Mr. Macaulay fell in love with Miss Mills, and obtained her
affection in return. He had to encounter the opposition of her
relations, who were set upon her making another and a better
match, and of Mrs. Patty More, (so well known to all who have
studied the somewhat diffuse annals of the More family,) who, in
the true spirit of romantic friendship, wished her to promise
never to marry at all, but to domesticate herself as a youngest
sister in the household at Cowslip Green. Miss Hannah, however,
took a more unselfish view of the situation, and advocated Mr.
Macaulay's cause with firmness and good feeling. Indeed, he must
have been, according to her particular notions, the most
irreproachable of lovers, until her own Coelebs was given to the
world. By her help he carried his point in so far that the
engagement was made and recognised; but the friends of the young
lady would not allow her to accompany him to Africa; and, during
his absence from England, which began in the early months of
1796, by an arrangement that under the circumstances was very
judicious, she spent much of her time in Leicestershire with his
sister Mrs. Babington.

His first business after arriving at Sierra Leone was to sit in
judgment on the ringleaders of a formidable outbreak which had
taken place in the colony; and he had an opportunity of proving
by example that negro disaffection, from the nature of the race,
is peculiarly susceptible to treatment by mild remedies, if only
the man in the post of responsibility has got a heart and can
contrive to keep his head. He had much more trouble with a batch
of missionaries, whom he took with him in the ship, and who were
no sooner on board than they began to fall out, ostensibly on
controversial topics, but more probably from the same motives