o he called it, all
the winter.

It is pleasant to notice that neither Thackeray, the editor nor Smith,
the publisher quarrelled with the author who had laid them open to the
censure of their public,--nor he with them. On December 21st, he wrote
to Thackeray, in answer apparently, to a letter about lecturing for a
charitable purpose: and continued:

"The mode in which you direct your charity puts me in mind of a
matter that has lain long on my mind, though I never have had the
time or face to talk to you of it. In somebody's drawing-room,
ages ago, you were speaking accidentally of M. de Marvy.[8] I
expressed my great obligation to him; on which you said that I
could prove my gratitude, if I chose, to his widow,--which choice I
then not accepting, have ever since remembered the circumstance as
one peculiarly likely to add, so far as it went, to the general
impression on your mind of the hollowness of people's sayings and
hardness of their hearts. The fact is, I give what I give almost in
an opposite way to yours. I think there are many people who will
relieve hopeless distress for one who will help at a hopeful pinch;
and when I have the choice I nearly always give where I think the
money will be fruitful rather than merely helpful. I would lecture
for a school when I would _not_ for a distressed author; and would
have helped De Marvy to perfect his invention, but not--unless I
had no other object--his widow after he was gone. In a word, I like
to prop the falling more than to feed the fallen."

[Footnote 8: Louis Marvy, an engraver, and political refugee after the
French Revolution of 1848. He produced the plates, and Thackeray the
text, of "Landscape Painters of England, in a series of steel
engravings, with short Notices."]

The winter passed without any great undertaking. G.F. Watts proposed to
add Ruskin's portrait to his gallery of celebrities; but he was in no
mood to sit. Rossetti did, however, sketch him this year. In March he
presented eighty-three Turner drawings to Oxford, and twenty-five to
Cambridge. The address of thanks with the great seal of Oxford
University is dated March 23rd, 1861; the Catalogue of the Cambridge
collection is dated May 28th.

On April 2nd he addressed the St. George's Mission Working Men's
Institute, and shortly afterwards, though at this time in a much
enfeebled state of health, gave a