My dear Mother,—­I entreat you to entertain no apprehensions about my health.  My fever, cough, and sore-throat have all disappeared for the last four days.  Many thanks for your intelligence about poor dear John’s recovery, which has much exhilarated me.  Yet I do not know whether illness to him is not rather a prerogative than an evil.  I am sure that it is well worth while being sick to be nursed by a mother.  There is nothing which I remember with such pleasure as the time when you nursed me at Aspenden.  The other night, when I lay on my sofa very ill and hypochondriac, I was thinking over that time.  How sick, and sleepless, and weak I was, lying in bed, when I was told that you were come!  How well I remember with what an ecstasy of joy I saw that face approaching me, in the middle of people that did not care if I died that night except for the trouble of burying me!  The sound of your voice, the touch of your hand, are present to me now, and will be, I trust in God, to my last hour.  The very thought of these things invigorated me the other day; and I almost blessed the sickness and low spirits which brought before me associated images of a tenderness and an affection, which, however imperfectly repaid, are deeply remembered.  Such scenes and such recollections are the bright half of human nature and human destiny.  All objects of ambition, all rewards of talent, sink into nothing compared with that affection which is independent of good or adverse circumstances, excepting that it is never so ardent, so delicate, or so tender as in the hour of languor or distress.  But I must stop.  I had no intention of pouring out on paper what I am much more used to think than to express.  Farewell, my dear Mother.

Ever yours affectionately,

T.B.  Macaulay.

Macaulay liked Cambridge too well to spend the long vacation elsewhere except under strong compulsion; but in 1821, with the terrors of the Mathematical Tripos already close at hand, he was persuaded into joining a reading party in Wales with a Mr. Bird as tutor.  Eardley Childers, the father of the statesman of that name, has preserved a pleasant little memorial of the expedition.

To Charles Smith Bird, Eardley Childers, Thos.  B. Macaulay,
William Clayton Walters, Geo. B. Paley, Robert Jarratt, Thos. 
Jarratt, Edwin Kempson, Ebenezer Ware, Wm. Cornwall, John
Greenwood, J. Lloyd, and Jno.  Wm. Gleadall, Esquires.

Gentlemen,—­We the undersigned, for ourselves and the inhabitants in general of the town of Llanrwst in the county of Denbigh, consider it our duty to express to you the high sense we entertain of your general good conduct and demeanour during your residence here, and we assure you that we view with much regret the period of your separation and departure from amongst us.  We are very sensible of the obligation we are under for your uniformly benevolent and charitable exertions upon several public occasions, and we feel peculiar pleasure in thus tendering to you individually our gratitude and thanks.