her's hospitable home. At the age
of three he would lie at full length on the carpet eagerly reading. He
was never seen without an open book in his hands, even during his walks.
He cared nothing for the sports of his companions. He could neither
ride, nor drive, nor swim, nor row a boat, nor play a game of tennis or
foot-ball. He cared only for books of all sorts, which he seized upon
with inextinguishable curiosity, and stored their contents in his
memory. When a boy, he had learned the "Paradise Lost" by heart. He did
not care to go to school, because it interrupted his reading. Hannah
More, a frequent visitor at Clapham and a warm friend of the family,
gazed upon him with amazement, but was too wise and conscientious to
spoil him by her commendations. At eight years of age he also had great
facility in making verses, which were more than tolerable.

Zachary Macaulay objected to his son being educated in one of the great
schools in England, like Westminster and Harrow, and he was therefore
sent to a private school kept by an evangelical divine who had been a
fellow at Cambridge,--a good scholar, but narrow in his theological
views. Indeed, Macaulay got enough of Calvinism before he went to
college, and was so unwisely crammed with it at home and at school, that
through life he had a repugnance to the evangelical doctrines of the Low
Church, with which, much to the grief of his father, he associated cant,
always his especial abhorrence and disgust. While Macaulay venerated his
father, he had little sympathy with his views, and never loved him as he
did his own sisters. He did his filial duty, and that was
all,--contributed largely to his father's support in later life, treated
him with profound respect, but was never drawn to him in affectionate
frankness and confidence.

It cannot be disguised that Macaulay was worldly in his turn of mind,
intensely practical, and ambitious of distinction as soon as he became
conscious of his great powers, although in his school-days he was very
modest and retiring. He was not religiously inclined, nor at all
spiritually minded. An omnivorous reader seldom is narrow, and seldom is
profound. Macaulay was no exception. He admired Pascal, but only for his
exquisite style and his trenchant irony. He saw little in Augustine
except his vast acquaintance with Latin authors. He carefully avoided
writing on the Schoolmen, or Calvin, or the great divines of the
seventeenth century. Bunyan he a