tempted speech-making, but he sat down with such cool serenity if he found that he could not recall what he wished to say, that his audience could not help joining in and smiling with him when he came to a stand-still. Once he asked me to travel with him from London to Manchester to hear a great speech he was going to make at the founding of the Free Library Institution in that city. All the way down he was discoursing of certain effects he intended to produce on the Manchester dons by his eloquent appeals to their pockets. This passage was to have great influence with the rich merchants, this one with the clergy, and so on. He said that although Dickens and Bulwer and Sir James Stephen, all eloquent speakers, were to precede him, he intended to beat each of them on this special occasion. He insisted that I should be seated directly in front of him so that I should have the full force of his magic eloquence. The occasion was a most brilliant one; tickets had been in demand at unheard-of prices several weeks before the day appointed; the great hall, then opened for the first time to the public, was filled by an audience such as is seldom convened, even in England. The three speeches which came before Thackeray was called upon were admirably suited to the occasion, and most eloquently spoken. Sir John Potter, who presided, then rose, and after some complimentary allusions to the author of "Vanity Fair," introduced him to the crowd, who welcomed him with ringing plaudits. As he rose he gave me a half-wink from under his spectacles, as if to say: "Now for it; the others have done very well, but I will show 'em a grace beyond the reach of their art." He began in a clear and charming manner, and was absolutely perfect for three minutes. In the middle of a most earnest and elaborate sentence he suddenly stopped, and gave a look of comic despair at the ceiling, crammed both hands into his trousers' pockets and deliberately sat down. Everybody seemed to understand that it was one of Thackeray's unfinished speeches, and there were no signs of surprise or discontent among his audience. He continued to sit on the platform in a perfectly composed manner, and when the meeting was over he said to me without a sign of discomfiture, "My boy, you have my profoundest sympathy; this day you have accidentally missed hearing one of the finest speeches ever composed for delivery by a great British orator." And I never heard him mention the subject again. Thackeray rarely took any exercise, thus living in striking contrast to the other celebrated novelist of our time, who was remarkable for the number of hours he daily spent in the open air. It seems to be almost certain now, from concurrent testimony, gathered from physicians and those who knew him best in England, that Thackeray's premature death was hastened by an utter disregard of the natural laws. His vigorous frame gave ample promise of longevity, but he drew too largely on his brain and not enough on his legs. High living and high thinking, he used to say, was the correct reading of the proverb. He was a man of the tenderest feelings, very apt to be cajoled into doing what the world calls foolish things, and constantly performing feats of un-wisdom, which performances he was immoderately laughing at all the while in his books. No man has impaled snobbing with such a stinging rapier, but he always accused himself of being a snob, past all cure. This I make no doubt was one of his exaggerations, but there was a grain of truth in the remark, which so sharp an observer as himself could not fail to notice, even though the victim was so near Lome. Thackeray and the Oyster.-Thackeray announced to me by letter in the early autumn of 1852 that he had determined to visit America, and would sail for Boston by the "Canada" on the 30th of October. All the necessary arrangements for his lecturing tour had been made without troubling him with any of the details. He arrived on a frosty November evening and went directly to the Tremont House, where rooms had been engaged for him. I remember his delight in getting off the sea, and the enthusiasm with which he hailed the announcement that dinner would be ready shortly. A few friends were ready to sit down with him, and he seemed greatly to enjoy the novelty of an American repast. In London he had been very curious in his inquiries about American oysters, as marvellous stories, which he did not believe, had been told him of their great size. We apologised-although we had taken care that the largest specimens to be procured should startle his unwonted vision when he came to the table-for what we called the extreme smallness of the oysters, promising that we would do better next time. Six bloated Falstaffian bivalves lay before him in their shells. I noticed that he gazed at them anxiously with fork upraised; then he whispered to me with a look of anguish, "How shall I