n down under an attack of low
fever.

On his arrival he was admitted at once and for ever within the innermost
circle of friends and fellow-labourers who were united round Wilberforce
and Henry Thornton by indissoluble bonds of mutual personal regard and
common public ends. As an indispensable part of his initiation into that
very pleasant confederacy, he was sent down to be introduced to Hannah
More, who was living at Cowslip Green, near Bristol, in the enjoyment
of general respect, mixed with a good deal of what even those who admire
her as she deserved must in conscience call flattery. He there met
Selina Mills, a former pupil of the school which the Miss Mores kept
in the neighbouring city, and a lifelong friend of all the sisters. The
young lady is said to have been extremely pretty and attractive, as
may well be believed by those who saw her in later years. She was the
daughter of a member of the Society of Friends, who at one time was a
bookseller in Bristol, and who built there a small street called "Mills
Place," in which he himself resided. His grandchildren remembered him
as an old man of imposing appearance, with long white hair, talking
incessantly of Jacob Boehmen. Mr. Mills had sons, one of whom edited a
Bristol journal exceedingly well, and is said to have made some figure
in light literature. This uncle of Lord Macaulay was a very lively,
clever man, full of good stories, of which only one has survived. Young
Mills, while resident in London, had looked in at Rowland Hill's chapel,
and had there lost a new hat. When he reported the misfortune to his
father, the old Quaker replied: "John, if thee'd gone to the right place
of worship, thee'd have kept thy hat upon thy head." Lord Macaulay was
accustomed to say that he got his "joviality" from his mother's family.
If his power of humour was indeed of Quaker origin, he was rather
ungrateful in the use to which he sometimes put it.

Mr. Macaulay fell in love with Miss Mills, and obtained her affection
in return. He had to encounter the opposition of her relations, who were
set upon her making another and a better match, and of Mrs. Patty More,
(so well known to all who have studied the somewhat diffuse annals of
the More family,) who, in the true spirit of romantic friendship, wished
her to promise never to marry at all, but to domesticate herself as a
youngest sister in the household at Cowslip Green. Miss Hannah,
however, took a more unselfish view of the