in which Martial expatiates on the enjoyments of a
Spanish country-house, or a villa-farm in the environs of Rome;--those
delicious morsels of verse which, (considering the sense that modern
ideas attach to the name,) it is an injustice to class under the head of
epigrams.

Macaulay's extraordinary faculty of assimilating printed matter at first
sight remained the same through life. To the end he read books more
quickly than other people skimmed them, and skimmed them as fast as
anyone else could turn the leaves. "He seemed to read through the skin,"
said one who had often watched the operation. And this speed was not in
his case obtained at the expense of accuracy. Anything which had once
appeared in type, from the highest effort of genius down to the most
detestable trash that ever consumed ink and paper manufactured for
better things, had in his eyes an authority which led him to look upon
misquotation as a species of minor sacrilege.

With these endowments, sharpened by an insatiable curiosity, from his
fourteenth year onward he was permitted to roam almost at will over
the whole expanse of literature. He composed little beyond his school
exercises, which themselves bear signs of having been written in a
perfunctory manner. At this period he had evidently no heart in anything
but his reading. Before leaving Shelford for Aspenden he had already
invoked the epic muse for the last time.

 "Arms and the man I sing, who strove in vain
  To save green Erin from a foreign reign."

The man was Roderic, king of Connaught, whom he got tired of singing
before he had well completed two books of the poem. Thenceforward he
appears never to have struck his lyre, except in the first enthusiasm
aroused by the intelligence of some favourable turn of fortune on
the Continent. The flight of Napoleon from Russia was celebrated in a
"Pindaric Ode" duly distributed into strophes and antistrophes;
and, when the allies entered Paris, the school put his services into
requisition to petition for a holiday in honour of the event. He
addressed his tutor in a short poem, which begins with a few sonorous
and effective couplets, grows more and more like the parody on
Fitzgerald in "Rejected Addresses," and ends in a peroration of which
the intention is unquestionably mock-heroic:

 "Oh, by the glorious posture of affairs,
  By the enormous price that Omnium hears,
  By princely Bourbon's late recovered Crown,
  And by Miss Fanny's safe return from town,
  Oh, do not thou, and thou alone, refuse
  To show thy pleasure at this glorious news!"

Touched by the mention of his sister, Mr. Preston yielded and young
Macaulay never turned another verse except at the bidding of his
schoolmaster, until, on the eve of his departure for Cambridge, he
wrote between three and four hundred lines of a drama, entitled "Don
Fernando," marked by force and fertility of diction, but somewhat too
artificial to be worthy of publication under a name such as his. Much
about the same time he communicated to Malden the commencement of a
burlesque poem on the story of Anthony Babington; who, by the part that
he took in the plots against the life of Queen Elizabeth, had given the
family a connection with English history which, however questionable,
was in Macaulay's view better than none.

 "Each, says the proverb, has his taste. 'Tis true.
  Marsh loves a controversy; Coates a play;
  Bennet a felon; Lewis Way a Jew;
  The Jew the silver spoons of Lewis Way.
  The Gipsy Poetry, to own the truth,
  Has been my love through childhood and in youth."

It is perhaps as well that the project to all appearance stopped with
the first stanza, which in its turn was probably written for the sake of
a single line. The young man had a better use for his time than to spend
it in producing frigid imitations of Beppo.

He was not unpopular among his fellow-pupils, who regarded him with
pride and admiration, tempered by the compassion which his utter
inability to play at any sort of game would have excited in every
school, private or public alike. He troubled himself very little about
the opinion of those by whom he was surrounded at Aspenden. It required
the crowd and the stir of a university to call forth the social
qualities which he possessed in so large a measure. The tone of his
correspondence during these years sufficiently indicates that he lived
almost exclusively among books. His letters, which had hitherto been
very natural and pretty, began to smack of the library, and please less
than those written in early boyhood. His pen was overcharged with the
metaphors and phrases of other men; and it was not till maturing powers
had enabled him to master and arrange the vast masses of literature
which filled his memory that his native force could display itself
freely through the medium of a style which was all his own. In 1815 he
began a formal literary correspondence, after the taste of the previous
century, with Mr. Hudson, a gentleman in the Examiner's Office of the
East India House.

Aspenden Hall: August 22, 1815.

Dear Sir,--The Spectator observes, I believe in his first paper, that
we can never read an author with much zest unless we are acquainted with
his situation. I feel the same in my epistolary correspondence; and,
supposing that in this respect we may be alike, I will just tell you
my condition. Imagine a house in the middle of pretty large grounds,
surrounded by palings. These I never pass. You may therefore suppose
that I resemble the Hermit of Parnell.

 "As yet by books and swains the world he knew,
  Nor knew if books and swains report it true."

If you substitute newspapers and visitors for books and swains, you may
form an idea of what I know of the present state of things. Write to
me as one who is ignorant of every event except political occurrences.
These I learn regularly; but if Lord Byron were to publish melodies or
romances, or Scott metrical tales without number, I should never see
them, or perhaps hear of them, till Christmas. Retirement of this kind,
though it precludes me from studying the works of the hour, is very
favourable for the employment of "holding high converse with the mighty
dead."

I know not whether "peeping at the world through the loopholes of
retreat" be the best way of forming us for engaging in its busy and
active scenes. I am sure it is not a way to my taste. Poets may talk
of the beauties of nature, the enjoyments of a country life, and rural
innocence; but there is another kind of life which, though unsung
by bards, is yet to me infinitely superior to the dull uniformity of
country life. London is the place for me. Its smoky atmosphere, and its
muddy river, charm me more than the pure air of Hertfordshire, and the
crystal currents of the river Rib. Nothing is equal to the splendid
varieties of London life, "the fine flow of London talk," and the
dazzling brilliancy of London spectacles. Such are my sentiments, and,
if ever I publish poetry, it shall not be pastoral. Nature is the last
goddess to whom my devoirs shall be paid.

Yours most faithfully,

THOMAS B. MACAULAY.

This votary of city life was still two months short of completing his
fifteenth year!

Aspenden Hall: August 23, 1815.

My dear Mama,--You perceive already in so large a sheet, and so small a
hand, the promise of a long, a very long letter, longer, as I intend
it, than all the letters which you send in a half-year together. I have
again begun my life of sterile monotony, unvarying labour, the dull
return of dull exercises in dull uniformity of tediousness. But do not
think that I complain.

 My mind to me a kingdom is,
 Such perfect joy therein I find
 As doth exceed all other bliss
 That God or nature hath assigned.

Assure yourself that I am philosopher enough to be happy,--I meant to
say not particularly unhappy,--in solitude; but man is an animal made
for society. I was gifted with reason, not to speculate in Aspenden
Park, but to interchange ideas with some person who can understand me.
This is what I miss at Aspenden. There are several here who possess both
taste and reading; who can criticise Lord Byron and Southey with much
tact and "savoir du metier." But here it is not the fashion to think.
Hear what I have read since I came here. Hear and wonder! I have in the
first place read Boccacio's Decameron, a tale of a hundred cantos. He is
a wonderful writer. Whether he tells in humorous or familiar strains the
follies of the silly Calandrino, or the witty pranks of Buffalmacco and
Bruno, or sings in loftier numbers

 Dames, knights, and arms, and love, the feats that spring
 From courteous minds and generous faith,

or lashes with a noble severity and fearless independence the vices of
the monks and the priestcraft of the established religion, he is always
elegant, amusing, and, what pleases and surprises most in a writer of
so unpolished an age, strikingly delicate and chastised. I prefer him
infinitely to Chaucer. If you wish for a good specimen of Boccacio, as
soon as you have finished my letter, (which will come, I suppose, by
dinner-time,) send Jane up to the library for Dryden's poems, and you
will find among them several translations from Boccacio, particularly
one entitled "Theodore and Honoria."

But, truly admirable as the bard of Florence is, I must not permit
myself to give him more than his due share of my letter. I have likewise
read Gil Blas, with unbounded admiration of the abilities of Le Sage.
Malden and I have read Thalaba together, and are proceeding to the Curse
of Kehama. Do not think, however, that I am neglecting more important
studies than either Southey or Boccacio. I have read the greater part of
the History of James I. and Mrs. Montague's essay on Shakspeare, and
a great deal of Gibbon. I never devoured so many books in a fortnight.
John Smith, Bob Hankinson, and I, went over the Hebrew Melodies
together. I certainly think far better of them than we used to do at
Clapham. Papa may laugh, and indeed he did laugh me out of my taste at
Clapham; but I think that there is a great deal of beauty in the first
melody, "She walks in beauty," though indeed who it is that walks in
beauty is not very exactly defined. My next letter shall contain a
production of my muse, entitled "An Inscription for the Column of
Waterloo," which is to be shown to Mr. Preston to-morrow. What he may
think of it I do not know. But I am like my favourite Cicero about my
own productions. It is all one to me what others think of them. I never
like them a bit less for being disliked by the rest of mankind. Mr.
Preston has desired me to bring him up this evening two or three
subjects for a Declamation. Those which I have selected are as follows:
1st, a speech in the character of Lord Coningsby, impeaching the Earl of
Oxford; 2nd, an essay on the utility of standing armies; 3rd, an essay
on the policy of Great Britain with regard to continental possessions.
I conclude with sending my love to Papa, Selina, Jane, John, ("but he
is not there," as Fingal pathetically says, when in enumerating his sons
who should accompany him to the chase he inadvertently mentions the dead
Ryno,) Henry, Fanny, Hannah, Margaret, and Charles. Valete.

T.B. MACAULAY.

