Does he write? he fain would paint a picture. It was not, however, the wistful depth of this supreme devotion which moved Thackeray. There are cuttings-off and impoverishments of life which are more pathetic than the deepest sorrows which can be expressed in words. The "once, and only once, and for one only," was not permitted to the warm heart and tender soul of our great humourist; but he had - and who will say there was not sufficient compensation in it?-the sweet alternative of children to please by the art which was not his art, and friends to entertain and a home to enliven. He did this instead of the Dante-picture and the Raphael-sonnets, for which his life had no place. In their languors of childish sickness, in the times he was absent from them, even when they had other children to entertain and wanted help for their simple merry-making, the great writer took his pencil and drew pictures for his little daughters and their little friends. No one thought anything of those works of love which were lavished upon them, which were done for play, in moments when the world and its thoughts were absent - until now, when time and death have given sacredness to everything he touched, when the heirs of his love and of his gifts bring this little basket of fragments with tender hands, to throw a gleam of tearful yet smiling light upon the records of their now empty home. | things which were afterwards carried out, and which we remember in more elaborate guise in other publications. How little he thought of these chance productions is very touchingly described in Miss Thackeray's preface. "The pictures were rarely preserved by himself," she says, "nor put away by us with any care. The familiar stream flowed on, loved but unheeded by us; and among the many drawings he devised, only a certain number remain in our possession. In all my remembrance, he never had one of his own drawings framed; and when I was a child I remember a great scrap-book which was given me to play with, and to work my will upon. I can only once remember a questioning word from him concerning some scissorpoints with which I had ornamented some of his sketches. In later years, by his desire, I have washed off the drawings from many and many a wood-block; and I remember once destroying his whole day's work in my anxiety to be of use. But although he certainly never wished us to make much of his work, all that belonged to it and to his art was of vivid and serious reality to him, and of unfailing interest and suggestion." This affords us, we think, a picture better than any of the pictures that follow- more genial, coming home to the multitude, which is slow about art, but has perceptions in every point of nature. Men of letters sometimes watch over their fame with a jealous care which makes an audience even of the family circle; but these are generally lesser lights of the firmament; and true genius with any greatness in it selIt is the associations which thus hang dom glorifies itself at the expense of the about it, and which, even to those who simplicity of nature. Thackeray at home knew nothing of him, must throw a touch- was not the great author but the dear ing light upon the character of Thackeray, father, whose thousand tender qualities that give its chief interest to this book. were far more dear to his children than No new revelation of talent or capability the fame which was extraneous and out of is in it: the drawings are many of them place in that warm domestic centre. What extremely clever, and the scraps of de- he could do and did do, was little to scription whimsical and charming; but those to whom he himself was everything. that which gives it a special character is "The familiar stream flowed on, loved but the glow of domestic ease and cheerful unheeded." What description could be leisure, the reflection of a peaceful home, given more natural and more affecting? the friendly, genial gleams of side light, Throughout the volume those soft family showing the man in his least serious mo- touches make up the charm and interest. ments, which we find enshrined within its The lions that figured in "The Rose and pages. What prodigality and wealth of the Ring," roaring and rushing, were work it shows! Sitting at his table, talk- scribbled off to enliven a childish sick-bed; ing, no doubt, to his friends or his chil- and the ingenious and tricky devices of the dren, here are the heads he scribbles on a pack of cards had a somewhat similar oripage, with playful extravagance, for want gin. Sometimes without thought, mere of thought, like the milk-boy's whistle. idle occupation of the busy brain and Here are the designs, ideas, and inten- hand which had no comprehension of tions never carried out, or reflections of sheer do-nothingness—sometimes, on 66 Birch's school, perhaps a less elevated effort, ought to go to the heart of all schoolboys, with the comical victim in the foreground, and the rueful faces of the "boys who go up next." These are nothings, the reader will perceive; yet they are full both of fun and pathos, and more significant of the workman than matters much more important. the contrary, giving the affectionate zest | effect, thanks to the skilful manipulation of work for them to the empty hours in of the artist. Sometimes they are black which he was separated from the creatures" nigger" faces, illustrating fantasies of he loved best-the running accompani- his American tours-sometimes historical ment of his life is noted on these frag- silhouettes. A three of clubs, in which mentary pages. Sometimes the drawing the Duke of Marlborough is the hero, one is vigorous and powerful, with meaning in spot representing his own pigtail, another it. Sometimes it is nothing more than the that of his horse, and a third nestling in scribblings of a blotting-book; but how his cocked hat, is very clever. The red ever it comes, it shows us the soft meas- cards require still more pains and trouble; ure, the undertone of harmony, the tune and the back view of Miss Smith at the to which his life was set. piano, with a diamond let into her shoulThe immediate object of the publica- ders, in delightful adaptation to the costion, however, is to give a little genuine tume of the period, is almost as good memento of Thackeray, and of the style as the scene representing "Napoleon in which was peculiarly his own, with the the midst of the Old Guard," where one sanction of such authority as marks the of the spots of the eight of diamonds comes work authentic. 