or Lever as the sources from which they | Sir William de Bathe, Samuel Lover, first derived their passion for a naval or Robert Bell, Charles Reade, Peter Cunmilitary career. But this is very different ningham, Frank Fladgate, better known from a man of Mr. Yates's maturity and as "Papa," and J. D., "most mellow of experience deliberately asserting that elderly topers, with all the characteristics Pendennis "impelled him into literature. of Bardolph of Brasenose' - a veteran It may be so, and there seems throughout who drank and swore in the good old-fashMr. Yates's nature a strong vein of senti- ioned way, and who came to a sad end, ment which would partially account for poor fellow, dying alone in his Temple the fact. But the prosaic critic may be chambers, on a Christmas eve, of loss of pardoned for suspecting that he has un- blood from an accident, while the men in consciously exaggerated the influence of the rooms below heard him staggering the book. Mr. Yates had from the very about and groaning, but took no notice, as first, partly, it may be, as a result of his they fancied their neighbor was only in thorough training in French and German, his usual condition." Thackeray was the partly as a gift of nature, a real capacity presiding genius of the place. As Mr. for literature. He has always possessed Gallenga has said in his concluding chapa faculty of neat and concise expression, ter, “Thackeray was a member but not flavored by wit, fun, and irony, that is ex much of a frequenter of the Athenæum ceedingly rare amongst English writers, Club, his preference being all for the Gar and that renders him, in certain kinds of rick, a club better suited to the free and composition, unsurpassed by any and un- easy, somewhat Bohemian, tastes and approached by most of his contempora habits of his early days." When Mr. ries. Ability of this sort would have Yates was first admitted to the Garrick he found its right field of display, and if Mr. was not eighteen years of age. When he Yates will forgive "the young gentleman, left it he was twenty-seven, and Thackthen fresh from Oxford, who called upon eray, who was the cause of his leaving it, him in 1866, at the Post Office, with a let- was forty-seven. The little article conter of introduction from Tom Hood," and tributed by Mr. Yates to a paper long of whose articles in Temple Bar he was since dead, at which Thackeray took grave good enough to approve, for saying it, umbrage, scarcely deserves the censures neither "Pendennis nor its author had passed upon it by its author. It is simply perhaps as much to do as he supposes a piece of smart, hurried, impertinent, and with the initial step he took on the road curiously young writing. Now, as Thackto literary fame. At the same time Mr. eray was then twenty years Mr. Yates's Yates ought to know and the fact that senior, what one might have expected he is now deliberately of opinion that such from him was, if he had been incurably is the case, even if he misconceives the wounded, silent contempt; or if he had circumstances, furnishes a suggestive been merely annoyed, a sharpish caution. clue to, and is a significant commentary to Mr. Yates. The article in question did: on, the appreciative, impulsive, and sym- not violate the sanctity of club life. It pathetic aspects of his character. It is disclosed no private or semi-private concurious that if "Pendennis" first made versations; it said absolutely nothing more. Mr. Yates a writer, the author of "Pen- about Thackeray than was at the time on dennis" should have been directly instru- the lips of every one, and was, therefore,. mental in investing the year 1858 with public property. Thackeray, however, "the vast importance" with which, in his very absurdly, as all cool-headed persons seventh chapter, Mr. Yates says "it was will think, addressed to Mr. Yates a forfraught to him." The reference is to the mal letter, which, as its recipient says, events that led to Mr. Yates's withdrawal was severe to the point of cruelty-being, from the Garrick Club. Both for its in- indeed, an inexplicably bitter outburst of terest and its taste the Garrick chapter personal feeling, and "a censure, in comis excellent. "The most striking portion parison with the offence committed, ludiof the club in those days was the smoking crously exaggerated." What, however, room on the ground floor, built out over under the circumstances, Mr. Yates ought the leads a good-sized apartment, to have done is perfectly clear. Young comfortably furnished, well-ventilated, and men of twenty-seven cannot allow themadorned by large pictures specially painted selves the luxury of engaging their supe. for it by Stanfield, David Roberts, and riors and elders in single combat. Their Louis Haghe." Among the habitués of business is to be conciliatory and to wait. the establishment were Charles Kemble, Mr. Yates should clearly have written to "Assassin" Smith, Clarkson Stanfield, Thackeray an apologetic disclaimer, as

