and impartiality were such as justified, and dignified, their temporary renunciation of party ties.  They interfered with decisive effect in the debates on the great scandals of Lord Melville and the Duke of York, and in more than one financial or commercial controversy that deeply concerned the national interests, of which the question of the retaining the Orders in Council was a conspicuous instance.  A boy who, like young Macaulay, was admitted to the intimacy of politicians such as these, and was accustomed to hear matters of state discussed exclusively from a public point of view without any afterthought of ambition, or jealousy, or self-seeking, could hardly fail to grow up a patriotic and disinterested man.  “What is far better and more important than all is this, that I believe Macaulay to be incorruptible.  You might lay ribbons, stars, garters, wealth, titles before him in vain.  He has an honest genuine love of his country, and the world would not bribe him to neglect her interests.”  Thus said Sydney Smith, who of all his real friends was the least inclined to over-praise him.

The memory of Thornton and Babington, and the other worthies of their day and set, is growing dim, and their names already mean little in our ears.  Part of their work was so thoroughly done that the world, as its wont is, has long ago taken the credit of that work to itself.  Others of their undertakings, in weaker hands than theirs, seem out of date among the ideas and beliefs which now are prevalent.  At Clapham, as elsewhere, the old order is changing, and not always in a direction which to them would be acceptable or even tolerable.  What was once the home of Zachary Macaulay stands almost within the swing of the bell of a stately and elegant Roman Catholic chapel; and the pleasant mansion of Lord Teignmouth, the cradle of the Bible Society, is now a religious house of the Redemptorist Order.  But in one shape or another honest performance always lives, and the gains that accrued from the labours of these men are still on the right side of the national ledger.  Among the most permanent of those gains is their undoubted share in the improvement of our political integrity by direct, and still more by indirect, example.  It would be ungrateful to forget in how large a measure it is due to them that one, whose judgments upon the statesmen of many ages and countries have been delivered to an audience vast beyond all precedent, should have framed his decisions in accordance with the dictates of honour and humanity, of ardent public spirit and lofty public virtue.

CHAPTER II.

1818—­1824.

Macaulay goes to the University—­His love for Trinity College—­
His contemporaries at Cambridge—­Charles Austin—­The Union
Debating Society—­University studies, successes, and failures—­
The Mathematical Tripos—­The Trinity Fellowship—­William the
Third—­Letters—­Prize poems—­Peterloo—­Novel-reading—­The Queen’s
Trial—­Macaulay’s feeling towards his mother—­A Reading-party—­
Hoaxing an editor—­Macaulay takes pupils.