This exhaustive enumeration of his brothers and sisters invites
attention to that home where he reigned supreme. Lady Trevelyan thus
describes their life at Clapham: "I think that my father's strictness
was a good counterpoise to the perfect worship of your uncle by the rest
of the family. To us he was an object of passionate love and devotion.
To us he could do no wrong. His unruffled sweetness of temper, his
unfailing flow of spirits, his amusing talk, all made his presence
so delightful that his wishes and his tastes were our law. He hated
strangers; and his notion of perfect happiness was to see us all working
round him while he read aloud a novel, and then to walk all together
on the Common, or, if it rained, to have a frightfully noisy game of
hide-and-seek. I have often wondered how our mother could ever have
endured our noise in her little house. My earliest recollections speak
of the intense happiness of the holidays, beginning with finding him in
Papa's room in the morning; the awe at the idea of his having reached
home in the dark after we were in bed, and the Saturnalia which at once
set in;--no lessons; nothing but fun and merriment for the whole six
weeks. In the year 1816 we were at Brighton for the summer holidays, and
he read to us Sir Charles Grandison. It was always a habit in our family
to read aloud every evening. Among the books selected I can recall
Clarendon, Burnet, Shakspeare, (a great treat when my mother took the
volume,) Miss Edgeworth, Mackenzie's Lounger and Mirror, and, as a
standing dish, the Quarterly and the Edinburgh Reviews. Poets too,
especially Scott and Crabbe, were constantly chosen. Poetry and novels,
except during Tom's holidays, were forbidden in the daytime, and
stigmatised as 'drinking drams in the morning.'"

Morning or evening, Mr. Macaulay disapproved of novel-reading; but, too
indulgent to insist on having his own way in any but essential matters,
he lived to see himself the head of a family in which novels were
more read, and better remembered, than in any household of the United
Kingdom. The first warning of the troubles that were in store for him
was an anonymous letter addressed to him as editor of the Christian
Observer, defending works of fiction, and eulogising Fielding and
Smollett. This he incautiously inserted in his periodical, and brought
down upon himself the most violent objurgations from scandalised
contributors, one of whom informed the public that he had committed the
obnoxious number to the flames, and should thenceforward cease to take
in the Magazine. The editor replied with becoming spirit; although by
that time he was aware that the communication, the insertion of which in
an unguarded moment had betrayed him into a controversy for which he had
so little heart, had proceeded from the pen of his son. Such was young
Macaulay's first appearance in print, if we except the index to the
thirteenth volume of the Christian Observer, which he drew up during his
Christmas holidays of 1814. The place where he performed his earliest
literary work can be identified with tolerable certainty. He enjoyed the
eldest son's privilege of a separate bedchamber; and there, at the front
window on the top story, furthest from the Common and nearest to London,
we can fancy him sitting, apart from the crowded play-room, keeping
himself warm as best he might, and travelling steadily through the
blameless pages the contents of which it was his task to classify for
the convenience of posterity.

Lord Macaulay used to remark that Thackeray introduced too much of the
Dissenting element into his picture of Clapham in the opening chapters
of "The Newcomes." The leading people of the place,--with the exception
of Mr. William Smith, the Unitarian member of Parliament,--were one and
all staunch Churchmen; though they readily worked in concert with those
religious communities which held in the main the same views, and pursued
the same objects, as themselves. Old John Thornton, the earliest of the
Evangelical magnates, when he went on his annual tour to the South
Coast or the Scotch mountains, would take with him some Independent or
Wesleyan minister who was in need of a holiday; and his followers in
the next generation had the most powerful motives for maintaining the
alliance which he had inaugurated. They could not neglect such doughty
auxiliaries in the memorable war which they waged against cruelty,
ignorance, and irreligion, and in their less momentous skirmishes with
the votaries of the stage, the racecourse, and the card-table.
Without the aid of nonconformist sympathy, and money, and oratory,
and organisation, their operations would have been doomed to certain
failure. The cordial relations entertained with the members of other
denominations by those among whom his youth was passed did much to
indoctrinate Macaulay with a lively and genuine interest in sectarian
theology. He possessed a minute acquaintance, very rare among men of
letters, with the origin and growth of the various forms of faith and
practice which have divided the allegiance of his countrymen; not the
least important of his qualifications for writing the history of an
epoch when the national mind gave itself to religious controversy even
more largely than has been its wont.

The method of education in vogue among the Clapham families was simple,
without being severe. In the spacious gardens, and the commodious houses
of an architecture already dating a century back, which surrounded the
Common, there was plenty of freedom, and good fellowship, and reasonable
enjoyment for young and old alike. Here again Thackeray has not
done justice to a society that united the mental culture, and the
intellectual activity, which are developed by the neighbourhood of a
great capital, with the wholesome quiet and the homely ways of country
life. Hobson and Brian Newcome are not fair specimens of the effect
of Clapham influences upon the second generation. There can have been
nothing vulgar, and little that was narrow, in a training which produced
Samuel Wilberforce, and Sir James Stephen, and Charles and Robert Grant,
and Lord Macaulay. The plan on which children were brought up in the
chosen home of the Low Church party, during its golden age, will
bear comparison with systems about which, in their day, the world was
supposed never to tire of hearing, although their ultimate results have
been small indeed.

It is easy to trace whence the great bishop and the great writer derived
their immense industry. Working came as naturally as walking to sons who
could not remember a time when their fathers idled. "Mr. Wilberforce and
Mr. Babington have never appeared downstairs lately, except to take a
hasty dinner, and for half an hour after we have supped. The slave-trade
now occupies them nine hours daily. Mr. Babington told me last night
that he had fourteen hundred folio pages to read, to detect the
contradictions, and to collect the answers which corroborate Mr.
Wilberforce's assertions in his speeches. These, with more than two
thousand pages to be abridged, must be done within a fortnight, and they
talk of sitting up one night in every week to accomplish it. The two
friends begin to look very ill, but they are in excellent spirits, and
at this moment I hear them laughing at some absurd questions in the
examination." Passages such as this are scattered broadcast through the
correspondence of Wilberforce and his friends. Fortitude, and diligence,
and self-control, and all that makes men good and great, cannot be
purchased from professional educators. Charity is not the only quality
which begins at home. It is throwing away money to spend a thousand a
year on the teaching of three boys, if they are to return from school
only to find the older members of their family intent on amusing
themselves at any cost of time and trouble, or sacrificing self-respect
in ignoble efforts to struggle into a social grade above their own. The
child will never place his aims high, and pursue them steadily, unless
the parent has taught him what energy, and elevation of purpose, mean
not less by example than by precept.

In that company of indefatigable workers none equalled the labours of
Zachary Macaulay. Even now, when he has been in his grave for more than
the third of a century, it seems almost an act of disloyalty to record
the public services of a man who thought that he had done less than
nothing if his exertions met with praise, or even with recognition. The
nature and value of those services may be estimated from the terms in
which a very competent judge, who knew how to weigh his words, spoke
of the part which Mr. Macaulay played in one only of his numerous
enterprises,--the suppression of slavery and the slave-trade. "That God
had called him into being to wage war with this gigantic evil became his
immutable conviction. During forty successive years he was ever burdened
with this thought. It was the subject of his visions by day and of his
dreams by night. To give them reality he laboured as men labour for the
honours of a profession or for the subsistence of their children.
In that service he sacrificed all that a man may lawfully
sacrifice--health, fortune, repose, favour, and celebrity. He died a
poor man, though wealth was within his reach. He devoted himself to
the severest toil, amidst allurements to luxuriate in the delights of
domestic and social intercourse, such as few indeed have encountered.
He silently permitted some to usurp his hardly-earned honours, that
no selfish controversy might desecrate their common cause. He made no
effort to obtain the praises of the world, though he had talents to
command, and a temper peculiarly disposed to enjoy them. He drew upon
himself the poisoned shafts of calumny, and, while feeling their sting
as generous spirits only can feel it, never turned a single step aside
from his path to propitiate or to crush the slanderers."

Zachary Macaulay was no mere man of action. It is difficult to
understand when it was that he had time to pick up his knowledge of
general literature; or how he made room for it in a mind so crammed
with facts and statistics relating to questions of the day that when
Wilberforce was at a loss for a piece of information he used to say,
"Let us look it out in Macaulay." His private papers, which are one long
register of unbroken toil, do nothing to clear up the problem. Highly
cultivated, however, he certainly was, and his society was in request
with many who cared little for the objects which to him were everything.
That he should have been esteemed and regarded by Lord Brougham, Francis
Homer, and Sir James Mackintosh, seems natural enough, but there is
something surprising in finding him in friendly and frequent
intercourse with some of his most distinguished French contemporaries.
Chateaubriand, Sismondi, the Duc de Broglie, Madame de Stael, and
Dumont, the interpreter of Bentham, corresponded with him freely in
their own language, which he wrote to admiration. The gratification that
his foreign acquaintance felt at the sight of his letters would have
been unalloyed but for the pamphlets and blue-books by which they were
too often accompanied. It is not difficult to imagine the feelings of a
Parisian on receiving two quarto volumes, with the postage only in part
pre-paid, containing the proceedings of a Committee on Apprenticeship in
the West Indies, and including the twelve or fifteen thousand questions
and answers on which the Report was founded. It would be hard to meet
with a more perfect sample of the national politeness than the passage
in which M. Dumont acknowledges one of the less formidable of these
unwelcome gifts. "Mon cher Ami,--Je ne laisserai pas partir Mr. Inglis
sans le charger de quelques lignes pour vous, afin de vous remercier du
Christian Observer que vous avez eu la bonte de m'envoyer. Vous savez
que j'ai a great taste for it; mais il faut vous avouer une triste
verite, c'est que je manque absolument de loisir pour le lire. Ne m'en
envoyez plus; car je me sens peine d'avoir sous les yeux de si bonnes
choses, dont je n'ai pas le temps de tue nourrir."

