derful
patience, artistic skill, and a thorough acquaintance with the
mechanical and chemical features of sun-painting. For the next
thirty years he took portraits of almost all the prominent persons
who visited Washington City, and in time his reminiscences of them
became very interesting.

The citizens of Washington enjoyed a rare treat when Thackeray came
to deliver his lectures on the English essayists, wits, and humorists
of the eighteenth century. Accustomed to the spread-eagle style
of oratory too prevalent at the Capitol, they were delighted with
the pleasing voice and easy manner of the burly, gray-haired, rosy-
cheeked Briton, who made no gestures, but stood most of the time
with his hands in his pockets, as if he were talking with friends
at a cozy fireside. He did not deal, like Cervantes, with the
ridiculous extravagance of a fantastic order, nor, like Washington
Irving, with the faults and foibles of men, but he struck at the
very heart of the social life of his countrymen's ancestors with
caustic and relentless satire. Some of the more puritanical objected
to the moral tendencies of Thackeray's lectures, and argued that
the naughty scapegraces of the British court should not have been
thus exhumed for the edification of an American audience.

Thackeray made himself at home among the working journalists at
Washington, and was always asking questions. He was especially
interested in the trial of Herbert, a California Congressman, who
had shot dead at a hotel table a waiter who had not promptly served
him, and he appeared to study old Major Lane, a "hunter from
Kentucky," "half horse and half alligator," but gentlemanly in his
manners, and partial to rye-whisky, ruffled shirts, gold-headed
canes, and draw-poker. The Major had fought--so he said--under
Jackson at New Orleans, under Houston at San Jacinto, and under
Zach. Taylor at Buena Vista, and he was then prosecuting a claim
before Congress for his services as an agent among the Yazoo Indians.
It was better than a play to hear him talk, and to observe Thackeray
as he listened.

Rembrandt Peale visited Washington during the Pierce Administration,
and greatly interested those who met him with his reminiscences.
His birth took place while his father, Charles Wilson Peale, was
in camp at Valley Forge. After the War of the Revolution, and
while Washington was a resident of Philadelphia, Charles Wilson
Peale painted several portraits of him. Young