a
capacity for culture which contradicts all my experience. There are
----" (mentioning two or three names well known in New York) "who I know
have arisen from nothing, yet they are fit for any society in the world.
They would be just as self-possessed and entertaining in the presence of
stars and garters as they are here to-night. Now, in England, a man who
has made his way up, as they have, doesn't seem able to feel his social
dignity. A little bit of the flunky sticks in him somewhere. I am,
perhaps, as independent in this respect as any one I know, yet I'm not
entirely sure of myself."

"Do you remember," I asked him, "what Goethe says of the boys in Venice?
He explains their cleverness, grace, and self-possession as children by
the possibility of any one of them becoming Doge."

"That may be the secret, after all," said Thackeray. "There is no
country like yours for a young man who is obliged to work for his own
place and fortune. If I had sons, I should send them here."

Afterwards, in London, I visited with him the studio of Baron
Marochetti, the sculptor, who was then his next-door neighbor in Onslow
Square, Brompton. The Baron, it appeared, had promised him an original
wood-cut of Albert Duerer's, for whom Thackeray had a special admiration.
Soon after our entrance, the sculptor took down a small engraving from
the wall, saying,--

"Now you have it, at last."

The subject was St. George and the Dragon.

Thackeray inspected it with great delight for a few minutes: then,
suddenly becoming grave, he turned to me and said,--

"I shall hang it near the head of my bed, where I can see it every
morning. We all have our dragons to fight. Do you know yours? I know
mine: I have not one, but two."

"What are they?" I asked.

"Indolence and Luxury!"

I could not help smiling, as I thought of the prodigious amount of
literary labor he had performed, and at the same time remembered the
simple comfort of his dwelling, next door.

"I am serious," he continued; "I never take up the pen without an
effort; I work only from necessity. I never walk out without seeing some
pretty, useless thing which I want to buy. Sometimes I pass the same
shop-window every day for months, and resist the temptation, and think
I'm safe; then comes the day of weakness, and I yield. My physician
tells me I must live very simply, and not dine out so much; but I cannot
break off the agreeable habit. I shall look at this picture and think