who had exerted himself
for the deliverance of the wretched Africans. He has just begun it. He
has composed I know not how many hymns. I send you one, as a specimen,
in his own handwriting, which he wrote about six months ago on one
Monday morning while we were at breakfast."

The affection of the last generation of his relatives has preserved
all these pieces, but the piety of this generation will refrain from
submitting them to public criticism. A marginal note, in which Macaulay
has expressed his cordial approval of Uncle Toby's [Tristram Shandy,
chapter clxiii.] remark about the great Lipsius, indicates his own
wishes in the matter too clearly to leave any choice for those who come
after him. But there still may be read in a boyish scrawl the epitome of
Universal History, from "a new king who knew not Joseph,"--down through
Rameses, and Dido, and Tydeus, and Tarquin, and Crassus, and Gallienus,
and Edward the Martyr,--to Louis, who "set off on a crusade against the
Albigenses," and Oliver Cromwell, who "was an unjust and wicked man."
The hymns remain, which Mrs. Hannah More, surely a consummate judge of
the article, pronounced to be "quite extraordinary for such a baby."
To a somewhat later period probably belongs a vast pile of blank verse,
entitled "Fingal, a poem in xii books;" two of which are in a complete
and connected shape, while the rest of the story is lost amidst a
labyrinth of many hundred scattered lines, so transcribed as to suggest
a conjecture that the boy's demand for foolscap had outrun the paternal
generosity.

Of all his performances, that which attracted most attention at the time
was undertaken for the purpose of immortalising Olaus Magnus, King of
Norway, from whom the clan to which the bard belonged was supposed
to derive its name. Two cantos are extant, of which there are several
exemplars, in every stage of calligraphy from the largest round hand
downwards, a circumstance which is apparently due to the desire on the
part of each of the little Macaulays to possess a copy of the great
family epic. The opening stanzas, each of which contains more lines than
their author counted years, go swinging along with plenty of animation
and no dearth of historical and geographical allusion.

Day set on Cumbria's hills supreme,
And, Menai, on thy silver stream.
The star of day had reached the West.
Now in the main it sank to rest.
Shone great Eleindyn's castle tall:
Shone every battery, every