"In the year 1817," Lady Trevelyan writes, "my parents made a tour in
Scotland with your uncle. Brougham gave them a letter to Jeffrey, who
hospitably entertained them; but your uncle said that Jeffrey was not
at all at his ease, and was apparently so terrified at my father's
religious reputation that he seemed afraid to utter a joke. Your uncle
complained grievously that they travelled from manse to manse, and
always came in for very long prayers and expositions. [Macaulay writes
in his journal of August 8, 1859: "We passed my old acquaintance,
Dumbarton castle, I remembered my first visit to Dumbarton, and the old
minister, who insisted on our eating a bit of cake with him, and said
a grace over it which might have been prologue to a dinner of the
Fishmongers' Company, or the Grocers' Company."] I think, with all the
love and reverence with which your uncle regarded his father's memory,
there mingled a shade of bitterness that he had not met quite the
encouragement and appreciation from him which he received from others.
But such a son as he was! Never a disrespectful word or look; always
anxious to please and amuse; and at last he was the entire stay and
support of his father's declining years.

"Your uncle was of opinion that the course pursued by his father towards
him during his youth was not judicious. But here I am inclined to
disagree with him. There was no want of proof of the estimation in which
his father held him, corresponding with him from a very early age as
with a man, conversing with him freely, and writing of him most fondly.
But, in the desire to keep down any conceit, there was certainly in my
father a great outward show of repression and depreciation. Then
the faults of your uncle were peculiarly those that my father had no
patience with. Himself precise in his arrangements, writing a beautiful
hand, particular about neatness, very accurate and calm, detesting
strong expressions, and remarkably self-controlled; while his eager
impetuous boy, careless of his dress, always forgetting to wash his
hands and brush his hair, writing an execrable hand, and folding
his letters with a great blotch for a seal, was a constant care and
irritation. Many letters to your uncle have I read on these subjects.
Sometimes a specimen of the proper way of folding a letter is sent him,
(those were the sad days before envelopes were known,) and he is desired
to repeat the experiment till he succeeds. General Macaulay's fastidious
nature led him to take my father's line regarding your uncle, and my
youthful soul was often vexed by the constant reprimands for venial
transgressions. But the great sin was the idle reading, which was a
thorn in my father's side that never was extracted. In truth, he really
acknowledged to the full your uncle's abilities, and felt that if he
could only add his own morale, his unwearied industry, his power of
concentrating his energies on the work in hand, his patient painstaking
calmness, to the genius and fervour which his son possessed, then a
being might be formed who could regenerate the world. Often in later
years I have heard my father, after expressing an earnest desire for
some object, exclaim, 'If I had only Tom's power of speech!' But he
should have remembered that all gifts are not given to one, and that
perhaps such a union as he coveted is even impossible. Parents must
be content to see their children walk in their own path, too happy if
through any road they attain the same end, the living for the glory of
God and the good of man."

From a marvellously early date in Macaulay's life public affairs divided
his thoughts with literature, and, as he grew to manhood, began more and
more to divide his aspirations. His father's house was much used as a
centre of consultation by members of Parliament who lived in the suburbs
on the Surrey side of London; and the boy could hardly have heard more
incessant, and assuredly not more edifying, political talk if he had
been brought up in Downing Street. The future advocate and interpreter
of Whig principles was not reared in the Whig faith. Attached friends of
Pitt, who in personal conduct, and habits of life, certainly came nearer
to their standard than his great rival,--and warmly in favour of a war
which, to their imagination, never entirely lost its early character of
an internecine contest with atheism.--the Evangelicals in the House of
Commons for the most part acted with the Tories. But it may be doubted
whether, in the long run, their party would not have been better without
them. By the zeal, the munificence, the laborious activity, with which
they pursued their religious and semi-religious enterprises, they did
more to teach the world how to get rid of existing institutions than
by their votes and speeches at Westminster they contributed to preserve
them. [Macaulay, writing to one of his sisters in 1844, says: "I think
Stephen's article on the Clapham Sect the best thing he ever did, I do
not think with you that the Claphamites were men too obscure for such
delineation. The truth is that from that little knot of men emanated
all the Bible Societies, and almost all the Missionary Societies, in the
world. The whole organisation of the Evangelical party was their work.
The share which they had in providing means for the education of the
people was great. They were really the destroyers of the slave-trade,
and of slavery. Many of those whom Stephen describes were public men of
the greatest weight, Lord Teignmouth governed India in Calcutta, Grant
governed India in Leadenhall Street, Stephen's father was Perceval's
right-hand man in the House of Commons. It is needless to speak of
Wilberforce. As to Simeon, if you knew what his authority and influence
were, and how they extended from Cambridge to the most remote corners
of England, you would allow that his real sway in the Church was far
greater than that of any primate. Thornton, to my surprise, thinks the
passage about my father unfriendly. I defended Stephen. The truth is
that he asked my permission to draw a portrait of my father for the
Edinburgh Review. I told him that I had only to beg that he would not
give it the air of a puff; a thing which, for myself and for my friends,
I dread far more than any attack. My influence over the Review is so
well known that a mere eulogy of my father appearing in that work would
only call forth derision. I therefore am really glad that Stephen has
introduced into his sketch some little characteristic traits which, in
themselves, were not beauties."] With their May meetings, and African
Institutions, and Anti-slavery Reporters, and their subscriptions of
tens of thousands of pounds, and their petitions bristling with hundreds
of thousands of signatures, and all the machinery for informing opinion
and bringing it to bear on ministers and legislators which they did
so much to perfect and even to invent, they can be regarded as nothing
short of the pioneers and fuglemen of that system of popular agitation
which forms a leading feature in our internal history during the past
half-century. At an epoch when the Cabinet which they supported was
so averse to manifestations of political sentiment that a Reformer who
spoke his mind in England was seldom long out of prison, and in Scotland
ran a very serious risk of transportation, Toryism sat oddly enough on
men who spent their days in the committee-room and their evenings on the
platform, and each of whom belonged to more Associations combined for
the purpose of influencing Parliament than he could count on the fingers
of both his hands.

There was something incongruous in their position; and as time went
on they began to perceive the incongruity. They gradually learned that
measures dear to philanthropy might be expected to result from the
advent to power of their opponents; while their own chief too often
failed them at a pinch out of what appeared to them an excessive,
and humiliating, deference to interests powerfully represented on the
benches behind him. Their eyes were first opened by Pitt's change of
attitude with regard to the object that was next all their hearts. There
is something almost pathetic in the contrast between two entries in
Wilberforce's diary, of which the first has become classical, but the
second is not so generally known. In 1787, referring to the movement
against the slave-trade, he says: "Pitt recommended me to undertake its
conduct, as a subject suited to my character and talents. At length, I
well remember, after a conversation in the open air at the root of an
old tree at Holwood, just above the vale of Keston, I resolved to give
notice on a fit occasion in the House of Commons of my intention to
bring the subject forward." Twelve years later Mr. Henry Thornton had
brought in a bill for confining the trade within certain limits upon
the coast of Africa. "Upon the second reading of this bill," writes
Wilberforce, "Pitt coolly put off the debate when I had manifested a
design of answering P.'s speech, and so left misrepresentations without
a word. William Smith's anger;--Henry Thornton's coolness;--deep
impression on me, but conquered, I hope, in a Christian way."

Besides instructing their successors in the art of carrying on a popular
movement, Wilberforce and his followers had a lesson to teach, the value
of which not so many perhaps will be disposed to question. In public
life, as in private, they habitually had the fear of God before their
eyes. A mere handful as to number, and in average talent very much on
a level with the mass of their colleagues;--counting in their ranks no
orator, or minister, or boroughmonger;--they commanded the ear of the
House, and exerted on its proceedings an influence, the secret of which
those who have studied the Parliamentary history of the period find it
only too easy to understand. To refrain from gambling and ball-giving,
to go much to church and never to the theatre, was not more at variance
with the social customs of the day than it was the exception in the
political world to meet with men who looked to the facts of the case and
not to the wishes of the minister, and who before going into the lobby
required to be obliged with a reason instead of with a job. Confidence
and respect, and (what in the House of Commons is their unvarying
accompaniment) power, were gradually, and to a great extent
involuntarily, accorded to this group of members. They were not addicted
to crotchets, nor to the obtrusive and unseasonable assertion of
conscientious scruples. The occasions on which they made proof of
independence and impartiality were such as justified, and dignified,
their temporary renunciation of party ties. They interfered with
decisive effect in the debates on the great scandals of Lord Melville
and the Duke of York, and in more than one financial or commercial
controversy that deeply concerned the national interests, of which
the question of the retaining the Orders in Council was a conspicuous
instance. A boy who, like young Macaulay, was admitted to the intimacy
of politicians such as these, and was accustomed to hear matters of
state discussed exclusively from a public point of view without any
afterthought of ambition, or jealousy, or self-seeking, could hardly
fail to grow up a patriotic and disinterested man. "What is far better
and more important than all is this, that I believe Macaulay to be
incorruptible. You might lay ribbons, stars, garters, wealth, titles
before him in vain. He has an honest genuine love of his country, and
the world would not bribe him to neglect her interests." Thus said
Sydney Smith, who of all his real friends was the least inclined to
over-praise him.

