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A PAPER READ TO THE MEMBERS OF THE 



Haley HitL Literart & Scientific Societv, December 14th, 1865, 



Br Mr. JONAS STOTT, 



Master of St. Mary's School, Wakefield. 



Lord Macaulay was of Scottisli descent. His grandfather John 

 M ' Aulay was a minister of the Church of Scotland at Cardross, a parish 

 on the banks of the Clyde, below Dumbarton Castle. Dr. Johnson on his 

 way to the Hebrides, passed an evening with him, and the convcisation 

 they had is related by Boswell. 



Zachary M' Aulay, his son, like many other of the Scots came to 

 England and sought opportunities here for his industry and enterprise 

 which the quiet banks of the Clyde did not thea afford. In 1798 

 married Selina Mills, daughter of a Bristol merchant, a lady of remarkable 

 ability and who had been educated at a school kept by the gifted Hannah 

 More. 



Thomas Babington Macaulay was born on the 25th of October, 1800, 

 at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, the seat of his uncle after whom he 

 was named. The child was surrounded at home by persons whose moral 

 and intellectual gifts were of the highest kind, and who eSerted a powerful 

 influence for good on his future. I remember seeing when a boy a picture 

 of the mfant Shakspeare, sm-rounded by fairies, who were represented as 

 cndo^ving him with the gifts and qualifications necessary to a great poet 

 and dramatist. Thomas Babington was thus surroimded, not by imaginary 

 fairies, but by men and women who by self conquest and a noble devotion 

 to all that was high and ennobling have left a name that will " smell 

 sweet and blossom in the dust." In his mother he had the example of as 

 good and christian a spirit as ever breathed. Hannah More who had now 

 given up her school, who held a high place in the world of letters, as 

 sprightly at 75 as at 25, was a regular visitor at Macaulay's home. His 

 father belonged to a society which Sydney Smith has sneeringly called 



