ng up an appreciable portion of
its precious time to the gratification of ponderous, implacable,
personal vanity.

[Sidenote: THACKERAY ON THE SUBJECT.]

There is one gleam of light flickering about this intrinsically
melancholy topic in connection with the name of Thackeray. I have read
somewhere that it was a kindred calamity of a public speaker which led
to Thackeray's first appearance in print. At a time when the century was
young, and the author of "Vanity Fair" was a lad at Charterhouse,
Richard Lalor Sheil, the Irish lawyer and orator, had promised to
deliver a speech to a public meeting assembled on Penenden Heath. In
those days there were no staffs of special reporters, no telegraphs, nor
anything less costly than post-chaises wherewith to establish rapid
communication between country platforms and London newspaper offices.
Sheil, rising to the height of the occasion, wrote out his speech, and,
before leaving town, sent copies to the leading journals, in which it,
on the following morning, duly appeared.

Alack! when the orator reached the Heath he found the platform in
possession of the police, who prohibited the meeting and would have none
of the speech. The incident was much talked of, and the boy Thackeray
set to and wrote in verse a parody on the printed but unspoken oration:
Here is the last verse, as I remember it:--

"What though these heretics heard me not?"
Quoth he to his friend Canonical;
"My speech is safe in the _Times_, I wot,
And eke in the _Morning Chronicle_."

* * * * *

[_The original drawings of the illustrations in this Magazine are always
on view, and on sale, in the Art Gallery at these offices, which is open
to the public without charge._]

_A Work of Accusation._

BY HARRY HOW.

"Suicide whilst in a state of temporary insanity."

Such was the verdict of the coroner's jury, and they could scarcely have
declared anything else--there was not a tittle of evidence implicating
another as the perpetrator of the deed. The deceased was found lying in
his studio at the foot of his easel, shot through the heart. The
revolver--a six-chambered one--was tightly gripped in his hand. Four out
of the six chambers remained undischarged. It must have been suicide,
simple and premeditated! The inquiry into the death of the deceased
revealed only one spark of anything approaching sensationalism. It was
the evidence of the housekeeper-