The memory of Thornton and Babington, and the other worthies of their
day and set, is growing dim, and their names already mean little in our
ears. Part of their work was so thoroughly done that the world, as its
wont is, has long ago taken the credit of that work to itself. Others of
their undertakings, in weaker hands than theirs, seem out of date among
the ideas and beliefs which now are prevalent. At Clapham, as elsewhere,
the old order is changing, and not always in a direction which to them
would be acceptable or even tolerable. What was once the home of Zachary
Macaulay stands almost within the swing of the bell of a stately
and elegant Roman Catholic chapel; and the pleasant mansion of Lord
Teignmouth, the cradle of the Bible Society, is now a religious house of
the Redemptorist Order. But in one shape or another honest performance
always lives, and the gains that accrued from the labours of these
men are still on the right side of the national ledger. Among the most
permanent of those gains is their undoubted share in the improvement of
our political integrity by direct, and still more by indirect, example.
It would be ungrateful to forget in how large a measure it is due to
them that one, whose judgments upon the statesmen of many ages and
countries have been delivered to an audience vast beyond all precedent,
should have framed his decisions in accordance with the dictates of
honour and humanity, of ardent public spirit and lofty public virtue.




CHAPTER II. 1818-1824.

     Macaulay goes to the University--His love for Trinity
     College--His contemporaries at Cambridge--Charles Austin--
     The Union Debating Society--University studies, successes,
     and failures--The Mathematical Tripos--The Trinity
     Fellowship--William the Third--Letters--Prize poems--
     Peterloo--Novel-reading--The Queen's Trial--Macaulay's
     feeling towards his mother--A Reading-party--Hoaxing an
     editor--Macaulay takes pupils.

IN October 1818 Macaulay went into residence at Trinity College,
Cambridge. Mr. Henry Sykes Thornton, the eldest son of the member for
Southwark, was his companion throughout his university career. The
young men lived in the same lodgings, and began by reading with the same
tutor; a plan which promised well, because, in addition to what was his
own by right, each had the benefit of the period of instruction paid for
by the other. But two hours were much the same as one to Macaulay, in
whose eyes algebra and geometry were so much additional material for
lively and interminable argument. Thornton reluctantly broke through the
arrangement, and eventually stood highest among the Trinity wranglers
of his year; an elevation which he could hardly have attained if he had
pursued his studies in company with one who regarded every successive
mathematical proposition as an open question. A Parliamentary election
took place while the two friends were still quartered together in Jesus
Lane. A tumult in the neighbouring street announced that the citizens
were expressing their sentiments by the only channel which was open to
them before the days of Reform; and Macaulay, to whom any excitement of
a political nature was absolutely irresistible, dragged Thornton to
the scene of action, and found the mob breaking the windows of the Hoop
hotel, the head-quarters of the successful candidates. His ardour
was cooled by receiving a dead cat full in the face. The man who was
responsible for the animal came up and apologised very civilly, assuring
him that there was no town and gown feeling in the matter, and that the
cat had been meant for Mr. Adeane. "I wish," replied Macaulay, "that you
had meant it for me, and hit Mr. Adeane."

After no long while he removed within the walls of Trinity, and resided
first in the centre rooms of Bishop's Hostel, and subsequently in the
Old Court, between the Gate and the Chapel. The door, which once bore
his name, is on the ground floor, to the left hand as you face the
staircase. In more recent years, undergraduates who are accustomed to
be out after lawful hours have claimed a right of way through the window
which looks towards the town;--to the great annoyance of any occupant
who is too good-natured to refuse the accommodation to others, and too
steady to need it himself. This power of surreptitious entry had not
been discovered in Macaulay's days; and, indeed, he would have cared
very little for the privilege of spending his time outside walls which
contained within them as many books as even he could read, and more
friends than even he could talk to. Wanting nothing beyond what his
college had to give, he revelled in the possession of leisure and
liberty, in the almost complete command of his own time, in the power of
passing at choice from the most perfect solitude to the most agreeable
company. He keenly appreciated a society which cherishes all that is
genuine, and is only too out-spoken in its abhorrence of pretension and
display:--a society in which a man lives with those whom he likes,
and with those only; choosing his comrades for their own sake, and so
indifferent to the external distinctions of wealth and position that
no one who has entered fully into the spirit of college life can ever
unlearn its priceless lesson of manliness and simplicity.

Of all his places of sojourn during his joyous and shining pilgrimage
through the world, Trinity, and Trinity alone, had any share with his
home in Macaulay's affection and loyalty. To the last he regarded it as
an ancient Greek, or a mediaeval Italian, felt towards his native city.
As long as he had place and standing there, he never left it willingly
or returned to it without delight. The only step in his course about the
wisdom of which he sometimes expressed misgiving was his preference of
a London to a Cambridge life. The only dignity that in his later days he
was known to covet was an honorary fellowship, which would have allowed
him again to look through his window upon the college grass-plots,
and to sleep within sound of the splashing of the fountain; again to
breakfast on commons, and dine beneath the portraits of Newton and Bacon
on the dais of the hall; again to ramble by moonlight round Neville's
cloister, discoursing the picturesque but somewhat exoteric philosophy
which it pleased him to call by the name of metaphysics. From the door
of his rooms, along the wall of the Chapel, there runs a flagged pathway
which affords an acceptable relief from the rugged pebbles that surround
it. Here as a Bachelor of Arts he would walk, book in hand, morning
after morning throughout the long vacation, reading with the same
eagerness and the same rapidity whether the volume was the most abstruse
of treatises, the loftiest of poems, or the flimsiest of novels. That
was the spot where in his failing years he specially loved to renew
the feelings of the past; and some there are who can never revisit it
without the fancy that there, if anywhere, his dear shade must linger.

He was fortunate in his contemporaries. Among his intimate friends were
the two Coleridges--Derwent, the son, and Henry Nelson, who was destined
to be the son-in-law of the poet; and how exceptional that destiny was
the readers of Sara Coleridge's letters are now aware. Hyde Villiers,
whom an untimely death alone prevented from taking an equal place in
a trio of distinguished brothers, was of his year, though not of his
college. [Lord Clarendon, and his brothers, were all Johnians.] In the
year below were the young men who now bear the titles of Lord Grey, Lord
Belper, and Lord Romilly; [This paragraph was written in the summer of
1874. Three of Macaulay's old college friends, Lord Romilly, Moultrie,
and Charles Austin, died, in the hard winter that followed, within a few
days of each other.] and after the same interval came Moultrie, who in
his "Dream of Life," with a fidelity which he himself pronounced to have
been obtained at some sacrifice of grace, has told us how the heroes of
his time looked and lived, and Charles Villiers, who still delights our
generation by showing us how they talked. Then there was Praed, fresh
from editing the Etonian, as a product of collective boyish effort
unique in its literary excellence and variety; and Sidney Walker,
Praed's gifted school fellow, whose promise was blighted by premature
decay of powers; and Charles Austin, whose fame would now be more in
proportion to his extraordinary abilities, had not his unparalleled
success as an advocate tempted him before his day to retire from the
toils of a career of whose rewards he already had enough.

With his vigour and fervour, his depth of knowledge and breadth
of humour, his close reasoning illustrated by an expansive
imagination,--set off, as these gifts were, by the advantage, at that
period of life so irresistible, of some experience of the world at home
and abroad,--Austin was indeed a king among his fellows.

                         "Grave, sedate,
 And (if the looks may indicate the age,)
 Our senior some few years; no keener wit,
 No intellect more subtle, none more bold,
 Was found in all our host."

So writes Moultrie, and the testimony of his verse is borne out by
John Stuart Mill's prose. "The impression he gave was that of boundless
strength, together with talents which, combined with such apparent
force of will and character, seemed capable of dominating the world."
He certainly was the only man who ever succeeded in dominating Macaulay.
Brimming over with ideas that were soon to be known by the name of
Utilitarian, a panegyrist of American institutions, and an unsparing
assailant of ecclesiastical endowments and hereditary privileges, he
effectually cured the young undergraduate of his Tory opinions, which
were never more than skin deep, and brought him nearer to Radicalism
than he ever was before or since. The report of this conversion, of
which the most was made by ill-natured tale-bearers who met with more
encouragement than they deserved, created some consternation in the
family circle; while the reading set at Cambridge was duly scandalised
at the influence which one, whose classical attainments were rather
discursive than exact, had gained over a Craven scholar. To this hour
men may be found in remote parsonages who mildly resent the fascination
which Austin of Jesus exercised over Macaulay of Trinity. [It was at
this period of his career that Macaulay said to the late Mr. Hampden
Gurney: "Gurney, I have been a Tory, I am a Radical; _but I never will
be a Whig_."]

The day and the night together were too short for one who was entering
on the journey of life amidst such a band of travellers. So long as a
door was open, or a light burning, in any of the courts, Macaulay was
always in the mood for conversation and companionship. Unfailing in his
attendance at lecture and chapel, blameless with regard to college laws
and college discipline, it was well for his virtue that no curfew was in
force within the precincts of Trinity. He never tired of recalling the
days when he supped at midnight on milk-punch and roast turkey, drank
tea in floods at an hour when older men are intent upon anything rather
than on the means of keeping themselves awake, and made little of
sitting over the fire till the bell rang for morning chapel in order
to see a friend off by the early coach. In the license of the summer
vacation, after some prolonged and festive gathering, the whole party
would pour out into the moonlight, and ramble for mile after mile
through the country, till the noise of their wide-flowing talk mingled
with the twittering of the birds in the hedges which bordered the Coton
pathway or the Madingley road. On such occasions it must have been well
worth the loss of sleep to hear Macaulay plying Austin with sarcasms
upon the doctrine of the Greatest Happiness, which then had still some
gloss of novelty; putting into an ever-fresh shape the time-honoured
jokes against the Johnians for the benefit of the Villierses; and urging
an interminable debate on Wordsworth's merits as a poet, in which
the Coleridges, as in duty bound, were ever ready to engage. In this
particular field he acquired a skill of fence which rendered him the
most redoubtable of antagonists. Many years afterwards, at the time when
the Prelude was fresh from the press, he was maintaining against the
opinion of a large and mixed society that the poem was unreadable. At
last, overborne by the united indignation of so many of Wordsworth's
admirers, he agreed that the question should be referred to the test
of personal experience; and on inquiry it was discovered that the only
individual present who had got through the Prelude was Macaulay himself.

