innermost circle of friends and fellow-labourers who were united
round Wilberforce and Henry Thornton by indissoluble bonds of
mutual personal regard and common public ends. As an indispensable
part of his initiation into that very pleasant confederacy, he was
sent down to be introduced to Hannah More, who was living at
Cowslip Green, near Bristol, in the enjoyment of general respect,
mixed with a good deal of what even those who admire her as she
deserved must in conscience call flattery. He there met Selina
Mills, a former pupil of the school which the Miss Mores kept in
the neighbouring city, and a lifelong friend of all the sisters.
The young lady is said to have been extremely pretty and
attractive, as may well be believed by those who saw her in later
years. She was the daughter of a member of the Society of Friends,
who at one time was a bookseller in Bristol, and who built there a
small street called "Mills Place," in which he himself resided.
His grandchildren remembered him as an old man of imposing
appearance, with long white hair, talking incessantly of Jacob
Boehmen. Mr. Mills had sons, one of whom edited a Bristol journal
exceedingly well, and is said to have made some figure in light
literature. This uncle of Lord Macaulay was a very lively, clever
man, full of good stories, of which only one has survived. Young
Mills, while resident in London, had looked in at Rowland Hill's
chapel, and had there lost a new hat. When he reported the
misfortune to his father, the old Quaker replied: "John, if thee'd
gone to the right place of worship, thee'd have kept thy hat upon
thy head." Lord Macaulay was accustomed to say that he got his
"joviality" from his mother's family. If his power of humour was
indeed of Quaker origin, he was rather ungrateful in the use to
which he sometimes put it.