emselves at any cost of time and trouble, or sacrificing self-respect
in ignoble efforts to struggle into a social grade above their own. The
child will never place his aims high, and pursue them steadily, unless
the parent has taught him what energy, and elevation of purpose, mean
not less by example than by precept.

In that company of indefatigable workers none equalled the labours of
Zachary Macaulay. Even now, when he has been in his grave for more than
the third of a century, it seems almost an act of disloyalty to record
the public services of a man who thought that he had done less than
nothing if his exertions met with praise, or even with recognition. The
nature and value of those services may be estimated from the terms in
which a very competent judge, who knew how to weigh his words, spoke
of the part which Mr. Macaulay played in one only of his numerous
enterprises,--the suppression of slavery and the slave-trade. "That God
had called him into being to wage war with this gigantic evil became his
immutable conviction. During forty successive years he was ever burdened
with this thought. It was the subject of his visions by day and of his
dreams by night. To give them reality he laboured as men labour for the
honours of a profession or for the subsistence of their children.
In that service he sacrificed all that a man may lawfully
sacrifice--health, fortune, repose, favour, and celebrity. He died a
poor man, though wealth was within his reach. He devoted himself to
the severest toil, amidst allurements to luxuriate in the delights of
domestic and social intercourse, such as few indeed have encountered.
He silently permitted some to usurp his hardly-earned honours, that
no selfish controversy might desecrate their common cause. He made no
effort to obtain the praises of the world, though he had talents to
command, and a temper peculiarly disposed to enjoy them. He drew upon
himself the poisoned shafts of calumny, and, while feeling their sting
as generous spirits only can feel it, never turned a single step aside
from his path to propitiate or to crush the slanderers."

Zachary Macaulay was no mere man of action. It is difficult to
understand when it was that he had time to pick up his knowledge of
general literature; or how he made room for it in a mind so crammed
with facts and statistics relating to questions of the day that when
Wilberforce was at a loss for a piece of information he used to say,
"Let us