regenerate the world. Often in later
years I have heard my father, after expressing an earnest desire for
some object, exclaim, 'If I had only Tom's power of speech!' But he
should have remembered that all gifts are not given to one, and that
perhaps such a union as he coveted is even impossible. Parents must
be content to see their children walk in their own path, too happy if
through any road they attain the same end, the living for the glory of
God and the good of man."

From a marvellously early date in Macaulay's life public affairs divided
his thoughts with literature, and, as he grew to manhood, began more and
more to divide his aspirations. His father's house was much used as a
centre of consultation by members of Parliament who lived in the suburbs
on the Surrey side of London; and the boy could hardly have heard more
incessant, and assuredly not more edifying, political talk if he had
been brought up in Downing Street. The future advocate and interpreter
of Whig principles was not reared in the Whig faith. Attached friends of
Pitt, who in personal conduct, and habits of life, certainly came nearer
to their standard than his great rival,--and warmly in favour of a war
which, to their imagination, never entirely lost its early character of
an internecine contest with atheism.--the Evangelicals in the House of
Commons for the most part acted with the Tories. But it may be doubted
whether, in the long run, their party would not have been better without
them. By the zeal, the munificence, the laborious activity, with which
they pursued their religious and semi-religious enterprises, they did
more to teach the world how to get rid of existing institutions than
by their votes and speeches at Westminster they contributed to preserve
them. [Macaulay, writing to one of his sisters in 1844, says: "I think
Stephen's article on the Clapham Sect the best thing he ever did, I do
not think with you that the Claphamites were men too obscure for such
delineation. The truth is that from that little knot of men emanated
all the Bible Societies, and almost all the Missionary Societies, in the
world. The whole organisation of the Evangelical party was their work.
The share which they had in providing means for the education of the
people was great. They were really the destroyers of the slave-trade,
and of slavery. Many of those whom Stephen describes were public men of
the greatest weight, Lord Teignmouth governed India in Calcutta