lt in Palace
Gardens, Kensington. He received me with the frank welcome of old, and
when we were alone, in the privacy of his library, made an opportunity
(intentionally, I am sure) of approaching the subject, which, he knew, I
could not have forgotten. I asked him why he wrote the article.

"I was unwell," he answered,--"you know what the moral effects of my
attacks are,--and I was indignant that such a shameful proposition
should be made in your American newspapers, and not a single voice be
raised to rebuke it."

"But you certainly knew," said I, "that the ---- ---- does not represent
American opinion. I assure you, that no honest, respectable man in the
United States ever entertained the idea of cheating an English
stockholder."

"I should hope so, too," he answered; "but when I saw the same thing in
the ---- ----, which, you will admit, is a paper of character and
influence, I lost all confidence. I know how impulsive and excitable
your people are, and I really feared that some such measure might be
madly advocated and carried into effect. I see, now, that I made a
blunder, and I am already punished for it. I was getting eight per cent.
from my American investments, and now that I have the capital here it is
lying idle. I shall probably not be able to invest it at a better rate
than four per cent."

I said to him, playfully, that he must not expect me, as an American, to
feel much sympathy with this loss: I, in common with his other friends
beyond the Atlantic, expected from him a juster recognition of the
national character.

"Well," said he, "let us say no more about it. I admit that I have made
a mistake."

Those who knew the physical torments to which Thackeray was periodically
subject--spasms which not only racked his strong frame, but temporarily
darkened his views of men and things--must wonder, that, with the
obligation to write permanently hanging over him, he was not more
frequently betrayed into impatient or petulant expressions. In his clear
brain, he judged himself no less severely, and watched his own nature no
less warily, than he regarded other men. His strong sense of justice was
always alert and active. He sometimes tore away the protecting drapery
from the world's pet heroes and heroines, but, on the other hand, he
desired no one to set him beside them. He never betrayed the least
sensitiveness in regard to his place in literature. The comparisons
which critics sometimes instituted betwee