do it?" I described to him the simple process by which the free-born citizens of America were accustomed to accomplish such a task. He seemed satisfied that the thing was feasible, selected the smallest one in the half-dozen (rejecting a large one, "because," he said, "it resembled the high priest's ser vant's ear that Peter cut off"), and then bowed his head as if he were saying grace. All eyes were upon him to watch the effect of a new sensation in the person of a great British author. Opening his mouth very wide, he struggled for a moment, and then all was over. forget the comic look of despair he cast upon the other five over-occupied shells. I broke the perfect stillness by asking him how he felt. Profoundly grateful," he gasped, "and as if I shall never The Comic Aspase-The cars in War in Vizng dat tras at the cireslation acurved by the Crack is na d was stima, sons are i when it was its saret vil den fr is a tal remeberng 1: Tauernist's mont editor-in-chef, as a note of key is bala UN ONLY 47A The announcemers by us wellas tu my arms, homitee so-diet 14 of 1100 of the frier at a rame made the edir haf delmes vm pry, and de ran away to Para to bent of the excrement for a few days I met him by alpiner his hotel in the Ene de in Pax, and mand m wild with ersitato and ful of exins excellent George Smith is pullsia don," he exclaimed, is not ong enough a amtain me now, and I am staged as at Paris 20 my residence! Great heavens,” sad be tirow ing up his long arms, where w is te mendous circulation stop Who knows but that I shall have to add Vienna and Eome to my whereabouts! If the worst come to the worst, New York, also, may fall mo my clutches, and only the Rocky Mountains may Thackeray was a master in every sense, dars be able to stop my progress." Those days in ing, as it were, in himself a double quantity of Paris with him were amply tremendous. We being. Robust humour and lotty sentiment dined at all possible and impossitue places alternated so strangely in him, that sometimes together. We walked round and round the, he seemed like the natural son of Rabelais, and glittering court of the Palais Royal, gazing in, at others he rose up a very twin brother of ide at the windows of the jewellers' shops, and all Stratford seer. There was nothing in him my efforts were necessary to restrain him from amorphous and unconsidered. Whatever he rushing in and ordering a pocketful of dia- chose to do was always perfectly done. There monds and "other trifles," as he called them; was a genuine Thackeray flavour in everything "for," said he, "how can I spend the princely he was willing to say or to write. He detected income which Smith allows me for editing the with unfailing skill the good or the vile whees Cornhill, unless I begin instantly somewhere!" ever it existed. He had an unerring et a If he saw a group of three or four persons talk- firm understanding, and abounding truth. ing together in an excited way, after the manner "Two of his great master powers," said the of that then riant Parisian people, he would chairman at a dinner given to him many years whisper to me with immense gesticulation, ago in Edinburgh, "are satire and sympathy "There, there, you see the news has reached George Brinely remarked that he could not Paris, and perhaps the number has gone up have painted Vanity Fair' as he has, unless since my last accounts from London." His Eden had been shining in his inner eye" Ne spirits during those few days were colossal, and had, indeed, an awful insight, with a world of he told me that he found it impossible to sleep, solemn tenderness and simplicity in his com "for counting up his subscribers." position. Those who heard the same voice that withered the memory of King George IV. repeat "The spacious firmament on high," have a re collection not easily to be blotted from the mind, and I have a kind of pity for all who were born so recently as not to have heard and understood Thackeray's lectures, But they can read him, and I beg of them to try and appreciate the tenderer phase of his genius, as well as the sarcastic one, He teaches mANY lessons to young men, and here is one of them, which I quote memoriter from "Harry Lyndon > I happened to know personally (and let me modestly add, with some degree of sympathy) what he suffered editorially, when he had the charge and responsibility of a magazine. With first-class contributors he got on very well, he said, but the extortioners and revilers bothered the very life out of him. He gave me some amusing accounts of his misunderstandings with the "fair" (as he loved to call them), some of whom followed him up so closely with their poetical compositions, that his house (he was "Do you not, as a boy, remember waking of bright summer mornings and finding your mother looking over you? Had not the gaze of her tender eyes stolen into your senses long before you woke, and cast over your