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 preeminence 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."

While still the merest child he was sent as a day-scholar to Mr.
Greaves, a shrewd Yorkshireman with a turn for science, who had been
originally brought to the neighbourhood in order to educate a number
of African youths sent over to imbibe Western civilisation at the
fountain-head. The poor fellows had found as much difficulty in keeping
alive at Clapham as Englishmen experience at Sierra Leone; and, in the
end, their tutor set up a school for boys of his own colour, and at one
time had charge of almost the entire rising generation of the Common.
Mrs. Macaulay explained to Tom that he must learn to study without the
solace of bread and butter, to which he replied: "Yes, mama, industry
shall be my bread and attention my butter." But, as a matter of fact,
no one ever crept more unwillingly to school. Each several afternoon he
made piteous entreaties to be excused returning after dinner, and was
met by the unvarying formula: "No, Tom, if it