That home was never more cheerful than during the eight years which followed the close of Macaulay’s college life.  There had been much quiet happiness at Clapham, and much in Cadogan Place; but it was round the house in Great Ormond Street that the dearest associations gathered.  More than forty years afterwards, when Lady Trevelyan was dying, she had herself driven to the spot, as the last drive she ever took, and sat silent in her carriage for many minutes with her eyes fixed upon those well-known walls.

[In August 1857, Macaulay notes in his diary:  “I sent the carriage home, and walked to the Museum.  Passing through Great Ormond Street I saw a bill upon No. 50.  I knocked, was let in, and went over the house with a strange mixture of feelings.  It is more than twenty-six years since I was in it.  The dining-room, and the adjoining room, in which I once slept, are scarcely changed—­the same colouring on the wall, but more dingy.  My father’s study much the same;—­the drawing-rooms too, except the papering.  My bedroom just what it was.  My mother’s bedroom.  I had never been in it since her death.  I went away sad.”]

While warmly attached to all his nearest relations, Macaulay lived in the closest and most frequent companionship with his sisters Hannah and Margaret, younger than himself by ten and twelve years respectively.  His affection for these two, deep and enduring as it was, had in it no element of blindness or infatuation.  Even in the privacy of a diary, or the confidence of the most familiar correspondence, Macaulay, when writing about those whom he loved, was never tempted to indulge in fond exaggeration of their merits.  Margaret, as will be seen in the course of this narrative, died young, leaving a memory of outward graces, and sweet and noble mental qualities, which is treasured by all among whom her short existence was passed.  As regards the other sister, there are many alive who knew her for what she was; and, for those who did not know her, if this book proves how much of her brother’s heart she had, and how well it was worth having, her children will feel that they have repaid their debt even to her.

Education in the Macaulay family was not on system.  Of what are ordinarily called accomplishments the daughters had but few, and Hannah fewest of any; but, ever since she could remember anything, she had enjoyed the run of a good standard library, and had been allowed to read at her own time, and according to her own fancy.  There were two traits in her nature which are seldom united in the same person:  a vivid practical interest in the realities which surrounded her, joined with the power of passing at will into a world of literature and romance in which she found herself entirely at home.  The feeling with which Macaulay and his sister regarded books differed from that of other people in kind rather than in degree.  When they were discoursing together about a work of history or biography, a bystander would have supposed