slumbering spirit a sweet spell of peace, and love, and fresh-springing joy?" My dear friend, John Brown of Edinburgh (whom may God long preserve to both countries where he is so loved and honoured), chronicles this touching incident: "We cannot resist here recalling one Sunday evening in December, when Thackeray was walking with two friends along the Dean Road to the west of Edinburgh-one of the noblest outlets to any city. It was a lovely evening; such a sunset as one never forgets; a rich dark bar of cloud hovered over the sun, going down behind the Highland hills, lying bathed in amethystine bloom. Between this cloud and the hills there was a narrow slip of the pure ether, of a tender cowslip colour, lucid, and as if it were the very body of heaven in its clearness, every object standing out as if etched upon the sky. The north-west end of Corstorphine Hill, with its trees and rocks, lay in the heart of this pure radiance; and there a wooden crane, used in the granary below, was so placed as to assume the figure of a cross; there it was, unmistakable, lifted up against the crystalline sky. All three gazed at it silently. As they gazed, Thackeray gave utterance in a tremulous, gentle, and rapid voice, to what all were feeling in the word, 'Calvary!' The friends walked on in silence, and then turned to other things. All that evening he was very gentle and serious, speaking as he seldom did of Divine things, of death, of sin, of eternity, of salvation, expressing his simple faith in God and in his Saviour." Thackeray was found dead in his bed on Christmas morning, and he probably died without pain. His mother and his daughters were sleeping under the same roof when he passed away alone. Dickens told me that, looking on him as he lay in his coffin, he wondered that the figure he had known in life as one of such noble presence could seem so shrunken and wasted; but there had been years of sorrow, years of labour, years of pain, in that now exhausted life. It was his happiest Christmas morning when he heard the Voice calling him homeward to unbroken rest. THACKERAY AT HOME.† I used to see a good deal of Mr Thackeray. He was living at that time in his new house in Brompton, which he told me he had purchased, together with the furniture contained in it, from the proceeds of his lectures in America upon the • "Yesterdays with Authors." By J. T. Fields. "Memories of Many Men and of Some Women." By Maunsell B. Field. "Four Georges." When I found him at home, he was sometimes engaged in dictating to his daughter, and my calls upon these occasions were necessarily brief. His health was not very good, and he often dictated lying upon the bed, while Miss Thackeray sat upon a chair at its side, with a table before her upon which she wrote. I dined with him one day at the Reform Club. He was a great gourmet, although not a great eater, and that day he was suffering from a severe headache. After the soup and the fish had both been removed, he told me that the next dish would be one of his own invention. It proved to be a boiled pheasant with a soubise sauce, and it was really delicious. Between us we could not eat more than half of the bird, and he sent what remained with his compliments to a friend, who was dining on the other side of the room. Such a proceeding would look odd in one of our New York clubs, but I presume that it could not be unusual there. After dinner we withdrew, or rather ascended, to the smoking-room, where Mr Thackeray introduced me to several Members of Parliament, and, excusing himself on account of his head. ache, retired, leaving me to be entertained by them. I have always found it a severe ordeal to be left to the tender mercies of a Member of Parliament. They are so well-informed about this country, so familiar with the Federalist and other writings of the Fathers, and so thoroughly versed in our more recent history, that it is not very easy to hold up one's end of the rope in a conversation with them turning upon these subjects. And these are the subjects upon which they naturally desire to hear an American talk. I was one day walking with Mr Thackeray, when something was said by me about ¡Mr Dickens. Thereupon Thackeray, in the most naïve manner in the world, remarked to me that it was very strange, but nevertheless a fact, that Dickens's publishers sold five copies of any one of his books, for one copy which his booksellers sold of any of his. It did not appear to me so very singular, but I did not say so. The one appealed to only the cultivated class, the other to all classes. The one was a great humorist and moral anatomist, and the other a great humanitarian. I then referred to the rumour, at that time in general circulation, that Dickens was in pecuniary embarrassments by reason of his extravagant living, and was contemplating a flight from England to avoid his creditors. Thackeray with great warmth denied this story