Although this letter was not sent, the spirit of Mr. Yates's actual rejoinder, approved though it was by Dickens, was scarcely more conciliatory. There is no need to pursue the details of the incident. The alternative was at last presented to Mr. Yates of apologizing to Thackeray or of quitting the club. Here Mr. Yates made a second mistake. He declined to apologize, and preferred the doom of exile. That he was to a great extent in the right ought really not to have weighed with him. Matters of this sort are practically decided not on their merits but by the preju dices and the partialities of a majority. Mr. Yates has given the facts; only a few remarks are necessary to place them in their proper perspective. The inference is irresistible that Thackeray's feelings were worked upon from outside, and that influences hostile to Mr. Yates were from the first brought to bear upon him. Dash

suring the great novelist that he had misunderstood the motives with, and the conditions under, which the offending article was penned; that on reading it the author recognized its impropriety, and that doing this he could only cry "Peccavi!" express his extreme regret, and throw himself on his elder's consideration. One of two things must then have happened either Thackeray would have accepted the apology and condoned the offence, or, by refusing to do so, he would have made a graceless exhibition of churlishness, and public opinion, even the opinion of the Garrick Club, would have been with Mr. Yates. The letter which Mr. Yates prepared in draft, so far from being an apology, was a challenge, a justification of all he had originally said, and a justification by reference to instances which would have been most exasperating to Thackeray. "I took the liberty," to quote his own words, "of reminding Thackeraying and successful young men of strongly of some past errors of his own, not the result of the hasty occupation of an hour, but deliberately extending over a long space of time, and marked by the most wanton, reckless, and aggravating person ality."

I reminded him how, in his "Yellowplush Correspondence," he had described Dr. Lardner and Sir E. L. Bulwer: "One was pail, and wor spektickles, a wig, and a white neckcloth; the other was slim, with a hook nose, a pail fase, a small waist, a pare of falling shoulders, a tight coat, and a catarack of black satting tumbling out of his busm, and falling into a gilt velvit weskit." How he had held them up to ridicule by calling them "Docthor Athanasius Lardner" and "Mistaw Edwad Lytton Bulwig," by reproducing the brogue of the one and the drawl of the other, and by exhibiting them as contemptible in every way.

In regard to the Garrick Club, I called Mr. Thackeray's attention to the fact that he had not merely, in his "Book of Snobs," and under the pseudonym of Captain Shindy, given an exact sketch of a former member, Mr. Stephen Price, reproducing Mr. Price's frequent and well-known phrases; he had not merely, in the same book, drawn on a wood-block a close resemblance of Wyndham Smith, a fellowmember, which was printed among the "Sporting Snobs," Mr. W. Smith being a sporting man; he had not merely, in "Pendennis," made a sketch of a former member, Captain Granby Calcraft, under the name of Captain Granby Tiptoff, but in the same book, under the name of Foker, he had most offensively, though amusingly, reproduced every characteristic, in language, manner, and gesture, of our fellow. member, Mr. Andrew Arcedeckne, and had gone so far as to give an exact woodcut portrait of him, to Mr. Arcedeckne's intense an

noyance.

defined "personality," and superabun. dance of animal spirits, are never likely to be popular among their elders. It also seems reasonable to suppose there may have been a clique antagonistic to Mr. Yates in the Garrick Club, of which Mr. Yates's friend, now deceased, who mentioned to Thackeray the authorship of the article which produced the mischief, was possibly the leader. Again, Mr. Yates's champion and adviser in the whole matter was Thackeray's rival, whom Thackeray himself, however fervently he could, as Mr. Payn shows was the case, admire his genius, personally disliked. In this matter there can be no doubt that Dickens showed himself as bad an adviser as Delane, practised man of the world though he was, did upon another occasion when Dickens invoked his services as a counsellor.

