nor fail, for nothing is
expected of them. From such a one as Thackeray something would have been
expected, which would not have been forthcoming. He was too desultory
for regular work,--full of thought, but too vague for practical
questions. He could not have endured to sit for two or three hours at a
time with his hat over his eyes, pretending to listen, as is the duty of
a good legislator. He was a man intolerant of tedium, and in the best of
his time impatient of slow work. Nor, though his liberal feelings were
very strong, were his political convictions definite or accurate. He was
a man who mentally drank in much, feeding his fancy hourly with what he
saw, what he heard, what he read, and then pouring it all out with an
immense power of amplification. But it would have been impossible for
him to study and bring home to himself the various points of a
complicated bill with a hundred and fifty clauses. In becoming a man of
letters, and taking that branch of letters which fell to him, he
obtained the special place that was fitted for him. He was a round peg
in a round hole. There was no other hole which he would have fitted
nearly so well. But he had his moment of political ambition, like
others,--and paid a thousand pounds for his attempt.

In 1857 the first number of _The Virginians_ appeared, and the
last,--the twenty-fourth,--in October, 1859. This novel, as all my
readers are aware, is a continuance of _Esmond_, and will be spoken of
in its proper place. He was then forty-eight years old, very gray, with
much of age upon him, which had come from suffering,--age shown by
dislike of activity and by an old man's way of thinking about many
things,--speaking as though the world were all behind him instead of
before; but still with a stalwart outward bearing, very erect in his
gait, and a countenance peculiarly expressive and capable of much
dignity. I speak of his personal appearance at this time, because it was
then only that I became acquainted with him. In 1859 he undertook the
last great work of his life, the editorship of _The Cornhill Magazine_,
a periodical set on foot by Mr. George Smith, of the house of Smith and
Elder, with an amount of energy greater than has generally been bestowed
upon such enterprises. It will be well remembered still how much _The
Cornhill_ was talked about and thought of before it first appeared, and
how much of that thinking and talking was due to the fact that Mr.
Thackeray was to e