as a gross calumny. He said that he was acquainted with Dickens's affairs, and that, so far from exceeding his means, he had always lived within them. He complained very much of the annoyances of notoriety. He said that he could not walk a foot in London without being recognised, and that he found this a great penalty for literary fame. CHARACTER OF THACKERAY. the hand, which of course indicated that he had no desire to talk. Men who were members of the same club with him have been heard to say that sometimes he would pass them in the lobbies unnoticed, and at others he would cheerfully initiate a conversation, and leave behind him an impression that sullenness or hauteur was wholly foreign to his nature. It should be stated, however, that his health for many years had never been entirely unimpaired, and that his acute sensibility often rendered it irksome to him to come in contact with his fellow-men. In short, he was essentially of a nervous temperament, and altogether deficient in that vigorous self-possession which enables a man to shine in public assemblies, for it was absolute pain to him to be called upon to make a speech, and even in ordinary conversation he showed no particular desire to hold a prominent place. But the above considerations apart, it would be easier to know many men in a few days than it would be thoroughly to understand Thackeray in the same number of years; for semper idem was not his motto, and his genius was-as it undoubtedly had a perfect right to be-wayward and capricious. Douglas Jerrold, dating his acquaintance with Thackeray from the time that the latter, by some curious hazard, illustrated his book of "Men of Character," was often heard to say, "I have known Thackeray eighteen years, and don't know him yet."— A hundred admirers of Thackeray might undertake to write a memoir of him, and yet the task of doing full justice to his character and career must necessarily be left to a chosen future historian, who shall zealously gather to gether all the bits and fragments to be found scattered among books and men, and blend them into a substantial and permanent shape. But it must be admitted that there is an exceptional difficulty in regard to Thackeray, inasmuch as there were few whom he allowed to know him, in the true sense of the phrase that is to say, there was a constitutional reserve in his manner, accompanied, at times, by a cold austerity which led to some misgivings as to the possibility of his being the pleasant social companion his intimates often described him to be. And yet it is well known to those who saw much of Thackeray in his familiar moments that he could be essentially "jolly" (a favourite term of his) when the humour suited him, and that he would on such occasions open his heart as freely as if the word "reticence" formed no part of his vocabulary; whereas at other times he would keep himself entirely within himself, and answer a question by a monosyllable, or peradventure by a significant movement of the head. At one moment he would look you full in the face and greet you jauntily, at another he would turn from you with a peculiar waving of HODDER. SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON. [1811-1870.] His father's name was David Simpson, and his mother's Mary Jarvey. At the time of the birth of the seventh son and eighth child, the fortunes of David Simpson were at a very low ebb. The drawings in the baker's shop, on the day on which James Y. Simpson was born, amounted to 8s. 3d. Mrs Simpson, a woman of energy and tact, discovering this state of affairs, turned her attention to the details of the business, which afterwards continued fairly prosperous. BATHGATE, a town of about 10,000 inhabi- | strong will, and great shrewdness and industry. tants, lies in a district rich in coal, shale, ironstone, and limestone, about eighteen miles west from Edinburgh. Looking southwards from the slope of the hill overlooking the town, the eye meets the line of the Pentlands, intersected with deep valleys and ravines, the country between is dotted with oil-works, which at night look like a village on fire. Eastward Arthur's Seat and Edinburgh Castle loom largely through the haze of distance; westward is an undulating agricultural tract; northwards the eye meets the blue line of the Firth of Forth, extending upwards towards Stirling. The town probably did not number over 3000 inhabitants when James Young Simpson was born there, 7th June 1811. His immediate ancestry on both father and mother's side came of a good farmer's stock. Further back, on his mother's side, he was allied with the gentle blood of Scotland; on the father's side with a race of vigorous limb, Mary Simpson was one of the best of mothers, always displaying much force of character, along with a quiet, loving disposition. She died when James was nine years of age, but the memory of her prayers remained with him through