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.”