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.”