--

It would be exceedingly presumptuous on the part of one who never had the honor of being in Thackeray's company - except, indeed, once, some thirty years ago, when the great man, coming down to West Somerset to inspect a small Country house which he then thought of buying or renting, noticed him as a child -to attempt any estimate of Thackeray's character. Anthony Trollope, who on the strength of a seven years', though exceedingly slight, acquaintance with the author of "Vanity Fair," dared to pen a monograph on him, was called to account with contemptuous severity by the surviv ing relatives of the object of his admiration. Some of the stories told by Mr. Yates of Thackeray are as good as any. thing of the kind which can be expected.

Everything about him [says Mr. Gallenga] his humor, his countenance, his voice, was changeable. In the depth of his heart I am inclined to believe he was all kindness, but all sourness and uncharitableness on the surface. Like Carlyle, he spoke precisely as he wrote. His cynicism, his misanthrophy and pessimism, his hatred of mobbism and flunkeyism, were with him inexhaustible themes. But it was in a great measure mere bounce- rodomontade and fanfaronade and it grew louder and more blatant in proportion as his domestic fortunes improved, and his real good nature ripened

There are also, as we have seen, some | a copper will pursue him with execrations. reminiscences of him in Mr. Gallenga's Of Thackeray no biography worthy of the work, and a few pages are devoted to him name has yet been published, and even by Mr. Payn. But they really tell us when it is published it will fail to supply nothing. Death, the great leveller, is also us in all probability with any formula of the great distorter, and it is the most diffi- manageable dimensions in which we can cult thing in the world to arrive at any appraise the man. thing like a complete idea of the identity of so many-sided a man as Thackeray. Lord Beaconsfield, in his last novel, "Endymion," drew him, as to Disraeli the younger he seemed to be, at full length in St. Barbe. But then Lord Beaconsfield may have travestied his original, just as we are assured he caricatured and calumniated John Wilson Croker. Upon those who were personally acquainted with a great man gone, death produces an effect upon the moral features of their illustrious friend analogous to that which it is said to produce upon the human physiog. nomy. Countenances which, while the breath remained in the body, were unlovely, harsh, angular, or coarse, are traditionally supposed to be invested with a spiritual beauty and ennoblement di-ine historical value. Mr. Gallenga's book, rectly the muscles, sinew, and marrow are reduced to an inanimate clay. It is the fashion nowadays for the moral being of a man to undergo a similar transformation. Again, what is called character is habitually invested with an unreal unity. Pope's celebrated couplet,

Nothing so true as what you once let fall, Most women have no character at all, is applicable to the majority of the stronger as well as to the weaker sex. Consistency is the last thing one should look for, except amongst the most elevated of their kind, and not always with them. It is just possible that the infinite variety of the man, and the inconsistency and contradictions which it involved, may be the chief reasons that render it so hard for those who never knew him personally to form a notion of what manner of man Thackeray was. What are called estimates of character are in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand the records of personal, of interested, and of, therefore, more or less untrustworthy impressions. They are true as far as they go and no further. If of two mendicants, who meet a pedestrian, one at the top and the other at the bottom of the street, the former receives sixpence and the latter nothing, the estimates which they each form of the same individual will be diametrically opposite. The beggar who has pocketed the dole will heap blessings upon him; the beggar who has failed to secure

and mellowed.

Mr. Yates's volumes, apart from their purely personal interest, have and the remark holds, to some extent, good of Mr. Gallenga's and Mr. Payn's-a genu

indeed, contains a succinct, lucid, and admirably written account of the patriotic movement in Italy which came to a triumphant close when, on that memorable 20th of September, 1870, the troops of General Cadorna passed into the Eternal City. Mr. Gallenga occupies a promi nent place in that brilliant galaxy of special and war correspondents, the other bright particular stars of which are W. H. Russell, Sala, Forbes, and Cameron of the Standard. He has also, as a political writer, especially on foreign affairs, left behind him a reputation in Printing House Square which will never be forgotten.

