For

He used himself to tell a droll story of a scene in his nursery. every one who came to his father's house he had a Biblical nickname: Moses, Holofernes, Melchisedek, and the like. One visitor he called The Beast. Kind mamma, prudent papa, frowned at their precocious child, and set their brows against this offensive name; but Thomas stuck to his point. Next time the Beast made a morning call, the boy ran to the window which hung over the street--to turn back laughing, crowing with excitement and delight. "Look here, mother," cries the child, "you see I am right. Look, look at the number of the Beast!" Mrs. Macaulay glanced at the hackneycoach; and, behold, its number was 666!

ELECTION BALLAD. BY MACAULAY.

Almost the only sprightly specimen of the verse of Macaulay is the following Ballad, which might have been mistaken at the time, as we know from a passage of Moore's Diary that it was, for a political squib of that superlative song-writer. The passage will be found under the date June, 1831. Moore says:- "Went (Lord John and I together in a hackney-coach) to breakfast with Rogers. The party, besides ourselves, Macaulay, Luttrell, and Campbell. Macaulay gave us an account of the state of the Monothelite controversy, as revived at present among some of the fanatics of the day. . . . . In the course of conversation Campbell quoted a line

'Ye diners-out from whom we guard our spoons ;'

and looking over at me, said significantly, 'You ought to know that line.' I pleaded not guilty; upon which he said, 'It is a poem that appeared in the Times, which every one attributes to you.' But I again declared that I did not even remember it. Macaulay then broke silence, and said to our general surprise, 'That is mine;' on which we all expressed a wish to have it recalled to our memories, and he repeated the whole of it. I then remembered having been much struck with it at the time, and said that there was another squib still better on the subject of William Bankes's candidateship for Cambridge, which so amused me when it appeared, and showed such power in that style of composition, that I wrote up to Barnes about it, and advised him by all means to secure that hand as an ally. That was mine also," said Macaulay, thus discovering to us a new power, in addition to that varied store of talent which we had already known him to possess." ""* The latter squib is the folowing:

*Times journal.

AN ELECTION BALLAD. (1827.)

"THE COUNTRY CLERGYMAN'S TRIP TO CAMBRIDGE.

As I sate down to breakfast in state,
At my living of Tithing-cum-Boring,
With Betty beside me to wait,

Came a rap that almost beat the door in.
I laid down my basin of tea,

And Betty ceased spreading the toast,
'As sure as a gun, sir,' said she,
'That must be the knock of the post.'

A letter and free-bring it here

I have no correspondent who franks.
No! Yes! Can it be? Why, my dear,
'Tis our glorious, our Protestant Bankes.
'Dear Sir, as I know you desire

That the Church should receive due protection,

I humbly presume to require

Your aid at the Cambridge election.

'It has lately been brought to my knowledge,
That the ministers fully design

To suppress each cathedral and college,
And eject every learned divine.

To assist this detestable scheme

Three nuncios from Rome are come over;
They left Calais on Monday by steam,
And landed to dinner at Dover.

'An army of grim Cordeliers,

Well furnished with relics and vermin,
Will follow, Lord Westmoreland fears,
To effect what their chiefs may determine.
Lollards' bower, good authorities say,
Is again fitting up for a prison;
And a wood-merchant told me to-day
'Tis a wonder how fagots have risen.

"The Finance scheme of Canning contains
A new Easter-offering tax;

And he means to devote all the gains

To a bounty on thumbscrews and racks.
Your living so neat and compact-

Pray, don't let the news give you pain!--

Is promised, I know for a fact,

To an olive-faced Padre from Spain !'

I read, and I felt my heart bleed,

Sore wounded with horror and pity;
So I flew with all possible speed,

To our Protestant champion's committee.
True gentlemen, kind and well-bred!

No fleering! no distance! no scorn!
They asked after my wife who is dead,

And my children who never were born.

They then, like high-principled Tories,
Called our Sovereign unjust and unsteady,
And assailed him with scandalous stories
Till the coach for the voters was ready.
That coach might be well called a casket
Of learning and brotherly love :
There were parsons in boot and in basket;
There were parsons below and above.

There were Sneaker and Griper, a pair

Who stick to Lord Mulesby like leeches; A snug chaplain of plausible air,

Who writes my Lord Goslingham's speeches. Dr. Buzz, who alone is a host,

Who with arguments weighty as lead, Proves six times a week in the Post

That flesh somehow differs from bread,

Dr. Nimrod, whose orthodox toes

Are seldom withdrawn from the stirrup;
Dr. Humdrum, whose eloquence flows,
Like droppings of sweet poppy syrup;
Dr. Rosygill, puffing and fanning,

And wiping away perspiration;
Dr. Humbug, who proved Mr. Canning
The beast in St. John's Revelation.