life. The cares of the household then fell upon his only sister Mary. He was sent to school when four years of age. His school tasks were easy work for him, and his love of knowledge and of a good bone of fact was insatiable; so much so, breast, he left the class-room, and went straight to the Parliament House to seek work as a that on overhearing some one say that "the Bible and Shakespeare are the best books in the world," he remarked, "The Bible, and Shake-writer's clerk." So the question, "Can any speare, and Oliver & Boyd's Almanac ! At least I know the Almanac would have been the greatest prize for me when a boy." At home he was gentle and obliging, and made himself useful in the shop, and in delivering bread | around the neighbourhood. He never felt the straits of pinching poverty which so nearly threatened his elder brothers, the business having prospered from the date of his birth. During one of his earliest visits to Edinburgh he made his way direct to Greyfriars Churchyard, where he copied an inscription on one of the tomb-ceived the degree of Doctor of Medicine. Re stones. With an early longing for student life he entered Edinburgh University at the age of fourteen, attending the junior Greek and Humanity classes in session 1825-26, under Professors Dunbar and Pillans. In 1827-28 he enrolled as a student of medicine, and during the same session attended the classes of Natural Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, and the third Greek class. When entering on his second session he was fortunate enough to secure a bursary of the value of £10, tenable for three years. He had joined an old friend, John Reid, who then lodged with Dr Macarthur, in No. 1 Adam Street. One of the first books he bought on coming to Edinburgh was "The Economy of Human Life," for which he paid ninepence. He was strictly economical, and kept an exact note of his expenses, which at the end of the session he submitted to the family. The rent of his room was not more than three shillings a week. His little cash-book contained such entries as the following: "Vegetables and 'Byron's Beauties;' Finnen Hadies, 2d; and Bones of the Leg, £1, 1s. ;" "Subject, £2; Spoon, 6d.; and Bread and Tart, one shilling and eightpence; Fur Cap, 14sh.; Mary's Tippet, 2sh. and 6d. ; Duncan's Therapeutics,' 9d. ;" "Snuff, 14d.; and a book on Early Rising,' 94d." One of his father's letters to him, written in 1826, ran as follows: "MY DEAR SON,-I am glad to hear by John Pearson that you are well. I intended to be in Edinburgh this month, but I find it is out of my power. Be so good as write me what money you will take to bring you out. James, I am now turning old, and wearing awa' like the snaw among the thaw. I have had a weary winter, but will be glad to see you at Bathgate." David Simpson died in 1839. He attended closely, and benefited largely from, Professor Liston's surgery classes. It was while attending Liston's surgery classes, and witnessing the operations, "that he first began to grope after means for the alleviation of pain when the patient was in the hands of the operator. After seeing the terrible agony of a Highland woman under amputation of the thing be done to make operations less painful?" became a pressing one with him. He passed with ease and credit in the examination for his degree, and became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons before he was nineteen years of age. As he could not take his degree as a physician until he was twenty-one, he returned for a time to Bathgate. He entered college again in 1831, and became first assistant to Dr Gairdner in dispensary work, to whom he gave the utmost satisfaction. In 1832 he re ferring to this period of his life, long after- 'There's a Divinity that shapes our ends, Yes, in the language of the French proverb, When his literary studies at the university were finished, he threw himself, heart and soul, into his medical studies. Dr John Thomson, an eminent physician, saw in young Simpson a possible assistant, and engaged him at the modest salary of £50 a year. This sum he made to suffice for all his wants. "Professor Thomson," he wrote, "engaged me as his assistant, and hence, in brief, I came to settle down a citizen of Edinburgh, and fight amongst you a hard and uphill battle of life for bread, and name, and fame." Between the years 1831-36, at Dr Thomson's request, he turned his attention to the study of obstetric medicine. Already he had shown marked powers of concentration of mind, and in commendation of work and diligence he once said: "Sir Isaac Newton, whose gigantic genius and intellectual strength have fixed upon him the admiration and wonder of his race, modestly averred that his mental superiority, if any, consisted, in his own opinion, only of unusual powers of patient thought and industry. The unparalleled greatness in the results of his thoughts was owing, according to |