66 "The Orphan of Pim- into the dress of the emperor with the lico," which gives its name to the publica- most admirable effect. My father once tion, is a very slight sketch in the style of said," says Miss Thackeray, "that one of the "Novels by Popular Authors," of the achievements of his life which had which already we have various specimens given him most unalloyed satisfaction, was from his hand. Miss Maria Theresa the introduction of Napoleon's waistcoat Wiggleworth, "for many years governess as it appears in this battle-scene." Never in families of the highest distinction," was more delightful, genial foolery. Dr. and whose irreproachable character is supported by reference to the "revered clergy of the district," is not, however, presented to us as a parody, but upon her merits; and the tale of love, despair, betrayal and punishment, which she tells in the most elegant language, is illustrated with the portraits of all the fine people concerned, in various sensational moments, ending with a tragical tableau, in which a weak- Along with this genial play of exubeminded husband and a wicked lover per- rant and delightful nonsense, are a few ish almost at the same moment, and gen- more elaborate drawings. Perhaps the eral woe is distributed in just proportion best of these is the figure (as is supposed) to all concerned. Both the composition of a gentleman with whom the public of this highly moral, exciting, and mourn-made acquaintance at Mrs. Perkins's ball. ful tale, and its illustrations, are eminent- "This drawing," Miss Thackeray says, ly characteristic. They were first "begun entering into it with hereditary humour, at Kensington, one evening by lamplight;" and done in scraps, the last first, with the caprice of a family joke, filling the quiet evenings with fun and laughing occupation. Another set of drawings deal with the adventures of Prince Polonio, a precursor apparently of Prince Giglio, the hero of "The Rose and the Ring." "In the first page (which has drifted away into some unknown space) the travellers come upon a mysterious personage, called the Little Assessor of Tübingen, lying asleep under a tree, with blue facings to his coat. My father would never explain who the little Assessor was, or what he was doing. He said it was a mystery." The playingcards belong to the same playful portion of holiday work. All kinds of imaginations play about the black and red pips, which come in with the most whimsical "may recall Mr. Frederick Minchin, in the vivacity of early youth, before he had attained to that quiet dignity for which he was afterwards remarkable." The flying figure of this, alas! now somewhat antiquated beau, in high black stock and collar airy as Terpsichore herself, yet serious as all great performers are, in full impulse of a dance less languid than those we are now used to see is delightful. He is afloat, but decorous, poised in air, yet, one feels sure, certain never to come down upon any partner's toes, or otherwise commit himself by pranks unbecoming the perfect propriety of this model of all the graces of the ball-room. This is pure comedy on its genteelest level. There is a touch of tragedy, however, in the somewhat appalling little picture of children playing in the Glasgow gutters a draw curiosity of the crowd, there may be nothing undignified, nothing paltry, in the desire to appeal to the public for a posthumous arbitration of their difficulties and quarrels. But Mr. Thackeray was not of this disposition, and we think he was right. Yet without any story given, or any secrets disclosed, here is a sketch of him, shadowy and slight as his own sketches, telling little, yet all that it is needful to know. The cold critic who does not care for such a true and affecting human revelation, may think the drawings of but little im ing in which there is almost a Hogarthian | it, none the less that he is a great author, touch, in its keen perception of the misery and much in the eye of the world. To and unloveliness of the little group, which those who like to excite and to satisfy the yet are not beyond the reach of childish grace and mirth. The two Scotch sketches, indeed, are little favourable to our beloved country. A more truculent audience could scarcely have been than the MacGuffies and MacDuffies whom the lecturer sees before him, and whose harsh countenances he leaves on record. Let us hope we are not quite so appalling in the flesh. One of the most amusing of the sketches is that which represents the interior of a railway-carriage, in which an old clergyman is lecturing a poor lady convicted of having the objectionable pub-portance to be thus carefully reproduced; lication in her hand, on the enormity of reading Punch (in its early days), while Thackeray himself and Douglas Jerrold look on and listen on the adjoining bench. "Are you aware who are the conductors of that paper? and that they are Chartists, deists, atheists, anarchists, and socialists to a man? I have it on the best authority that they meet together once a week in a tavern in St. Giles's, where they concoct their infamous print. The chief part of their income is derived from threatening letters, which they send to the nobility and gentry. Their principal writer is a returned convict." To this conversation Jerrold is listening in the corner, with eyes looking back, and a comic solemnity, while Thackeray himself grins genial with benign countenance. The incident is said to have really occurred, and it is easy to understand the amusement which the two must have got out of it. We think we know the benevolent clerical critic who gives so fair and friendly an account of the "infamous print." It is, however, impossible to go over the book in detail. There is nothing but fun and