It is not only that the witnesses of these scenes unanimously declare
that they have never since heard such conversation in the most renowned
of social circles. The partiality of a generous young man for trusted
and admired companions may well colour his judgment over the space of
even half a century. But the estimate of university contemporaries
was abundantly confirmed by the outer world. While on a visit to Lord
Lansdowne at Bowood, years after they had left Cambridge, Austin and
Macaulay happened to get upon college topics one morning at breakfast.
When the meal was finished they drew their chairs to either end of the
chimney-piece, and talked at each other across the hearth-rug as if
they were in a first-floor room in the Old Court of Trinity. The whole
company, ladies, artists, politicians, and diners-out, formed a silent
circle round the two Cantabs, and, with a short break for lunch, never
stirred till the bell warned them that it was time to dress for dinner.

It has all irrevocably perished. With life before them, and each intent
on his own future, none among that troop of friends had the mind to play
Boswell to the others. One repartee survives, thrown off in the heat
of discussion, but exquisitely perfect in all its parts. Acknowledged
without dissent to be the best applied quotation that ever was made
within five miles of the Fitzwilliam Museum, it is unfortunately too
strictly classical for reproduction in these pages.

We are more easily consoled for the loss of the eloquence which then
flowed so full and free in the debates of the Cambridge Union. In 1820
that Society was emerging from a period of tribulation and repression.
The authorities of the university, who, as old constituents of Mr. Pitt
and warm supporters of Lord Liverpool, had never been very much
inclined to countenance the practice of political discussion among the
undergraduates, set their faces against it more than ever at an epoch
when the temper of the time increased the tendency of young men to run
into extremes of partisanship. At length a compromise was extorted from
the reluctant hands of the Vice-Chancellor, and the Club was allowed
to take into consideration public affairs of a date anterior to the
century. It required less ingenuity than the leaders of the Union had at
their command to hit upon a method of dealing with the present under the
guise of the past. Motions were framed that reflected upon the existing
Government under cover of a censure on the Cabinets of the previous
generation. Resolutions which called upon the meeting to declare that
the boon of Catholic Emancipation should have been granted in the year
1795, or that our Commercial Policy previous to 1800 should have been
founded on the basis of Free Trade, were clearly susceptible of great
latitude of treatment. And, again, in its character of a reading club,
the Society, when assembled for the conduct of private business, was
at liberty to review the political creed of the journals of the day in
order to decide which of them it should take in, and which it should
discontinue. The Examiner newspaper was the flag of many a hard-fought
battle; the Morning Chronicle was voted in and out of the rooms
half-a-dozen times within a single twelvemonth; while a series of
impassioned speeches on the burning question of interference in behalf
of Greek Independence were occasioned by a proposition of Malden's "that
'e Ellenike salpigks' do lie upon the table."

At the close of the debates, which were held in a large room at the back
of the Red Lion in Petty Cury, the most prominent members met for supper
in the Hotel, or at Moultrie's lodgings, which were situated close at
hand. They acted as a self-appointed Standing Committee, which watched
over the general interests of the Union, and selected candidates whom
they put in nomination for its offices. The Society did not boast a
Hansard;--an omission which, as time went on, some among its orators had
no reason to regret. Faint recollections still survive of a discussion
upon the august topic of the character of George the Third. "To whom
do we owe it," asked Macaulay, "that while Europe was convulsed with
anarchy and desolated with war, England alone remained tranquil,
prosperous, and secure? To whom but the Good Old King? Why was it that,
when neighbouring capitals were perishing in the flames, our own was
illuminated only for triumphs? [This debate evidently made some noise in
the university world. There is an allusion to it in a squib of Praed's,
very finished and elegant, and beyond all doubt contemporary. The
passage relating to Macaulay begins with the lines--"Then the favourite
comes with his trumpets and drums, And his arms and his metaphors
crossed."] You may find the cause in the same three words: the Good Old
King." Praed, on the other hand, would allow his late monarch neither
public merits nor private virtues. "A good man! If he had been a plain
country gentleman with no wider opportunities for mischief, he would at
least have bullied his footmen and cheated his steward."

Macaulay's intense enjoyment of all that was stirring and vivid around
him undoubtedly hindered him in the race for university honours; though
his success was sufficient to inspirit him at the time, and to give him
abiding pleasure in the retrospect. He twice gained the Chancellor's
medal for English verse, with poems admirably planned, and containing
passages of real beauty, but which may not be republished in the teeth
of the panegyric which, within ten years after they were written, he
pronounced upon Sir Roger Newdigate. Sir Roger had laid down the rule
that no exercise sent in for the prize which he established at Oxford
was to exceed fifty lines. This law, says Macaulay, seems to have more
foundation in reason than is generally the case with a literary canon,
"for the world, we believe, is pretty well agreed in thinking that the
shorter a prize poem is, the better."

Trinity men find it difficult to understand how it was that he missed
getting one of the three silver goblets given for the best English
Declamations of the year. If there is one thing which all Macaulay's
friends, and all his enemies, admit, it is that he could declaim
English. His own version of the affair was that the Senior Dean, a
relative of the victorious candidate, sent for him and said: "Mr.
Macaulay, as you have not got the first cup, I do not suppose that you
will care for either of the others." He was consoled, however, by the
prize for Latin Declamation; and in 1821 he established his classical
repute by winning a Craven University scholarship in company with his
friend Malden, and Mr. George Long, who preceded Malden as Professor of
Greek at University College, London.

Macaulay detested the labour of manufacturing Greek and Latin verse in
cold blood as an exercise; and his Hexameters were never up to the best
Etonian mark, nor his Iambics to the highest standard of Shrewsbury. He
defined a scholar as one who reads Plato with his feet on the fender.
When already well on in his third year he writes: "I never practised
composition a single hour since I have been at Cambridge." "Soak your
mind with Cicero," was his constant advice to students at that time of
life when writing Latin prose is the most lucrative of accomplishments.
The advantage of this precept was proved in the Fellowship examination
of the year 1824, when he obtained the honour which in his eyes was the
most desirable that Cambridge had to give. The delight of the young man
at finding himself one of the sixty masters of an ancient and splendid
establishment; the pride with which he signed his first order for the
college plate, and dined for the first time at the high table in his
own right; the reflection that these privileges were the fruit, not
of favour or inheritance, but of personal industry and ability,--were
matters on which he loved to dwell long after the world had loaded
him with its most envied prizes. Macaulay's feeling on this point is
illustrated by the curious reverence which he cherished for those
junior members of the college who, some ninety years ago, by a spirited
remonstrance addressed to the governing body, brought about a reform in
the Trinity Fellowship examination that secured to it the character for
fair play, and efficiency, which it has ever since enjoyed. In his copy
of the Cambridge Calendar for the year 1859, (the last of his life,)
throughout the list of the old mathematical Triposes the words "one of
the eight" appear in his hand-writing opposite the name of each of these
gentlemen. And I can never remember the time when it was not diligently
impressed upon me that, if I minded my syntax, I might eventually hope
to reach a position which would give me three hundred pounds a year, a
stable for my horse, six dozen of audit ale every Christmas, a loaf and
two pats of butter every morning, and a good dinner for nothing, with as
many almonds and raisins as I could eat at dessert.

Macaulay was not chosen a Fellow until his last trial, nominally for
the amazing reason that his translations from Greek and Latin, while
faithfully representing the originals, were rendered into English that
was ungracefully bald and inornate. The real cause was, beyond all
doubt, his utter neglect of the special study of the place; a liberty
which Cambridge seldom allows to be taken with impunity even by her most
favoured sons. He used to profess deep and lasting regret for his early
repugnance to scientific subjects; but the fervour of his penitence in
after years was far surpassed by the heartiness with which he inveighed
against mathematics as long as it was his business to learn them.
Everyone who knows the Senate House may anticipate the result. When the
Tripos of 1822 made its appearance, his name did not grace the list. In
short, to use the expressive vocabulary of the university, Macaulay was
gulfed--a mishap which disabled him from contending for the Chancellor's
medals, then the crowning trophies of a classical career. "I well
remember," says Lady Trevelyan, "that first trial of my life. We were
spending the winter at Brighton when a letter came giving an account of
the event. I recollect my mother taking me into her room to tell me, for
even then it was known how my whole heart was wrapped up in him, and
it was thought necessary to break the news. When your uncle arrived at
Brighton, I can recall my mother telling him that he had better go at
once to his father, and get it over, and I can see him as he left the
room on that errand."

