rter past three, and several leave Grace Church Street in the City
every day at four. The distance from London Bridge to Mr. Macaulay's
house is about four miles.

23d June, 1812.

In a letter from his mother of June 28, 1812, the anxious parent says:--

"Although we long to see you, yet we rejoice that you are so happily
situated at so great a distance from our, at present, wretched, miserably
distracted country, whose mad rulers are plunging us into an unnecessary
war with a country that I shall always revere as doing more to spread the
glorious gospel of Jesus Christ to the benighted heathen, and those that
are famishing from lack of knowledge, than any other nation on the globe.
Our hearts bleed at every pore to think of again being at war. We have
not yet forgotten the wormwood and gall of the last revolution.

"We hope you will steer clear of any of the difficulties of the contest
that is about to take place. We wish you to be very prudent and guarded
in all your conversation and actions and not to make yourself a party man
on either side. Have your opinions, but have them to yourself, and be
sure you do not commit them to paper. It may do you great injury either
on one side or the other, and you are not in your present situation as a
politician but as an artist."

In this same letter his father adds:--

"The die is cast and our country plunged in war.... There is great
opposition to it in the country. The papers, which you will have
opportunity to see, will inform you of the state of parties. Your mother
has given you sound advice as respects the course you should pursue. Be
the _artist_ wholly and let _politics_ alone. I rejoice that you are
where you are at the present time. You will do what you can without delay
to support yourself, as I know not how we shall be able to procure funds
to transmit to you, and, if we had them, how we could transmit them
should the war continue."

To this the son answers in a letter of August 6, 1812:--

"I am improving, perhaps, the last opportunity I shall have for some time
to write you. Mr. Wheeler, an American, who has been here some time
studying portrait painting, has kindly offered to deliver this to you.

"Our political affairs, it seems, have come to a crisis, which I
sincerely hope will turn to the advantage of America; it certainly will
not to this country. War is an evil which no man ought to think lightly
of, but, if ever it was just, it now is. The English