nonsense in it, and yet, curiously enough, the impression it makes is entirely tender and pathetic. We are less amused than touched by the soft breath of recollections, the love so delicately shadowed out, without a word that can profane or even vulgarize its sacredness, of which these pages are full. To those who knew Thackeray, this delicate suggestion of him must, we do not doubt, come home with wonderful meaning; but even to those who did not know the man, such indications of him as are to be found here will be more valuable than the details of vulgar volumes of biography. The world has nothing to do with the private griefs and struggles of a man who respects his own privacy, and chooses to preserve but with all whose interest in his character has ever been awakened every line will tell, and the least careful of the pictures will be probably the most interesting. A solemn document formally drawn up does not give us half so much information about the writer as does the bit of blotting-paper or torn scrap out of his waste-basket, upon which he has jotted down inadvertently the vagaries that crossed his mind during the writing of it - the trying of a new pen, or effort to get the old one in order. The scribblings of Thackeray's amused and amusing fancy are so many windows into the man, by which we may see his real heart; and how genial is all we find, how full of innocent fun and light-heartedness, that lightness of heart which is the happiest gift of God, and accompanies its possessor through good and evil fortune, giving him moments of gaiety in the midst of trouble, and keeping him alive! Those unfortunate people who cannot get any good of the passing gleams of amusement which cross the deepest darkness by times, what a much harder lot life must be to them! But to such a man as this, life however checkered is not a hard lot. It is full of the sweetest compensations not those artificial makings-up which we laugh at under the title of poetic justice, but compensations of nature, tremblings of light through tears, soft outbursts of laughter in the midst of sighing, perpetual rebellions of the unconquered soul against its secret foe, that dread and dull monotony which eats out the charm of life. Monotony, it is evident, could not be where Thackeray was. Nature in him was always astir, always open-eyed-seeing more than others, and generally seeing with genial observation, notwithstanding that penetrating insight into the darker side of human motive which was in him, and which is the one thing that impairs his From The Cornhill Magazine. A NEGRO METHODIST CONFERENCE. genius to the idealist. How a man so full | friends known and unknown - the latter of the milk of human kindness, so tender class taking in all English readers. In in his humour, so warm in his affections, one of the poems of his Irish book, we should have been gifted just with that remember, he greets the new morning as special perception of the weaknesses and it rises with the thought that "my little mixed impulses of human nature its de- girls are waking, and making their prayers ficiency in the absolutely good, and per- perhaps for me." Let the reader pardon petual, ever visible alloy looks like one a defective memory if the quotation is not of the paradoxes of which he was so fond, correct. It is as a memorial of this most - but so it was. Perhaps the very variety beautiful of loves that we receive the little of his mind, refusing acquiescence in a collection of fragments-kind play and dull level of goodness as much as in every pleasantry of the days that are over, other dull level, prompted the laughing turned into pathos by death and time. search for other qualities and impulses Soft fall the dews, soft lie, the snows, upon which are but too readily found whenever the kind father's sleeping head, once astir they are sought for. But Thackeray was with crowds of tender and of gentle fantoo true a humourist, too genial a man, ever cies! The man of whom such relics only to dissect with bitterness. The impulse are preserved is surely of the number of to laugh, and to find occasion for laughing, those whose names smell sweet and blosmight be too strong in him; but even his som in the dust. rebellion against fictitious standards, and the sham which passes muster in the world, and is often more esteemed than the true, was never sharp and bitter. It was amusement more than indignation that moved him; a soft hope, a friendly conviction that, after all, these foibles and feeblenesses had to be judged by "larger, other eyes than ours," was always in his mind; not Ithuriel's spear revealing the baser nature in sudden force of native hideousness, but rather a twinkling, mischievous illumination of many lights suddenly catching the sinner when he thought of it least, and confounding him by quick exposure and ridicule. This was natural to his mind, not lofty scorn and moral indignation. He loved to expose false pretences, to break in the paper walls of social falsehood, to show to us the general atmosphere of deception, even of our selves, in which so many of us live and breathe; but he never judged harshly, nor pronounced any bitter sentence; and he never failed to pay his tribute to the finer and truer nature when it came in his way. It has been objected to him often that his Dobbin had splay feet, and that his Amelia was a fool. Well there are fools who hold our hearts when wiser folks throw them away; and as for poor Dobbin's ugliness, that, too, was one of the paradoxes his creator loved. He could not contemplate human nature without seeing them; and to his temper, that fantastic, pathetic contrast of external appearances with inward realities was always more at-ligious enthusiasm, and vent their emo tractive than any other aspect of life. However, no critic will be clever enough to find one touch of cynicism in this tender memorial of Thackeray which his children have offered so modestly to his WINCHESTER (Virginia) is very unlike its stately English namesake, and is still, in fact, in rather a primitive condition. There is no greater mistake, however, than to take any individual