If their son had gone to a public school, it is more than probable that he would have turned out a different man, and have done different work.

So sensitive and homeloving a boy might for a while have been too depressed to enter fully unto the ways of the place; but, as he gained confidence, he could not have withstood the irresistible attractions which the life of a great school exercises over a vivid eager nature, and he would have sacrificed to passing pleasures and emulations a part, at any rate, of those years which, in order to be what he was, it was necessary that he should spend wholly among his books.

Westminster or Harrow might have sharpened his faculties for dealing with affairs and with men; but the world at large would have lost more than he could by any possibility have gained.

If Macaulay had received the usual education of a young Englishman, he might in all probability have kept his seat for Edinburgh; but he could hardly have written the Essay on Von Ranke, or the description of England in the third chapter of the History.
Mr.Macaulay ultimately fixed upon a private school, kept by the Rev.
Mr.Preston, at Little Shelford, a village in the immediate vicinity of Cambridge.

The motives which guided this selection were mainly of a religious nature.