he was feeling, the little fellow looked up in her face and
replied: "Thank you, madam, the agony is abated."

But it must not be supposed that his quaint manners proceeded
from affectation or conceit; for all testimony declares that a
more simple and natural child never lived, or a more lively and
merry one. He had at his command the resources of the Common; to
this day the most unchanged spot within ten miles of St. Paul's,
and which to all appearance will ere long hold that pleasant pre-
eminence within ten leagues. That delightful wilderness of gorse
bushes, and poplar groves, and gravel-pits, and ponds great and
small, was to little Tom Macaulay a region of inexhaustible
romance and mystery. He explored its recesses; he composed, and
almost believed, its legends; he invented for its different
features a nomenclature which has been faithfully preserved by
two generations of children. A slight ridge, intersected by deep
ditches, towards the west of the Common, the very existence of
which no one above eight years old would notice, was dignified
with the title of the Alps; while the elevated island, covered
with shrubs, that gives a name to the Mount pond, was regarded
with infinite awe as being the nearest approach within the
circuit of his observation to a conception of the majesty of
Sinai. Indeed, at this period his infant fancy was much exercised
with the threats and terrors of the Law. He had a little plot of
ground at the back of the house, marked out as his own by a Tory
of oyster-shells, which a maid one day threw away as rubbish. He
went straight to the drawing-room, where his mother was
entertaining some visitors, walked into the circle, and said very
solemnly: "Cursed be Sally; for it is written, Cursed is he that
removeth his neighbour's land-mark."