American town as a type of many, or even of the state in which it is situated, so that in giving the following description of some interesting occurrences, at which we were present at Winchester, Virginia, we wish it to be distinctly understood that we are speaking of that place only, and not describing others under one comprehensive name, or painting classes of men from any of the individual models that passed before our eyes. There were two negro, or coloured, churches in Winchester-one "Metho dist Episcopal" and the other Baptist. Negroes in general belong to one of these two denominations, though there are also Episcopalian, i.e. Anglican, and Catholic congregations, in some large towns, while perhaps other small portions of the coloured population belong to various other religions. Every one knows that the negro is of an emotional, passionate, susceptible nature, and the Methodist Church offers him many attractions. Even white Methodists sometimes feel excited by their re tions in gestures and exclamations which one would think very unlikely to be forced from them in their normal state of mind. It is not surprising, therefore, that the impulsive African should manifest his Presently a young woman stepped forward, and claimed the newly-arrived minister as her guest, and the old man laughingly said: "Very well, sister; I commend him to your care; take him home, and feed him well, and give him a very good bed." The accommodation was doubtless scanty, but the will of the sister was good, though we suspect that she already had her hands full. There were "exercises " every morning and evening, while the rest of the day was set apart for business. A white Methodist bishop presided. As yet there is no coloured bishop in the Methodist Church, a fact which occasioned one of the best addresses made to the students for the ministry during the conference. The church where the meetings were held was small and very plain, whitewashed and galleried, and provided with a small melodeon, or species of harmonium without stops, and looking like a very diminutive cottage pianoforte. But the congregation was not dependent on this instrument for its music; the coloured churches had simply the best music in town. The choir proper consisted of a dozen men and women, who sang hymns beautifully and accurately in parts, while the whole congregation backed them up with a volume of sound more melodious than is generally heard in any white church in America. A negro could hardly sing out of tune if he wished to, and no choir but the surpliced one of a cathedral could outdo the performance of coloured singers, even if only very slightly trained. nature very freely during the religious | other brother who has just come, and we "exercises" of the Methodist Church, must find a home for him. Will any of and this we had an opportunity of observ- the sisters come forward and give him ing during a conference of coloured min- hospitality? He is young and very goodisters, including those of Virginia, Mary- looking; and you know the Bible tells us land, District of Columbia, and West Vir- we may often entertain angels unawares." ginia, which met at Winchester in the early spring of 1874. The conference was officially called the "Washington Conference of the Coloured Methodist Episcopal Church." It lasted for a week. The Friday and Saturday before the opening Sunday were busy days on the railway: each train brought dozens of coloured ministers, some with, but most without their families, and each carrying a bag or bundle, with his "go-to-meetin' ""suit of glossy black, for there was to be an ordination on the closing Sunday. Most of these ministers were intelligent-looking men, and their clothes were in very good condition; some of the younger were quite dandified, and a few of the older wore gold spectacles. Though the town of Winchester is very small (it must be added that it is also old, for it has a history of two hundred years, and was one of the first settlements of the Virginian colonists), there was no difficulty about lodging close upon two hundred strangers. Each coloured person owning any kind of home-shanty or log hut, or the rarer cottage gave hospitality to as many ministers as he could accommodate; and the least number was two, even although the host had but one spare room and bed. The people were proud of thus housing their pastors, and vied with each other in giving them the very best of food. A negro, man or woman, is born a good cook, and it is safe to say that many a white family, even in respectable circumstances, does not fare so well, or at any rate seldom fares better, than a coloured woman with a much smaller income. Some people say the latter often steals her provisions; we do not think they steal, on an average, more than a certain class of white servants do; and even granting that the material of the cuisine is stolen, there are few whites who, if they had stolen such material, would know how to turn it to such good account. During the first two or three nights after the main body of the ministers had arrived, a few kept coming irregularly, and it became a question how to procure quarters for them. One evening a very old preacher was presiding over the meeting, and after gratefully thanking the people of the town for their lavish hospitality, and especially praising "the sisters," he added, very pleasantly: "But we have an At the chancel end of the church was a space railed off and raised two steps above the level of the floor, while in the place of the altar stood a kind of tribune, where three men could stand abreast, with six or eight steps leading up to it on each side. This was used for prayer and preaching; the space below was fitted up with chairs for the bishop and some of the speakers, while two secretaries sat at a long table placed against the base of the tribune. The bishop wore a tail-coat and a white necktie, but scarcely looked dignified. The young secretaries, both of them candidates for deaconship, were good-looking and intelligent: many of the young men had been through a regular theological course in the new colleges and seminaries |