Personally I do not think that any work I was allowed to do in my time was ever rewarded by a word of praise more gratifying to my self-esteem than that which Delane beend of that seven years' severe trial. He had stowed upon me from the beginning to the great confidence in my judgment and knowledge of Continental affairs, and allowed me to conduct the wars and revolutions of that eventful period at my own discretion. He heard that the Times authority on military subjects never stood higher. He was told by club quidnuncs, who congratulated him on the war articles in the great journal, that there was only one man in England who understood such subjects so thoroughly, and that was Sir John answered that they-the quidnuncs - "were Burgoyne, and he laughed in his sleeve as he perhaps not much out in their surmises." At the same time, however, there were many anxious moments at the various stages of the

Franco-German war, especially during the three great days before Metz, towards the close of the siege of Paris, or the campaign of Aurelles de Paladine and Chanzy on the Loire, in which a sudden turn in the fortune of arms seemed probable, seemed imminent, and when, nevertheless, I pinned my faith to Moltke's genius, and staked, as it were, the Times' reputation on the German's complete final victory; and then my good editor came to me late in the evening pale with anxiety, begging me not to be rash, not too confident, for he had seen this, and he had heard that, and competent judges, whom he named, among others Colonel B, had assured him that we were venturing too far, and that events would soon contradict our statements and demolish our theories, greatly to the loss of the Times prestige. When Paris surrendered, and Moltke and I had triumphed over prostrate France, my dear Delane drew a long breath and wrote to me a kind letter of congratulation, stating how glad he was that he had trusted me, that I had always been right in my forecast, and had not, by one single false step during that long warlike crisis, misled the English reading public. I have still the letter before me, and I value it far more highly than any Red or Black Eagle that Bismarck could have bestowed upon me.

gent notion of a political situation in a remote capital.

Mr. Gallenga makes some suggestive remarks on the social revolution which has been accomplished since the period of his first stay in England. "Men," he tells us, "then travelled little; the women seldom left home except for their three weeks' sea-bathing at Herne Bay or Broadstairs. They seldom saw the inside of a theatre, and few of them were great readers, for Mudie was not yet, nor Westerton, nor the Grosvenor or the London Library, and books were hard to borrow and dear to buy." When Mr. Yates first knew London, Butcher Hall Lane had not disappeared, Alton Ale houses abounded to the east of Temple Bar, Almack's was in its zenith, the Adelaide Gallery had just been taken by Laurent, the Holborn Restaurant was a swimming bath, Vauxhall, though in its decadence, "dingy, dear, and absurdly expensive," was popu lar, the overland route was on view in Waterloo Place, the park was full of prodigious dandies, cheap chop-houses and foreign eating-houses were in vogue, When, therefore, Mr. Gallenga says, "I Paddy Green was in his patriarchal bloom. might also feel tempted to flatter myself There was none of the display, luxury, that my career as a journalist was not an and glitter of these latter times, but there absolute failure," he speaks with unneces- was much comfort, much geniality, and sary diffidence and modesty. In talking an amount of sociability, and a facility for of "the cut and dry manner which has cheap amusements now unknown. Bobecome almost the technical and conven-hemia then occupied a recognized and tional style of the press, especially since the invention of electric wires has sunk the correspondent's business to the level of that of the mere telegraph clerk," he will be held by competent judges to be in error. The influence of telegraphy upon the style of the special and war correspondent has certainly not been hostile, still less fatal, to vigor and picturesqueness; witness the marvellous despatches of Mr. Cameron and Mr. Forbes. On the other hand, it has probably robbed the resident correspondent in foreign capitals, and therefore the press generally, of some of its own authority. Instead of the wellweighed and instructive letters on foreign Mr. Edmund Byng, Mr. Yates's godfather, affairs, which used to be highly profitable entertained the most select of guests with reading, and which have now almost en- the plainest and best of dinners, and tirely disappeared from journalism, the young men, "who to day sit down to soup, Times, the Morning Post, the St. James's fish, entrées - then called 'made dishes' Gazette, and the Globe alone being per- -a roast, a bird, a sweet, a savory, and mitted by inexorable exigencies of space a bottle of claret, would then have been occasionally to publish them, we have content with a slice off the joint, a bit of to be content with telegraphic despatches cheese, and a pint of beer." Even Mr. which are admirable as viewy condensa Yates, when he first married, as he "could tions of the latest news, but which have not afford to give his friends good wine, little permanent value, and which scarcely and would not give them bad," regaled help the average reader to form an intelli- ❘ them on bitter ale. Lucky friends! though

considerable place in the map of London. Mr. Sala was brought from Rool's oystershop to be presented to the Duke of Sutherland, then Marquess of Stafford, who was loud in praise of "Colonel Quagg's Conversion," at the Fielding Club. Robert Brough was denouncing the sham culture of pseudo-classicists in his lyrics, and published in his "Songs of the Governing Classes" a passionate attack upon social distinctions with the refrain, —

