m was indebted for protection."

A letter, written during the latter years of his life, expresses
Macaulay's general views on the subject of University honours. "If a man
brings away from Cambridge self-knowledge, accuracy of mind, and habits
of strong intellectual exertion, he has gained more than if he had made
a display of showy superficial Etonian scholarship, got three or four
Browne's medals, and gone forth into the world a schoolboy and doomed to
be a schoolboy to the last. After all, what a man does at Cambridge is,
in itself, nothing. If he makes a poor figure in life, his having
been Senior Wrangler or University scholar is never mentioned but with
derision. If he makes a distinguished figure, his early honours merge in
those of a later date. I hope that I do not overrate my own place in the
estimation of society. Such as it is, I would not give a halfpenny to
add to the consideration which I enjoy, all the consideration that I
should derive from having been Senior Wrangler. But I often regret, and
even acutely, my want of a Senior Wrangler's knowledge of physics and
mathematics; and I regret still more some habits of mind which a Senior
Wrangler is pretty certain to possess." Like all men who know what the
world is, he regarded the triumph of a college career as of less value
than its disappointments. Those are most to be envied who soonest learn
to expect nothing for which they have not worked hard, and who never
acquire the habit, (a habit which an unbroken course of University
successes too surely breeds,) of pitying themselves overmuch if ever in
after life they happen to work in vain.

Cambridge: Wednesday. (Post-mark, 1818)

My dear Mother,--King, I am absolutely certain, would take no more
pupils on any account. And, even if he would, he has numerous applicants
with prior claims. He has already six, who occupy him six hours in the
day, and is likewise lecturer to the college. It would, however, be
very easy to obtain an excellent tutor. Lefevre and Malkin are men
of first-rate mathematical abilities, and both of our college. I can
scarcely bear to write on Mathematics or Mathematicians. Oh for words to
express my abomination of that science, if a name sacred to the useful
and embellishing arts may be applied to the perception and recollection
of certain properties in numbers and figures! Oh that I had to learn
astrology, or demonology, or school divinity! Oh that I were to pore
over Thomas Aquinas, a