ive merits of Pascal, Racine,
Corneille, Moliere, and Boileau or checking him as he attempted to
justify his godparents by running off a list of all the famous Thomases
in history. The place is full of his memories. His favourite walk was a
mile of field-road and lane which leads from the house to a lodge on
the highway; and his favourite point of view in that walk was a slight
acclivity, whence the traveller from Leicester catches his first sight
of Rothley Temple, with its background of hill and greenwood. He is
remembered as sitting at the window in the hall, reading Dante to
himself, or translating it aloud as long as any listener cared to remain
within ear-shot. He occupied, by choice, a very small chamber on the
ground floor, through the window of which he could escape unobserved
while afternoon callers were on their way between the front door and the
drawing-room. On such occasions he would take refuge in a boat moored
under the shade of some fine oaks which still exist, though the
ornamental water on whose bank they stood has since been converted into
dry land.

A journal kept at intervals by Margaret Macaulay, some extracts from
which have here been arranged in the form of a continuous narrative,
affords a pleasant and faithful picture of her brother's home-life
during the years 1831 and 1832. With an artless candour, from which his
reputation will not suffer, she relates the alternations of hope and
disappointment through which the young people passed when it began to be
a question whether or not he would be asked to join the Administration.

"I think I was about twelve when I first became very fond of my brother,
and from that time my affection for him has gone on increasing during a
period of seven years. I shall never forget my delight and enchantment
when I first found that he seemed to like talking to me. His manner was
very flattering to such a child, for he always took as much pains to
amuse me, and to inform me on anything I wished to know, as ho could
have done to the greatest person in the land. I have heard him express
great disgust towards those people who, lively and agreeable abroad, are
a dead weight in the family circle. I think the remarkable clearness
of his style proceeds in some measure from the habit of conversing with
very young people, to whom he has a great deal to explain and impart.

"He reads his works to us in the manuscript, and, when we find fault, as
I very often do with his be