During the same year he engaged in a less arduous competition. A certain
Mr. Greaves of Fulbourn had long since provided a reward of ten pounds
for "the Junior Bachelor of Trinity College who wrote the best essay on
the Conduct and Character of William the Third." As the prize is annual,
it is appalling to reflect upon the searching analysis to which the
motives of that monarch must by this time have been subjected. The
event, however, may be counted as an encouragement to the founders
of endowments; for, amidst the succession of juvenile critics whose
attention was by his munificence turned in the direction of his
favourite hero, Mr. Greaves had at last fallen in with the right man. It
is more than probable that to this old Cambridgeshire Whig was due the
first idea of that History in whose pages William of Orange stands as
the central figure. The essay is still in existence, in a close
neat hand, which twenty years of Reviewing never rendered illegible.
Originally written as a fair copy, but so disfigured by repeated
corrections and additions as to be unfit for the eyes of the college
authorities, it bears evident marks of having been held to the flames,
and rescued on second, and in this case it will be allowed, on better
thoughts. The exercise, (which is headed by the very appropriate motto,

               "Primus qui legibus urbem
 Fundabit, Curibus parvis et paupere terra
 Missus in imperium magnum,")

is just such as will very likely be produced in the course of next
Easter term by some young man of judgment and spirit, who knows
his Macaulay by heart, and will paraphrase him without scruple. The
characters of James, of Shaftesbury, of William himself; the Popish
plot; the struggle over the Exclusion bill; the reaction from Puritanic
rigour into the license of the Restoration, are drawn on the same lines
and painted in the same colours as those with which the world is now
familiar. The style only wants condensation, and a little of the humour
which he had not yet learned to transfer from his conversation to his
writings, in order to be worthy of his mature powers. He thus describes
William's lifelong enemy and rival, whose name he already spells after
his own fashion.

"Lewis was not a great general. He was not a great legislator. But he
was, in one sense of the words, a great king. He was a perfect master of
all the mysteries of the science of royalty,--of all the arts which at
once extend power and conciliate popularity,--which most advantageously
display the merits, or most dexterously conceal the deficiencies, of a
sovereign. He was surrounded by great men, by victorious commanders,
by sagacious statesmen. Yet, while he availed himself to the utmost of
their services, he never incurred any danger from their rivalry. His was
a talisman which extorted the obedience of the proudest and mightiest
spirits. The haughty and turbulent warriors whose contests had agitated
France during his minority yielded to the irresistible spell, and,
like the gigantic slaves of the ring and lamp of Aladdin, laboured to
decorate and aggrandise a master whom they could have crushed. With
incomparable address he appropriated to himself the glory of campaigns
which had been planned, and counsels which had been suggested, by
others. The arms of Turenne were the terror of Europe. The policy of
Colbert was the strength of France. But in their foreign successes, and
their internal prosperity, the people saw only the greatness and wisdom
of Lewis."

In the second chapter of the History much of this is compressed into the
sentence: "He had shown, in an eminent degree, two talents invaluable to
a prince,--the talent of choosing his servants well, and the talent of
appropriating to himself the chief part of the credit of their acts."

In a passage that occurs towards the close of the essay may be traced
something more than an outline of the peroration in which, a quarter
of a century later on, he summed up the character and results of the
Revolution of 1688.

"To have been a sovereign, yet the champion of liberty; a revolutionary
leader, yet the supporter of social order, is the peculiar glory of
William. He knew where to pause. He outraged no national prejudice. He
abolished no ancient form. He altered no venerable name. He saw that the
existing institutions possessed the greatest capabilities of excellence,
and that stronger sanctions, and clearer definitions, were alone
required to make the practice of the British constitution as admirable
as the theory. Thus he imparted to innovation the dignity and
stability of antiquity. He transferred to a happier order of things the
associations which had attached the people to their former government.
As the Roman warrior, before he assaulted Veii, invoked its guardian
gods to leave its walls, and to accept the worship and patronise the
cause of the besiegers, this great prince, in attacking a system of
oppression, summoned to his aid the venerable principles and deeply
seated feelings to which that system was indebted for protection."

A letter, written during the latter years of his life, expresses
Macaulay's general views on the subject of University honours. "If a man
brings away from Cambridge self-knowledge, accuracy of mind, and habits
of strong intellectual exertion, he has gained more than if he had made
a display of showy superficial Etonian scholarship, got three or four
Browne's medals, and gone forth into the world a schoolboy and doomed to
be a schoolboy to the last. After all, what a man does at Cambridge is,
in itself, nothing. If he makes a poor figure in life, his having
been Senior Wrangler or University scholar is never mentioned but with
derision. If he makes a distinguished figure, his early honours merge in
those of a later date. I hope that I do not overrate my own place in the
estimation of society. Such as it is, I would not give a halfpenny to
add to the consideration which I enjoy, all the consideration that I
should derive from having been Senior Wrangler. But I often regret, and
even acutely, my want of a Senior Wrangler's knowledge of physics and
mathematics; and I regret still more some habits of mind which a Senior
Wrangler is pretty certain to possess." Like all men who know what the
world is, he regarded the triumph of a college career as of less value
than its disappointments. Those are most to be envied who soonest learn
to expect nothing for which they have not worked hard, and who never
acquire the habit, (a habit which an unbroken course of University
successes too surely breeds,) of pitying themselves overmuch if ever in
after life they happen to work in vain.

Cambridge: Wednesday. (Post-mark, 1818)

My dear Mother,--King, I am absolutely certain, would take no more
pupils on any account. And, even if he would, he has numerous applicants
with prior claims. He has already six, who occupy him six hours in the
day, and is likewise lecturer to the college. It would, however, be
very easy to obtain an excellent tutor. Lefevre and Malkin are men
of first-rate mathematical abilities, and both of our college. I can
scarcely bear to write on Mathematics or Mathematicians. Oh for words to
express my abomination of that science, if a name sacred to the useful
and embellishing arts may be applied to the perception and recollection
of certain properties in numbers and figures! Oh that I had to learn
astrology, or demonology, or school divinity! Oh that I were to pore
over Thomas Aquinas, and to adjust the relation of Entity with the
two Predicaments, so that I were exempted from this miserable study!
"Discipline" of the mind! Say rather starvation, confinement, torture,
annihilation! But it must be. I feel myself becoming a personification
of Algebra, a living trigonometrical canon, a walking table of
Logarithms. All my perceptions of elegance and beauty gone, or at least
going. By the end of the term my brain will be "as dry as the remainder
biscuit after a voyage." Oh to change Cam for Isis! But such is my
destiny; and, since it is so, be the pursuit contemptible, below
contempt, or disgusting beyond abhorrence, I shall aim at no second
place. But three years! I cannot endure the thought. I cannot bear
to contemplate what I must have to undergo. Farewell then Homer and
Sophocles and Cicero.

 Farewell happy fields
 Where joy for ever reigns
 Hail, horrors, hail, Infernal world!

How does it proceed? Milton's descriptions have been driven out of my
head by such elegant expressions as the following

[Long mathematical formula]

My classics must be Woodhouse, and my amusements summing an infinite
series. Farewell, and tell Selina and Jane to be thankful that it is
not a necessary part of female education to get a headache daily without
acquiring one practical truth or beautiful image in return. Again, and
with affectionate love to my Father, farewell wishes your most miserable
and mathematical son

T.B. MACAULAY.

Cambridge: November 9, 1818.

My dear Father,--Your letter, which I read with the greatest pleasure,
is perfectly safe from all persons who could make a bad use of it. The
Emperor Alexander's plans as detailed in the conversation between him
and Clarkson [Thomas Clarkson, the famous assailant of slavery.]
are almost superhuman; and tower as much above the common hopes and
aspirations of philanthropists as the statue which his Macedonian
namesake proposed to hew out of Mount Athos excelled the most colossal
works of meaner projectors. As Burke said of Henry the Fourth's
wish that every peasant in France might have the chicken in his pot
comfortably on a Sunday, we may say of these mighty plans, "The mere
wish, the unfulfilled desire, exceeded all that we hear of the splendid
professions and exploits of princes." Yet my satisfaction in the success
of that noble cause in which the Emperor seems to be exerting himself
with so much zeal is scarcely so great as my regret for the man who
would have traced every step of its progress with anxiety, and hailed
its success with the most ardent delight. Poor Sir Samuel Romilly!
Quando ullum invenient parem? How long may a penal code at once too
sanguinary and too lenient, half written in blood like Draco's, and
half undefined and loose as the common law of a tribe of savages, be the
curse and disgrace of the country? How many years may elapse before a
man who knows like him all that law can teach, and possesses at the same
time like him a liberality and a discernment of general rights which
the technicalities of professional learning rather tend to blunt, shall
again rise to ornament and reform our jurisprudence? For such a man, if
he had fallen in the maturity of years and honours, and been borne from
the bed of sickness to a grave by the side of his prototype Hale amidst
the tears of nobles and senators, even then, I think, the public sorrow
would have been extreme. But that the last moments of an existence of
high thoughts and great virtues should have been passed as his were
passed! In my feelings the scene at Claremont [The death of Princess
Charlotte.] this time last year was mere dust in the balance in
comparison.

Ever your affectionate son,

T. B. M.

Cambridge: Friday, February 5, 1819.

My dear Father,--I have not of course had time to examine with attention
all your criticisms on Pompeii. [The subject of the English poem for the
Chancellor's prize of 1819 was the Destruction of Pompeii.] I certainly
am much obliged to you for withdrawing so much time from more important
business to correct my effusions. Most of the remarks which I have
examined are perfectly just; but as to the more momentous charge, the
want of a moral, I think it might be a sufficient defence that, if a
subject is given which admits of none, the man who writes without a
moral is scarcely censurable. But is it the real fact that no literary
employment is estimable or laudable which does not lead to the spread
of moral truth or the excitement of virtuous feeling? Books of amusement
tend to polish the mind, to improve the style, to give variety to
conversation, and to lend a grace to more important accomplishments. He
who can effect this has surely done something. Is no useful end served
by that writer whose works have soothed weeks of languor and sickness,
have relieved the mind exhausted from the pressure of employment by an
amusement which delights without enervating, which relaxes the tension
of the powers without rendering them unfit for future exercise? I should
not be surprised to see these observations refuted; and I shall not be
sorry if they are so. I feel personally little interest in the question.
If my life be a life of literature, it shall certainly be one of
literature directed to moral ends.

