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