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 works of fiction, and eulogising Fielding and
Smollett. This he incautiously inserted in his periodical, and brought
down upon himself the most violent objurgations from scandalised
contributors, one of whom informed the public that he had committed the
obnoxious number to the flames, and should thenceforward cease to take
in the Magazine. The editor replied with becoming spirit; although by
that time he was aware that the communication, the insertion of which in
an unguarded moment had betrayed him into a controversy for which he had
so little heart, had proceeded from the pen of his son. Such was young
Macaulay's first appearance in print, if we except the index