18 SEPTEMBER 1926, Page 16

[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I thought it was

settled long ago that the father of Macaulay's New Zealander was one of the travellers " From the Blue Mountains, or _Ontario's Lake," who view the desolution of ruined London in Mrs. Barbauld's poem " 181E"

That poem was well-known in its day, and can hardly have escaped Macaulay's early appetite for literature. It provoked what Crabb Robinson called a " very coarse "s review in the

Quarterly.—I am, Sir, &c., A. A. B.

[Mrs. Barbauld predicted that some day a traveller from the Antipodes would stand on a broken arch of Blackfriars Bridge and look upon the ruins of St. Paul's.—En. Spectator.]