If you should refuse it, you will deprive me of the most pleasing illusion which I ever experienced in my life.

Pray do not fail to write speedily.
Your dutiful and affectionate son, T.B.MACAULAY.
His father answered him in a letter of strong religious complexion, full of feeling, and even of beauty, but too long for reproduction in a biography that is not his own.
Mr.Macaulay's deep anxiety for his son's welfare sometimes induced him to lend too ready an ear to busybodies, who informed him of failings in the boy which would have been treated more lightly, and perhaps more wisely, by a less devoted father.

In the early months of 1814 he writes as follows, after hearing the tale of some guest of Mr.Preston whom Tom had no doubt contradicted at table in presence of the assembled household.
London: March 4, 1814.
My dear Tom,--In taking up my pen this morning a passage in Cowper almost involuntarily occurred to me.

You will find it at length in his "Conversation." "Ye powers who rule the Tongue, if such there are, And make colloquial happiness your care, Preserve me from the thing I dread and hate, A duel in the form of a debate.
Vociferated logic kills me quite.
A noisy man is always in the right." You know how much such a quotation as this would fall in with my notions, averse as I am to loud and noisy tones, and self-confident, overwhelming, and yet perhaps very unsound arguments.

And you will remember how anxiously I dwelt upon this point while you were at home.
I have been in hopes that this half-year would witness a great change in you in this respect.