A layman can scarce form a notion

Of our wonderful talk on the road;
Of the learning, the wit, and devotion
Which almost each syllable showed;
Why divided allegiance agrees

So ill with our free constitution;
How Catholics swear as they please,
In hope of the priest's absolution;
How the Bishop of Norwich had bartered
His faith for a legate's commission;
How Lyndhurst, afraid to be martyr'd,
Had stooped to a base coalition;
How Papists are cased from compassion
By bigotry, stronger than steel;
How burning would soon come in fashion,
And how very bad it must feel.

We were all so much touched and excited
By a subject so direly sublime,

That the rules of politeness were slighted,
And we all of us talked at a time;

And in tones which each moment grew louder,
Told how we should dress for the show,
And where we should fasten the powder,
And if we should bellow or no.

Thus from subject to subject we ran,

And the journey passed pleasantly o'er,

MR. MACAULAY AND THE BALLAD BOY.

In a paper on "Ballads for the People," in the Westminster Review, it was stated that our most brilliant historian, being lately desirous of obtaining information upon this subject as material for his new volumes, took his way from the Albany to Whitechapel, and bought a roll of London ballads from a singing boy; happening to turn round as he reached home again, he perceived the youth, with a circle of young friends, was keeping close on his heels. Have I not given you your price, sir? was the great man's indignant remonstrance. All right, guv'ner,' was the response, 'we're only waiting till you begin to sing.""

Mr. Carruthers, in the Inverness Courier, however, gives the following more correct version of the above incident, as he heard it related at one of Mr. Rogers's breakfast parties, in St. James's-place. Mr. Macaulay had set off on a long solitary walk (an ordinary occurrence) from the Albany, and about Islington fell in with a singing boy, and purchased for 1s. or 1s. 6d. his stock of ballads. Dipping into the collection, and reading aloud to himself with energy, as is his wont, the warlike and military strains of the street minstrels, Mr. Macaulay observed that the boy still accompanied him. He stopped, and asked why he followed him? "I do like, sir," replied the urchin, "to hear you read the ballads-you read them so grand and fine." The historian pursued his journey, and the thought occurred—“What, if we had ballads of this kind respecting the old heroic deeds of Greece and Rome?". The idea gathered force, and ultimately a resolution was formed to attempt embodying in ballad poetry some of the legends related by Livy, and alluded to by Cicero and others. The result was The Lays of Ancient Rome.

Talking of Ballads, Mr. John Hill Burton, author of the Book Hunter, tells the following sad example of the way in which some ancient ballads have come into existence. Some mad young wags, wishing to test the critical powers of an experienced collector, sent him a new-made ballad, which they had been able to secure only in a fragmentary form. To the surprise of the fabricator it was duly printed; but what naturally raised his surprise to astonishment, and revealed to him a secret, was, that it was no longer a fragment, but a complete ballad-the collector, in the course of his industrious

inquries among the peasantry, having been so fortunate as to recover the missing fragments! This ballad has been printed in more than one collection, and admired as an instance of the inimitable simplicity of the genuine old versions!

A GOOD TALKER.--MR. BUCKLE.

At Cairo, Miss Marguerite Power had the good fortune to meet, a few weeks before his premature death, in 1862, Mr. Buckle, who, in his researches for fresh materials for his History of Civilization, was now on his way back from a journey up the Nile. He had, on his arrival in Egypt, brought letters of introduction to the R-'s, so that as they were already acquainted he came almost immediately to call, and was asked to dinner on an early day. "I have known, (says Miss Power,) most of the celebrated talkers of I will not say how many years back-of the time, in a word, when Sydney Smith rejoiced in his green bright old age; and Luttrell, and Rogers, and Tommy Moore were still capable of giving forth an occasional flash; and when the venerable Lord Brougham, and yet more venerable Lord Lyndhurst, delighted in friendly and brilliant sparring at dinner-tables, whose hosts are now in their half-forgotten graves. I have known some brilliant talkers in Paris-Lamartine and Dumas, and Cabarrus, and brightest, or at least most constantly bright of all, the late Madame Emile de Girardin. I knew Douglas Jerrold; and I am still happy enough to claim acquaintance with certain men and women whose names, though well known, it were perhaps invidious now to mention. But, for inexhaustibility, versatility, memory, and self-confidence, I never met any one to compete with Buckle. Talking was meat, and drink, and sleep to him he lived upon talk. He could keep pace with any given number of interlocutors on any given number of subjects, from the abstrusest point on the abstrusest science to the lightest jeu d'esprit, and talk them all down, and be quite ready to start fresh. Among the hundred and one anecdotes with which he entertained us I may be permitted to give, say the hundred and first. Wordsworth,' said Charles Lamb, one day told me that he considered Shakspeare greatly over-rated.' 'There is an immensity of trick in all Shakspeare wrote,' he said, and people are taken in by it. Now, if I had a mind, I could write exactly like Shakspeare. So you see,' proceeded Charles Lamb, quietly, it was only the mind that was wanting! We met Buckle on several subsequent occasions, and his talk and his spirits never flagged; the same untiring energy marked all he said, and did, and thought, and fatigue and oppression appeared to be things unknown to him."

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