Some Very Charming Young Lady Relatives Seemed To
Think Quite As Much Of Their Gifted Uncle As You Might Have Done Had
He Been Yours.
Macaulay is celebrated as a conversationalist; and, like Coleridge,
Carlyle, and almost every one who enjoys this reputation, he has
sometimes been accused of not allowing people their fair share in
conversation.
This might prove an objection, possibly, to those who
wish to talk; but as I greatly prefer to hear, it would prove none to
me. I must say, however, that on this occasion the matter was quite
equitably managed. There were, I should think, some twenty or thirty
at the breakfast table, and the conversation formed itself into little
eddies of two or three around the table, now and then welling out into
a great bay of general discourse. I was seated between Macaulay and
Milman, and must confess I was a little embarrassed at times, because
I wanted to hear what they were both saying at the same time. However,
by the use of the faculty by which you play a piano with both hands, I
got on very comfortably.
Milman's appearance is quite striking; tall, stooping, with a keen
black eye and perfectly white hair - a singular and poetic contrast. He
began upon architecture and Westminster Abbey - a subject to which I am
always awake. I told him I had not yet seen Westminster; for I was now
busy in seeing life and the present, and by and by I meant to go there
and see death and the past.
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