happy girls, who were never tired of
seeing, and hearing and admiring! We breakfasted, lunched, and dined
with one or the other of the set during our stay, and walked about the
colleges all day with the whole train. [A reminiscence from that week of
refined and genial hospitality survives in the Essay on Madame d'Arblay.
The reception which Miss Burney would have enjoyed at Oxford, if she had
visited it otherwise than as an attendant on Royalty, is sketched off
with all the writer's wonted spirit, and more than his wonted grace.]
Whewell was then tutor; rougher, but less pompous, and much more
agreeable, than in after years; though I do not think that he ever
cordially liked your uncle. We then went on to Oxford, which from
knowing no one there seemed terribly dull to us by comparison with
Cambridge, and we rejoiced our brother's heart by sighing after
Trinity."

During the first half of his life Macaulay spent some months of every
year at the seat of his uncle, Mr. Babington, who kept open house for
his nephews and nieces throughout the summer and autumn. Rothley Temple,
which lies in a valley beyond the first ridge that separates the flat
unattractive country immediately round Leicester from the wild and
beautiful scenery of Charnwood Forest, is well worth visiting as a
singularly unaltered specimen of an old English home. The stately trees;
the grounds, half park and half meadow; the cattle grazing up to the
very windows; the hall, with its stone pavement rather below than above
the level of the soil, hung with armour rude and rusty enough to dispel
the suspicion of its having passed through a collector's hands; the low
ceilings; the dark oak wainscot, carved after primitive designs, that
covered every inch of wall in bedroom and corridor; the general air
which the whole interior presented of having been put to rights at
the date of the Armada and left alone ever since;--all this antiquity
contrasted quaintly, but prettily enough, with the youth and gaiety that
lit up every corner of the ever-crowded though comfortable mansion. In
wet weather there was always a merry group sitting on the staircase, or
marching up and down the gallery; and, wherever the noise and fun were
most abundant, wherever there was to be heard the loudest laughter and
the most vehement expostulation, Macaulay was the centre of a circle
which was exclaiming at the levity of his remarks about the Blessed
Martyr; disputing with him on the comparat