'Tis a curse to the land, deny it who can,

That self-same boast, I'm a gentleman.

some vantage-ground, however slight, from which to launch his declaration. It was not very long, however, before he discovered one.

one may hope that if, even in this degen- gentleman whose admiration was almost erate epoch, Mr. Yates were starting too legibly visible for so very public an afresh he would be not so far borne away occasion. Borroughdale, on his side, was by the vicious contagion of fashion as to primed and loaded, full cock, ready for an endeavor to sap the digestion of his com- avowal. It was nothing absolutely pany by the loaded acidity which is called nothing to him who might be listenclaret, and the abominable decoctions of ing; how many people might be looking sugar and petroleum known as cham- on; like a man bent upon some forlorn pagne. London, Lord Beaconsfield re- hope he had come to that point when to marked some months before his death, go on is immeasurably easier than to turn which was once a very dull place, is now back. He would know his fate, he vowed a very amusing place, and so from one to himself, before he left the house that point of view it is. But the impression evening, nay, before he left that easy-chair left upon the reader who was not per- upon which he was then sitting. Even sonally acquainted with the metropolis he, however, needed some starting-point, during the first decade of the Victorian era, as he lays down Mr. Yates's volumes, is, that if we have gained considerably we have also lost not a little. There is much which is cheap and nasty now; there was "What a lovely bracelet that is of much which was cheap and pleasant then. yours!" he exclaimed. "I never noticed "Timmins's little dinners" had not be-it before. That one, I mean," touching come regular events, and the trail of Mrs. Ponsonby de Tompkins was not over us all. In yet another respect, of a far more important character, was there a distinc- "Yes, is it not? It belonged to my tion between the epoch when Mr. Yates mother," she answered, a blush, evoked commenced his active existence and the partly by his manner, partly by the recol. present. No such central figures in lit-lection called up by the bracelet, crossing erature - Dickens, Thackeray, Macaulay -as existed then exist now. The general average of literary productiveness has immensely increased, but the stimulating influences of individual genius, placed upon a high pedestal, have disappeared. Literature, and especially periodical literature, has become more highly organ. ized, and therefore more of a business. The result has been favorable to the social and moral welfare of the literary class, but it has involved the sacrifice of not a little freshness and of a great deal of fun. T. H. S. ESCOTT.

From Macmillan's Magazine. BORROUGHDALE OF BORROUGHDALE. "For every man hath a talent if he do but find it." JOHN LOCKE.

CHAPTER III.

(continued.)

with his finger a broad band of gold clasped with three brilliants which Miss Holland wore upon her left wrist.

her cheek. It had been parted with in the days of their poverty, and lately found again and redeemed with some little diffi culty by herself.

Borroughdale noticed the blush, and it lent him additional ardor.

"There is one uncommonly like it at home," he said. "It belonged to my mother, too. I wish you would have it, Miss Holland," he added audaciously. "You might wear it upon your other wrist."

This, it will be owned, for a shy man was pretty well! Katherine Holland, however, was determined, if possible, to ignore what this evening seemed the extraordinary and unprecedented signifi. cance of his manner; so, although rather to her own annoyance she blushed again, she answered lightly,

"Thank you very much, Lord Bor. roughdale, but I am afraid I couldn't well wear your bracelet, could I?"

Why not?"

For one,

"Well, for several reasons. because it wouldn't belong to me," she answered.

"It would if I gave it to you."

KATHERINE HOLLAND felt a little bewilderment. It was almost as if a new acquaintance had presented himself. The young man who had sat so often tête-à-tête "Yes, but then you couldn't well do with her in her aunt's drawing-room, that, could you? If it was your mother's, hardly daring to lift his eyes to her face, it is no doubt part of your family jewels. seemed an utterly different personage I have heard that they are particularly from this bold-eyed, confident-toned young fine."