is dinner, reading my
letter, and turning to him, with an inquisitive glance, at the end of
the paragraph. I think too that I see his expressive shake of the head
at it. O, may I be mistaken! You cannot conceive what an alteration a
favourable answer would produce in me. If your approbation of my request
depends upon my advancing in study, I will work like a cart-horse. If
you should refuse it, you will deprive me of the most pleasing illusion
which I ever experienced in my life. Pray do not fail to write speedily.

Your dutiful and affectionate son,

T. B. MACAULAY.

His father answered him in a letter of strong religious complexion,
full of feeling, and even of beauty, but too long for reproduction in a
biography that is not his own.

Mr. Macaulay's deep anxiety for his son's welfare sometimes induced him
to lend too ready an ear to busybodies, who informed him of failings
in the boy which would have been treated more lightly, and perhaps more
wisely, by a less devoted father. In the early months of 1814 he writes
as follows, after hearing the tale of some guest of Mr. Preston whom
Tom had no doubt contradicted at table in presence of the assembled
household.

London: March 4, 1814.

My dear Tom,--In taking up my pen this morning a passage in Cowper
almost involuntarily occurred to me. You will find it at length in his
"Conversation."

"Ye powers who rule the Tongue, if such there are,
And make colloquial happiness your care,
Preserve me from the thing I dread and hate,
A duel in the form of a debate.
Vociferated logic kills me quite.
A noisy man is always in the right."

You know how much such a quotation as this would fall in with my
notions, averse as I am to loud and noisy tones, and self-confident,
overwhelming, and yet perhaps very unsound arguments. And you will
remember how anxiously I dwelt upon this point while you were at home.
I have been in hopes that this half-year would witness a great change
in you in this respect. My hopes, however, have been a little damped by
something which I heard last week through a friend, who seemed to have
received an impression that you had gained a high distinction among the
young gentlemen at Shelford by the loudness and vehemence of your tones.
Now, my dear Tom, you cannot doubt that this gives me pain; and it does
so not so much on account of the thing itself, as because I consider
it a pretty infallible test of the mind within. I do long and pray