At all events let us be consistent. I was amused in turning over an old
volume of the Christian Observer to find a gentleman signing himself
Excubitor, (one of our antagonists in the question of novel-reading,)
after a very pious argument on the hostility of novels to a religious
frame of mind, proceeding to observe that he was shocked to hear a
young lady who had displayed extraordinary knowledge of modern ephemeral
literature own herself ignorant of Dryden's fables! Consistency with
a vengeance! The reading of modern poetry and novels excites a worldly
disposition and prevents ladies from reading Dryden's fables! There is a
general disposition among the more literary part of the religious world
to cry down the elegant literature of our own times, while they are
not in the slightest degree shocked at atrocious profaneness or gross
indelicacy when a hundred years have stamped them with the title
of classical. I say: "If you read Dryden you can have no reasonable
objection to reading Scott." The strict antagonist of ephemeral reading
exclaims, "Not so. Scott's poems are very pernicious. They call away the
mind from spiritual religion, and from Tancred and Sigismunda." But I
am exceeding all ordinary limits. If these hasty remarks fatigue you,
impute it to my desire of justifying myself from a charge which I should
be sorry to incur with justice. Love to all at home.

Affectionately yours,

T. B. M.

With or without a moral, the poem carried the day. The subject for the
next year was Waterloo. The opening lines of Macaulay's exercise
were pretty and simple enough to ruin his chance in an academical
competition.

 It was the Sabbath morn. How calm and fair
 Is the blest dawning of the day of prayer!
 Who hath not felt how fancy's mystic power
 With holier beauty decks that solemn hour;
 A softer lustre in its sunshine sees;
 And hears a softer music in its breeze?
 Who hath not dreamed that even the skylark's throat
 Hails that sweet morning with a gentler note?
 Fair morn, how gaily shone thy dawning smile
 On the green valleys of my native isle!
 How gladly many a spire's resounding height
 With peals of transport hailed thy newborn light!
 Ah! little thought the peasant then, who blest
 The peaceful hour of consecrated rest,
 And heard the rustic Temple's arch prolong
 The simple cadence of the hallowed song,
 That the same sun illumed a gory field,
 Where wilder song and sterner music pealed;
 Where many a yell unholy rent the air,
 And many a hand was raised,--but not in prayer.

The prize fell to a man of another college, and Trinity comforted itself
by inventing a story to the effect that the successful candidate had run
away from the battle.

In the summer of 1819 there took place a military affair, less
attractive than Waterloo as a theme for poets, but which, as far as this
country is concerned, has proved even more momentous in its ultimate
consequences. On the 16th of August a Reform demonstration was arranged
at Manchester resembling those which were common in the Northern
districts during the year 1866, except that in 1819 women formed an
important element in the procession. A troop of yeomanry, and afterwards
two squadrons of hussars, were sent in among the crowd, which was
assembled in St. Peter's Fields, the site on which the Free Trade Hall
now stands. The men used their swords freely, and the horses their
hoofs. The people, who meant anything but fighting, trampled each other
down in the attempt to escape. Five or six lives were lost, and fifty or
sixty persons were badly hurt; but the painful impression wrought upon
the national conscience was well worth the price. British blood has
never since been shed by British hands in any civic contest that rose
above the level of a lawless riot. The immediate result, however, was
to concentrate and embitter party feeling. The grand jury threw out
the bills against the yeomen, and found true bills against the popular
orators who had called the meeting together. The Common Councilmen of
the City of London, who had presented an Address to the Prince Regent
reflecting upon the conduct of the Government, were roundly rebuked
for their pains. Earl Fitzwilliam was dismissed from the office of Lord
Lieutenant, for taking part in a Yorkshire county gathering which had
passed resolutions in the same sense as the Address from the City. On
the other hand, a Peterloo medal was struck, which is still treasured
in such Manchester families as have not learned to be ashamed of the old
Manchester politics.

In this heated state of the political atmosphere the expiring Toryism
of the Anti-Slavery leaders flamed up once again. "I declare," said
Wilberforce, "my greatest cause of difference with the democrats is
their laying, and causing people to lay, so great a stress on the
concerns of this world as to occupy their whole minds and hearts, and
to leave a few scanty and lukewarm thoughts for the heavenly treasure."
Zachary Macaulay, who never canted, and who knew that on the 16th of
August the Manchester Magistrates were thinking just as much or as
little about religion as the Manchester populace, none the less took
the same side as Wilberforce. Having formed for himself, by observations
made on the spot, a decided opinion that the authorities ought to be
supported, he was much disturbed by reports which came to him from
Cambridge.

September, 1819.

My dear Father,--My mother's letter, which has just arrived, has given
me much concern. The letter which has, I am sorry to learn, given you
and her uneasiness was written rapidly and thoughtlessly enough, but can
scarcely, I think, as far as I remember its tenour, justify some of the
extraordinary inferences which it has occasioned. I can only assure you
most solemnly that I am not initiated into any democratical societies
here, and that I know no people who make politics a common or frequent
topic of conversation, except one man who is a determined Tory. It is
true that this Manchester business has roused some indignation here, as
at other places, and drawn philippics against the powers that be from
lips which I never heard opened before but to speak on university
contests or university scandal. For myself I have long made it a rule
never to talk on politics except in the most general manner; and I
believe that my most intimate associates have no idea of my opinions
on the questions of party. I can scarcely be censured, I think, for
imparting them to you;--which, however, I should scarcely have thought
of doing, (so much is my mind occupied with other concerns,) had
not your letter invited me to state my sentiments on the Manchester
business.

I hope that this explanation will remove some of your uneasiness. As
to my opinions, I have no particular desire to vindicate them. They are
merely speculative, and therefore cannot partake of the nature of moral
culpability. They are early formed, and I am not solicitous that you
should think them superior to those of most people at eighteen. I will,
however, say this in their defence. Whatever the affectionate alarm of
my dear mother may lead her to apprehend, I am not one of the "sons of
anarchy and confusion" with whom she classes me. My opinions, good or
bad, were learnt, not from Hunt and Waithman, but from Cicero, from
Tacitus, and from Milton. They are the opinions which have produced
men who have ornamented the world, and redeemed human nature from the
degradation of ages of superstition and slavery. I may be wrong as to
the facts of what occurred at Manchester; but, if they be what I have
seen them stated, I can never repent speaking of them with indignation.
When I cease to feel the injuries of others warmly, to detest wanton
cruelty, and to feel my soul rise against oppression, I shall think
myself unworthy to be your son.

I could say a great deal more. Above all I might, I think, ask, with
some reason, why a few democratical sentences in a letter, a private
letter, of a collegian of eighteen, should be thought so alarming an
indication of character, when Brougham and other people, who at an age
which ought to have sobered them talk with much more violence, are
not thought particularly ill of? But I have so little room left that I
abstain, and will only add thus much. Were my opinions as decisive as
they are fluctuating, and were the elevation of a Cromwell or the renown
of a Hampden the certain reward of my standing forth in the democratic
cause, I would rather have my lips sealed on the subject than give my
mother or you one hour of uneasiness. There are not so many people in
the world who love me that I can afford to pain them for any object of
ambition which it contains. If this assurance be not sufficient, clothe
it in what language you please, and believe me to express myself in
those words which you think the strongest and most solemn. Affectionate
love to my mother and sisters. Farewell.

T. B. M.

Cambridge: January 5, 1820.

My dear Father,--Nothing that gives you disquietude can give me
amusement. Otherwise I should have been excessively diverted by the
dialogue which you have reported with so much vivacity; the accusation;
the predictions; and the elegant agnomen of "the novel-reader" for which
I am indebted to this incognito. I went in some amazement to Malden,
Romilly, and Barlow. Their acquaintance comprehends, I will venture to
say, almost every man worth knowing in the university in every field of
study. They had never heard the appellation applied to me by any man.
Their intimacy with me would of course prevent any person from speaking
to them on the subject in an insulting manner; for it is not usual here,
whatever your unknown informant may do, for a gentleman who does not
wish to be kicked downstairs to reply to a man who mentions another as
his particular friend, "Do you mean the blackguard or the novel-reader?"
But I am fully convinced that had the charge prevailed to any extent it
must have reached the ears of one of those whom I interrogated. At all
events I have the consolation of not being thought a novel-reader by
three or four who are entitled to judge upon the subject, and whether
their opinion be of equal value with that of this John-a-Nokes against
whom I have to plead I leave you to decide.

But stronger evidence, it seems, is behind. This gentleman was in
company with me. Alas that I should never have found out how accurate
an observer was measuring my sentiments, numbering the novels which I
criticised, and speculating on the probability of my being plucked. "I
was familiar with all the novels whose names he had ever heard." If so
frightful an accusation did not stun me at once, I might perhaps hint
at the possibility that this was to be attributed almost as much to
the narrowness of his reading on this subject as to the extent of mine.
There are men here who are mere mathematical blocks; who plod on their
eight hours a day to the honours of the Senate House; who leave the
groves which witnessed the musings of Milton, of Bacon, and of Gray,
without one liberal idea or elegant image, and carry with them into the
world minds contracted by unmingled attention to one part of science,
and memories stored only with technicalities. How often have I seen
such men go forth into society for people to stare at them, and ask each
other how it comes that beings so stupid in conversation, so uninformed
on every subject of history, of letters, and of taste, could gain such
distinction at Cambridge!

