ins flocked in numbers to a resort where so much
merriment was perpetually on foot. There were seasons during the school
holidays when the house overflowed with noise and frolic from morning to
night; and Macaulay, who at any period of his life could literally spend
whole days in playing with children, was master of the innocent revels.
Games of hide-and-seek, that lasted for hours, with shouting and the
blowing of horns up and down the stairs and through every room, were
varied by ballads, which, like the Scalds of old, he composed during the
act of recitation, while the others struck in with the chorus. He had no
notion whatever of music, but an infallible ear for rhythm. His knack of
improvisation he at all times exercised freely. The verses which he thus
produced, and which he invariably attributed to an anonymous author whom
he styled "the Judicious Poet," were exclusively for home consumption.
Some of these effusions illustrate a sentiment in his disposition
which was among the most decided, and the most frequently and loudly
expressed. Macaulay was only too easily bored, and those whom he
considered fools he by no means suffered gladly. He once amused his
sisters by pouring out whole Iliads of extempore doggrel upon the head
of an unfortunate country squire of their acquaintance, who had a habit
of detaining people by the button, and who was especially addicted to
the society of the higher order of clergy

"His Grace Archbishop Manners Sutton
Could not keep on a single button.
As for Right Reverend John of Chester,
His waistcoats open at the breast are.
Our friend* has filled a mighty trunk
With trophies torn from Doctor Monk
And he has really tattered foully
The vestments of Archbishop Howley
No button could I late discern on
The garments of Archbishop Vernon,
And never had his fingers mercy
Upon the garb of Bishop Percy.
The buttons fly from Bishop Ryder
Like corks that spring from bottled cyder,--"

[*The name of this gentleman has been concealed, as not being
sufficiently known by all to give point, but well enough remembered by
some to give pain.]

and so on, throughout the entire bench, until, after a good half-hour
of hearty and spontaneous nonsense, the girls would go laughing back to
their Italian and their drawing-boards.

He did not play upon words as a habit, nor did he interlard his talk
with far-fetched or overstrained witticisms. His humour, like his
rhetoric, w