nd to adjust the relation of Entity with the
two Predicaments, so that I were exempted from this miserable study!
"Discipline" of the mind! Say rather starvation, confinement, torture,
annihilation! But it must be. I feel myself becoming a personification
of Algebra, a living trigonometrical canon, a walking table of
Logarithms. All my perceptions of elegance and beauty gone, or at least
going. By the end of the term my brain will be "as dry as the remainder
biscuit after a voyage." Oh to change Cam for Isis! But such is my
destiny; and, since it is so, be the pursuit contemptible, below
contempt, or disgusting beyond abhorrence, I shall aim at no second
place. But three years! I cannot endure the thought. I cannot bear
to contemplate what I must have to undergo. Farewell then Homer and
Sophocles and Cicero.

Farewell happy fields
Where joy for ever reigns
Hail, horrors, hail, Infernal world!

How does it proceed? Milton's descriptions have been driven out of my
head by such elegant expressions as the following

[Long mathematical formula]

My classics must be Woodhouse, and my amusements summing an infinite
series. Farewell, and tell Selina and Jane to be thankful that it is
not a necessary part of female education to get a headache daily without
acquiring one practical truth or beautiful image in return. Again, and
with affectionate love to my Father, farewell wishes your most miserable
and mathematical son

T.B. MACAULAY.

Cambridge: November 9, 1818.

My dear Father,--Your letter, which I read with the greatest pleasure,
is perfectly safe from all persons who could make a bad use of it. The
Emperor Alexander's plans as detailed in the conversation between him
and Clarkson [Thomas Clarkson, the famous assailant of slavery.]
are almost superhuman; and tower as much above the common hopes and
aspirations of philanthropists as the statue which his Macedonian
namesake proposed to hew out of Mount Athos excelled the most colossal
works of meaner projectors. As Burke said of Henry the Fourth's
wish that every peasant in France might have the chicken in his pot
comfortably on a Sunday, we may say of these mighty plans, "The mere
wish, the unfulfilled desire, exceeded all that we hear of the splendid
professions and exploits of princes." Yet my satisfaction in the success
of that noble cause in which the Emperor seems to be exerting himself
with so much zeal is scarcely so great as my regret for the man who
wou