In October 1818 Macaulay went into residence at Trinity College, Cambridge.  Mr. Henry Sykes Thornton, the eldest son of the member for Southwark, was his companion throughout his university career.  The young men lived in the same lodgings, and began by reading with the same tutor; a plan which promised well, because, in addition to what was his own by right, each had the benefit of the period of instruction paid for by the other.  But two hours were much the same as one to Macaulay, in whose eyes algebra and geometry were so much additional material for lively and interminable argument.  Thornton reluctantly broke through the arrangement, and eventually stood highest among the Trinity wranglers of his year; an elevation which he could hardly have attained if he had pursued his studies in company with one who regarded every successive mathematical proposition as an open question.  A Parliamentary election took place while the two friends were still quartered together in Jesus Lane.  A tumult in the neighbouring street announced that the citizens were expressing their sentiments by the only channel which was open to them before the days of Reform; and Macaulay, to whom any excitement of a political nature was absolutely irresistible, dragged Thornton to the scene of action, and found the mob breaking the windows of the Hoop hotel, the head-quarters of the successful candidates.  His ardour was cooled by receiving a dead cat full in the face.  The man who was responsible for the animal came up and apologised very civilly, assuring him that there was no town and gown feeling in the matter, and that the cat had been meant for Mr. Adeane.  “I wish,” replied Macaulay, “that you had meant it for me, and hit Mr. Adeane.”

After no long while he removed within the walls of Trinity, and resided first in the centre rooms of Bishop’s Hostel, and subsequently in the Old Court, between the Gate and the Chapel.  The door, which once bore his name, is on the ground floor, to the left hand as you face the staircase.  In more recent years, undergraduates who are accustomed to be out after lawful hours have claimed a right of way through the window which looks towards the town;—­to the great annoyance of any occupant who is too good-natured to refuse the accommodation to others, and too steady to need it himself.  This power of surreptitious entry had not been discovered in Macaulay’s days; and, indeed, he would have cared very little for the privilege of spending his time outside walls which contained within them as many books as even he could read, and more friends than even he could talk to.  Wanting nothing beyond what his college had to give, he revelled in the possession of leisure and liberty, in the almost complete command of his own time, in the power of passing at choice from the most perfect solitude to the most agreeable company.  He keenly appreciated a society which cherishes all that is genuine, and is only too out-spoken in its abhorrence of pretension and display:—­a society in which a man lives with those whom he likes, and with those only; choosing his comrades for their own sake, and so indifferent to the external distinctions of wealth and position that no one who has entered fully into the spirit of college life can ever unlearn its priceless lesson of manliness and simplicity.