h upon the signification of a few words. I hope so, and
trust that everything will go well. But it is chapel time, and I must
conclude.

Ever most affectionately yours,

T.B. MACAULAY.

Trin. Coll.: March 25, 1821.

My dear Mother,--I entreat you to entertain no apprehensions about my
health. My fever, cough, and sore-throat have all disappeared for the
last four days. Many thanks for your intelligence about poor dear John's
recovery, which has much exhilarated me. Yet I do not know whether
illness to him is not rather a prerogative than an evil. I am sure that
it is well worth while being sick to be nursed by a mother. There is
nothing which I remember with such pleasure as the time when you nursed
me at Aspenden. The other night, when I lay on my sofa very ill and
hypochondriac, I was thinking over that time. How sick, and sleepless,
and weak I was, lying in bed, when I was told that you were come! How
well I remember with what an ecstasy of joy I saw that face approaching
me, in the middle of people that did not care if I died that night
except for the trouble of burying me! The sound of your voice, the touch
of your hand, are present to me now, and will be, I trust in God, to
my last hour. The very thought of these things invigorated me the other
day; and I almost blessed the sickness and low spirits which brought
before me associated images of a tenderness and an affection, which,
however imperfectly repaid, are deeply remembered. Such scenes and such
recollections are the bright half of human nature and human destiny. All
objects of ambition, all rewards of talent, sink into nothing
compared with that affection which is independent of good or adverse
circumstances, excepting that it is never so ardent, so delicate, or so
tender as in the hour of languor or distress. But I must stop. I had no
intention of pouring out on paper what I am much more used to think than
to express. Farewell, my dear Mother.

Ever yours affectionately,

T.B. MACAULAY.

Macaulay liked Cambridge too well to spend the long vacation elsewhere
except under strong compulsion; but in 1821, with the terrors of the
Mathematical Tripos already close at hand, he was persuaded into joining
a reading party in Wales with a Mr. Bird as tutor. Eardley Childers, the
father of the statesman of that name, has preserved a pleasant little
memorial of the expedition.

To Charles Smith Bird, Eardley Childers, Thos. B. Macaulay, William
Clayton Walter