It is in such circles, which, I am happy to say, I hardly know but by
report, that knowledge of modern literature is called novel-reading; a
commodious name, invented by ignorance and applied by envy, in the same
manner as men without learning call a scholar a pedant, and men without
principle call a Christian a Methodist. To me the attacks of such men
are valuable as compliments. The man whose friend tells him that he is
known to be extensively acquainted with elegant literature may suspect
that he is flattering him; but he may feel real and secure satisfaction
when some Johnian sneers at him for a novel-reader. [My uncle was fond
of telling us how he would walk miles out of Cambridge in order to meet
the coach which brought the last new Waverley novel.]

As to the question whether or not I am wasting time, I shall leave that
for time to answer. I cannot afford to sacrifice a day every week in
defence and explanation as to my habits of reading. I value, most deeply
value, that solicitude which arises from your affection for me; but
let it not debar me from justice and candour. Believe me ever, my dear
Father,

Your most affectionate son,

T. B. M.

The father and son were in sympathy upon what, at this distance of time,
appears as the least inviting article of the Whig creed. They were both
partisans of the Queen. Zachary Macaulay was inclined in her favour by
sentiments alike of friendship, and of the most pardonable resentment.
Brougham, her illustrious advocate, had for ten years been the main hope
and stay of the movement against Slavery and the Slave Trade; while the
John Bull, whose special mission it was to write her down, honoured the
Abolitionist party with its declared animosity. However full its columns
might be of libels upon the honour of the wives and daughters of Whig
statesmen, it could always find room for calumnies against Mr. Macaulay
which in ingenuity of fabrication, and in cruelty of intention,
were conspicuous even among the contents of the most discreditable
publication that ever issued from the London press. When Queen Caroline
landed from the Continent in June 1820 the young Trinity undergraduate
greeted her Majesty with a complimentary ode, which certainly little
resembled those effusions that, in the old courtly days, an University
was accustomed to lay at the feet of its Sovereign. The piece has no
literary value, and is curious only as reflecting the passion of the
hour. The first and last stanzas run as follows:--

 Let mirth on every visage shine
 And glow in every soul.
 Bring forth, bring forth, the oldest wine,
 And crown the largest bowl.
 Bear to her home, while banners fly
 From each resounding steeple,
 And rockets sparkle in the sky,
 The Daughter of the People.
 E'en here, for one triumphant day,
 Let want and woe be dumb,
 And bonfires blaze, and schoolboys play.
 Thank Heaven, our Queen is come.

     *   *   *   *

 Though tyrant hatred still denies
 Each right that fits thy station,
 To thee a people's love supplies
 A nobler coronation;
 A coronation all unknown
 To Europe's royal vermin;
 For England's heart shall be thy throne,
 And purity thine ermine;
 Thy Proclamation our applause,
 Applause denied to some;
 Thy crown our love; thy shield our laws.
 Thank Heaven, our Queen is come!

Early in November, warned by growing excitement outside the House of
Lords, and by dwindling majorities within, Lord Liverpool announced
that the King's Ministers had come to the determination not to proceed
further with the Bill of Pains and Penalties. The joy which this
declaration spread through the country has been described as "beyond the
scope of record."

Cambridge: November 13, 1820.

My dear Father,--All here is ecstasy. "Thank God, the country is saved,"
were my first words when I caught a glimpse of the papers of Friday
night. "Thank God, the country is saved," is written on every face and
echoed by every voice. Even the symptoms of popular violence, three days
ago so terrific, are now displayed with good humour and received with
cheerfulness. Instead of curses on the Lords, on every post and every
wall is written, "All is as it should be;" "Justice done at last;" and
similar mottoes expressive of the sudden turn of public feeling. How the
case may stand in London I do not know; but here the public danger,
like all dangers which depend merely on human opinions and feelings,
has disappeared from our sight almost in the twinkling of an eye. I hope
that the result of these changes may be the secure reestablishment
of our commerce, which I suppose political apprehension must have
contributed to depress. I hope, at least, that there is no danger to our
own fortunes of the kind at which you seem to hint. Be assured however,
my dear Father, that, be our circumstances what they may, I feel firmly
prepared to encounter the worst with fortitude, and to do my utmost to
retrieve it by exertion. The best inheritance you have already secured
to me,--an unblemished name and a good education. And for the
rest, whatever calamities befall us, I would not, to speak without
affectation, exchange adversity consoled, as with us it must ever be,
by mutual affection and domestic happiness, for anything which can be
possessed by those who are destitute of the kindness of parents and
sisters like mine. But I think, on referring to your letter, that I
insist too much upon the signification of a few words. I hope so, and
trust that everything will go well. But it is chapel time, and I must
conclude.

Ever most affectionately yours,

T.B. MACAULAY.

Trin. Coll.: March 25, 1821.

My dear Mother,--I entreat you to entertain no apprehensions about my
health. My fever, cough, and sore-throat have all disappeared for the
last four days. Many thanks for your intelligence about poor dear John's
recovery, which has much exhilarated me. Yet I do not know whether
illness to him is not rather a prerogative than an evil. I am sure that
it is well worth while being sick to be nursed by a mother. There is
nothing which I remember with such pleasure as the time when you nursed
me at Aspenden. The other night, when I lay on my sofa very ill and
hypochondriac, I was thinking over that time. How sick, and sleepless,
and weak I was, lying in bed, when I was told that you were come! How
well I remember with what an ecstasy of joy I saw that face approaching
me, in the middle of people that did not care if I died that night
except for the trouble of burying me! The sound of your voice, the touch
of your hand, are present to me now, and will be, I trust in God, to
my last hour. The very thought of these things invigorated me the other
day; and I almost blessed the sickness and low spirits which brought
before me associated images of a tenderness and an affection, which,
however imperfectly repaid, are deeply remembered. Such scenes and such
recollections are the bright half of human nature and human destiny. All
objects of ambition, all rewards of talent, sink into nothing
compared with that affection which is independent of good or adverse
circumstances, excepting that it is never so ardent, so delicate, or so
tender as in the hour of languor or distress. But I must stop. I had no
intention of pouring out on paper what I am much more used to think than
to express. Farewell, my dear Mother.

Ever yours affectionately,

T.B. MACAULAY.

Macaulay liked Cambridge too well to spend the long vacation elsewhere
except under strong compulsion; but in 1821, with the terrors of the
Mathematical Tripos already close at hand, he was persuaded into joining
a reading party in Wales with a Mr. Bird as tutor. Eardley Childers, the
father of the statesman of that name, has preserved a pleasant little
memorial of the expedition.

To Charles Smith Bird, Eardley Childers, Thos. B. Macaulay, William
Clayton Walters, Geo. B. Paley, Robert Jarratt, Thos. Jarratt, Edwin
Kempson, Ebenezer Ware, Wm. Cornwall, John Greenwood, J. Lloyd, and Jno.
Wm. Gleadall, Esquires.

Gentlemen,--We the undersigned, for ourselves and the inhabitants in
general of the town of Llanrwst in the county of Denbigh, consider it
our duty to express to you the high sense we entertain of your general
good conduct and demeanour during your residence here, and we assure
you that we view with much regret the period of your separation and
departure from amongst us. We are very sensible of the obligation we
are under for your uniformly benevolent and charitable exertions
upon several public occasions, and we feel peculiar pleasure in thus
tendering to you individually our gratitude and thanks.

Wishing you all possible prosperity and happiness in your future
avocations, we subscribe ourselves with unfeigned respect, Gentlemen,

Your most obedient servants,

REV. JOHN TILTEY,

&c., &c.

(25 signatures.)

In one respect Macaulay hardly deserved his share of this eulogium. A
scheme was on foot in the town to found an auxiliary branch of the Bible
Society. A public meeting was called, and Mr. Bird urged his eloquent
pupil to aid the project with a specimen of Union rhetoric. Macaulay,
however, had had enough of the Bible Society at Clapham, and sturdily
refused to come forward as its champion at Llanrwst.

Llanrwst: July--, 1821.

My dear Mother,--You see I know not how to date my letter. My calendar
in this sequestered spot is as irregular as Robinson Crusoe's after he
had missed one day in his calculation. I have no intelligence to send
you, unless a battle between a drunken attorney and an impudent publican
which took place here yesterday may deserve the appellation. You may
perhaps be more interested to hear that I sprained my foot, and am just
recovering from the effects of the accident by means of opodeldoc which
I bought at the tinker's. For all trades and professions here lie in a
most delightful confusion. The druggist sells hats; the shoemaker is the
sole bookseller, if that dignity may be allowed him on the strength of
the three Welsh Bibles, and the guide to Caernarvon, which adorn his
window; ink is sold by the apothecary; the grocer sells ropes, (a
commodity which, I fear, I shall require before my residence here is
over,) and tooth-brushes. A clothes-brush is a luxury yet unknown to
Llanrwst. As to books, for want of any other English literature, I
intend to learn Paradise Lost by heart at odd moments. But I must
conclude. Write to me often, my dear Mother, and all of you at home, or
you may have to answer for my drowning myself, like Gray's bard, in "Old
Conway's foaming flood," which is most conveniently near for so poetical
an exit.

Ever most affectionately yours,

T. B. M.


Llanrwst: August 32, 1821.

My dear Father,--I have just received your letter, and cannot but feel
concerned at the tone of it. I do not think

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