“On the evening that we arrived,” says Lady Trevelyan, “we met at dinner Whewell, Sedgwick, Airy, and Thirlwail and how pleasant they were, and how much they made of us two happy girls, who were never tired of seeing, and hearing and admiring!  We breakfasted, lunched, and dined with one or the other of the set during our stay, and walked about the colleges all day with the whole train. [A reminiscence from that week of refined and genial hospitality survives in the Essay on Madame d’Arblay.  The reception which Miss Burney would have enjoyed at Oxford, if she had visited it otherwise than as an attendant on Royalty, is sketched off with all the writer’s wonted spirit, and more than his wonted grace.] Whewell was then tutor; rougher, but less pompous, and much more agreeable, than in after years; though I do not think that he ever cordially liked your uncle.  We then went on to Oxford, which from knowing no one there seemed terribly dull to us by comparison with Cambridge, and we rejoiced our brother’s heart by sighing after Trinity.”

During the first half of his life Macaulay spent some months of every year at the seat of his uncle, Mr. Babington, who kept open house for his nephews and nieces throughout the summer and autumn.  Rothley Temple, which lies in a valley beyond the first ridge that separates the flat unattractive country immediately round Leicester from the wild and beautiful scenery of Charnwood Forest, is well worth visiting as a singularly unaltered specimen of an old English home.  The stately trees; the grounds, half park and half meadow; the cattle grazing up to the very windows; the hall, with its stone pavement rather below than above the level of the soil, hung with armour rude and rusty enough to dispel the suspicion of its having passed through a collector’s hands; the low ceilings; the dark oak wainscot, carved after primitive designs, that covered every inch of wall in bedroom and corridor; the general air which the whole interior presented of having been put to rights at the date of the Armada and left alone ever since;—­all this antiquity contrasted quaintly, but prettily enough, with the youth and gaiety that lit up every corner of the ever-crowded though comfortable mansion.  In wet weather there was always a merry group sitting on the staircase, or marching up and down the gallery; and, wherever the noise and fun were most abundant, wherever there was to be heard the loudest laughter and the most vehement expostulation, Macaulay was the centre of a circle which was exclaiming at the levity of his remarks about the Blessed Martyr; disputing with him on the comparative merits of Pascal, Racine, Corneille, Moliere, and Boileau or checking him as he attempted to justify his godparents by running off a list of all the famous Thomases in history.  The place is full of his memories.  His favourite walk was a mile of field-road and lane which leads from the house to a lodge on the highway; and his favourite