unruffled sweetness of temper, his unfailing flow of spirits, his
amusing talk, all made his presence so delightful that his wishes
and his tastes were our law. He hated strangers; and his notion
of perfect happiness was to see us all working round him while he
read aloud a novel, and then to walk all together on the Common,
or, if it rained, to have a frightfully noisy game of hide-and-
seek. I have often wondered how our mother could ever have
endured our noise in her little house. My earliest recollections
speak of the intense happiness of the holidays, beginning with
finding him in Papa's room in the morning; the awe at the idea of
his having reached home in the dark after we were in bed, and the
Saturnalia which at once set in;--no lessons; nothing but fun and
merriment for the whole six weeks. In the year 1816 we were at
Brighton for the summer holidays, and he read to us Sir Charles
Grandison. It was always a habit in our family to read aloud
every evening. Among the books selected I can recall Clarendon,
Burnet, Shakspeare, (a great treat when my mother took the
volume,) Miss Edgeworth, Mackenzie's Lounger and Mirror, and, as
a standing dish, the Quarterly and the Edinburgh Reviews. Poets
too, especially Scott and Crabbe, were constantly chosen. Poetry
and novels, except during Tom's holidays, were forbidden in the
daytime, and stigmatised as 'drinking drams in the morning.'"

Morning or evening, Mr. Macaulay disapproved of novel-reading;
but, too indulgent to insist on having his own way in any but
essential matters, he lived to see himself the head of a family
in which novels were more read, and better remembered, than in
any household of the United Kingdom. The first warning of the
troubles that were in store for him was an anonymous letter
addressed to him as editor of the Christian Observer, defending