ious expenditure. Before the eldest son had completed his
thirteenth year he had three brothers and five sisters.

[It was in the course of his thirteenth year that the boy wrote his
"Epitaph on Henry Martyn."

Here Martyn lies. In manhood's early bloom
The Christian hero finds a Pagan tomb.
Religion, sorrowing o'er her favourite son,
Points to the glorious trophies that he won.
Eternal trophies! not with carnage red,
Not stained with tears by hapless captives shed,
But trophies of the Cross. For that dear name,
Through every form of danger, death, and shame,
Onward he journeyed to a happier shore,
Where danger, death and shame assault no more."]

In the course of 1812 it began to be evident that Tom had got beyond
the educational capabilities of Clapham; and his father seriously
contemplated the notion of removing to London in order to place him as a
day-scholar at Westminster. Thorough as was the consideration which the
parents gave to the matter, their decision was of more importance
than they could at the time foresee. If their son had gone to a public
school, it is more than probable that he would have turned out a
different man, and have done different work. So sensitive and homeloving
a boy might for a while have been too depressed to enter fully unto
the ways of the place; but, as he gained confidence, he could not have
withstood the irresistible attractions which the life of a great school
exercises over a vivid eager nature, and he would have sacrificed to
passing pleasures and emulations a part, at any rate, of those years
which, in order to be what he was, it was necessary that he should spend
wholly among his books. Westminster or Harrow might have sharpened his
faculties for dealing with affairs and with men; but the world at large
would have lost more than he could by any possibility have gained. If
Macaulay had received the usual education of a young Englishman, he
might in all probability have kept his seat for Edinburgh; but he
could hardly have written the Essay on Von Ranke, or the description of
England in the third chapter of the History.

Mr. Macaulay ultimately fixed upon a private school, kept by the Rev.
Mr. Preston, at Little Shelford, a village in the immediate vicinity
of Cambridge. The motives which guided this selection were mainly of
a religious nature. Mr. Preston held extreme Low Church opinions, and
stood in the good books of Mr. Simeon, whose word had long been law in