most earnestly that the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit may be
substituted for vehemence and self-confidence, and that you may be as
much distinguished for the former as ever you have been for the latter.
It is a school in which I am not ambitious that any child of mine should
take a high degree.

If the people of Shelford be as bad as you represent them in your
letters, what are they but an epitome of the world at large? Are they
ungrateful to you for your kindnesses? Are they foolish, and wicked,
and wayward in the use of their faculties? What is all this but what
we ourselves are guilty of every day? Consider how much in our case the
guilt of such conduct is aggravated by our superior knowledge. We shall
not have ignorance to plead in its extenuation, as many of the people of
Shelford may have. Now, instead of railing at the people of Shelford, I
think the best thing which you and your schoolfellows could do would be
to try to reform them. You can buy and distribute useful and striking
tracts, as well as Testaments, among such as can read. The cheap
Repository and Religious Tract Society will furnish tracts suited to all
descriptions of persons; and for those who cannot read--why should you
not institute a Sunday school to be taught by yourselves, and in which
appropriate rewards being given for good behaviour, not only at school
but through the week, great effects of a moral kind might soon be
produced? I have exhausted my paper, and must answer the rest of your
letter in a few days. In the meantime,

I am ever your most affectionate father,

ZACHARY MACAULAY.

A father's prayers are seldom fulfilled to the letter. Many years were
to elapse before the son ceased to talk loudly and with confidence; and
the literature that he was destined to distribute through the world was
of another order from that which Mr. Macaulay here suggests. The answer,
which is addressed to the mother, affords a proof that the boy could
already hold his own. The allusions to the Christian Observer, of which
his father was editor, and to Dr. Herbert Marsh, with whom the ablest
pens of Clapham were at that moment engaged in hot and embittered
controversy, are thrown in with an artist's hand.

Shelford: April 11. 1814.

My dear Mama,--The news is glorious indeed. Peace! Peace with a Bourbon,
with a descendant of Henri Quatre, with a prince who is bound to us by
all the ties of gratitude. I have some hopes that it will be a lasting
pe