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,