nd he had read some of Athanasius. 'I remember a
sermon,' he said, 'of Chrysostom's in praise of the Bishop of
Antioch;' and then he proceeded to give us the substance of this
sermon till Lady Holland got tired of the Fathers, again put her
extinguisher on Chrysostom as she had done on Munro, and with a
sort of derision, and as if to have the pleasure of puzzling
Macaulay, she turned to him and said, 'Pray, Macaulay, what was
the origin of a _doll_? when were dolls first mentioned in
history?' Macaulay was, however, just as much up to the dolls as
he was to the Fathers, and instantly replied that the Roman
children had their dolls, which they offered up to Venus when
they grew older; and quoted Persius for

'Veneri donatae a virgine puppae,'

and I have not the least doubt, if he had been allowed to
proceed, he would have told us who was the Chenevix of ancient
Rome, and the name of the first baby that ever handled a doll.

[3] [He had been dead three months.]

The conversation then ran upon Milman's 'History of
Christianity,' which Melbourne praised, the religious opinions of
Locke, of Milman himself, the opinion of the world thereupon, and
so on to Strauss's book and his mythical system, and what he
meant by mythical. Macaulay began illustrating and explaining the
meaning of a _myth_ by examples from remote antiquity, when I
observed that in order to explain the meaning of 'mythical' it
was not necessary to go so far back; that, for instance, we might
take the case of Wm. Huntington, S.S.: that the account of his
life was historical, but the story of his praying to God for a
new pair of leather breeches and finding them under a hedge was
mythical. Now, I had just a general superficial recollection of
this story in Huntington's 'Life,' but my farthing rushlight was
instantly extinguished by the blaze of Macaulay's all-grasping
and all-retaining memory, for he at once came in with the whole
minute account of this transaction: how Huntington had prayed,
what he had found, and where, and all he had said to the tailor
by whom this miraculous nether garment was made.

January 30th, 1841 {p.370}

[Page Head: M. GUIZOT'S ESTIMATE OF LORD HOLLAND.]

Parliament opened on Tuesday last with a very meagre speech, on
which no amendment could be hung. The Duke spoke extremely well
in the House of Lords, and Peel the same in the House of Commons.
Both approved (the Duke without any qualification, Pee