may fall into my clutches, and only the Rocky Mountains may be able to stop my progress!"

and I shall always remember how he made me get into a cab, one day, in London, that I might hear, as we rode along, the joyful news he had to impart, that he had just been reading his daughter's first paper, which was entitled

he, “I blubbered like a child, it was so good, so simple, and so honest; and my little girl wrote it, every word of it."

Those days in Paris with him were simply tremendous. We dined at all possible and impossible places together. We walked round"Little Scholars.' "When I read it," said and round the glittering court of Palais Royal, gazing in at the windows of the jewellers' shops, and all my efforts were necessary to restrain him from rushing in and ordering a pocketful of diamonds and "other trifles," as he called them; "for," said he, "how can I spend the princely income which Smith allows me for editing the Cornhill unless I begin instantly somewhere?" If he saw a group of three or four persons talking together in an excited way, after the manner of that then riant people, he would whisper to me, with immense gesticulation, "There, there, you see the news has reached Paris, and perhaps the number has gone up since my last accounts from London." His spirits during those few days were colossal, and he told me that he found it impossible to sleep "for counting up his subscribers."

I happened to know personally (and let me modestly add, with some degree of sympathy) what he suffered editorially, when he had the charge and responsibility of the magazine. With first-class contributors he got on very well, he said, but the extortioners and revilers bothered the very life out of him. He gave me some amusing accounts of his misunderstandings with the "fair" (as he loved to call them), some of whom followed him up so closely with their poetical compositions, that his house (he was then living in Onslow-square) was never free of interruption. "The darlings demanded," said he, "that I should rewrite, if I could not understand their nonsense, and put their halting lines in proper form." "I was so appalled," said he, "when they set upon me with their 'ipics and their ipecacs,' that you might have knocked me down with a feather, sir. It was insupportable, and I fled away into France." As he went on, growing drolly furious at the recollection of various editorial scenes, I could not help remembering Mr. Yellowplush's recommendation, thus characteristically expressed: "Take my advice, honrabble sir-listen to a humble footmin: it's generally best in poatry to understand puffickly what you mean yourself, and to igspress your meaning clearly afterwoods in the simpler words the better, p'r'aps."

He took very great delight in his young daughter's first contributions to the Cornhill,

Then

During his second visit to Boston I was asked to invite him to attend an evening meeting of a scientific club, which was to be held at the house of a distinguished member. I was very reluctant to ask him to be present, for I knew he could be easily bored, and I was fearful that a prosy essay or geological speech might ensue, and I knew he would be exasperated with me, even although I were the innocent cause of his affliction. My worst fears were realized. We had hardly got seated, before a dull, bilious-looking old gentleman arose, and applied his augur with such pertinacity that we were all bored nearly to distraction. I dared not look at Thackeray, but I felt that his eye was upon me. Nephew, conceive my distress, when he got up quite deliberately, from the prominent place where a chair had been set for him, and made his exit very noiselessly into a small anteroom leading into the larger room, and in which no one was sitting. The small apartment was dimly lighted, but he knew that I knew he was there. commenced a series of pantomimic feats impossible to describe adequately. He threw an imaginary person (myself, of course) upon the floor, and proceeded to stab him several times with a paper-folder, which he caught up for the purpose. After disposing of his victim in this way, he was not satisfied, for the dull lecture still went on in the other room, and he fired an imaginary revolver several times at an imaginary head. Still the droning speaker proceeded with his frozen subject (it was something about the Arctic regions, if I remember rightly), and now began the greatest pantomimic scene of all-namely, murder by poison, after the manner in which the player king is disposed of in "Hamlet." Thackeray had found a small vial on the mantel-shelf, and out of that he proceeded to pour the imaginary "juice of cursed hebenon into the imaginary porches of somebody's ears. The whole thing was inimitably done, and I hoped nobody saw it but myself; but years afterwards, a ponderous, fat-witted young man, put the question squarely to me: "What was the matter with Mr. Thackeray, that night the club met at Mr. -'s house?"

[Mrs. Anna Jameson, born in Dublin, 19th May, 1797; died in London, 17th March, 1860. She was the daughter of Mr. Murphy, painter in ordinary to the Princess Charlotte. Although she has written much on general subjects, Mrs. Jameson is best known by her works upon art-Lives of the Early Italian Painters, The Poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art, Legends of the Madonna, &c. She was engaged upon The Life of the Lord for two years previous to her death. The Diary of an Ennuyée was first published in 1826, and was subsequently re issued with many additions under the title of Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad. From the latter work the following sketch is taken.]

brought to Paris to be united to the marquis of ; it was a mere marriage de convenance, a family arrangement entered into when she was quite a child, according to the ancien régime; and, unfortunately for Genevieve, her affianced bridegroom was neither young nor amiable; yet more unfortunately it happened that the marquis' cousin, the Baron de Villay, who generally accompanied him in his visits of ceremony, possessed all the qualities in which he was deficient; being young and singularly handsome, "aimable," "spirituel." While the marquis, with the good breeding of that day, was bowing and paying his devoirs to the aunt of his intended (sa future), the young baron, with equal success, but in a very different style, was captivating the heart of the niece. Her extreme beauty had charmed him at the first glance, and her partiality, delicately and involuntarily betrayed, subdued every scruple, if he ever entertained any; and so, in the usual course of things, they were soon irretrievably and eperdument in love with each other.

Genevieve, to much gentleness of character, united firmness. The preparations for the marriage went on; the trousseau was bought; the jewels set; but the moment she was aware of her own sentiments, she had courage enough to declare to her aunt, that, rather than give her hand to the marquis, whom she detested past all her terms of detestation, she would throw herself into a nunnery, and endow it with her fortune. The poor aunt was thrown, by this unexpected declaration, into the utmost amazement and perplexity; she was au desespoir; such a thing had never been heard of or L'art de bien conter is still a Frenchman's contemplated: but the tears of Genevieve premost admired talent. Our handsome and vailed; the marriage, after a long negotiation, interesting beau, Edmonde, piques himself on was broken off, and the baron appeared publicly this accomplishment, and is a "conteur by as the suitor of Genevieve. The marquis profession. He related to us in the Tuileries, politely challenged his cousin, and owed his yesterday, the following anecdote, with infinite life to his forbearance; and the duel, and the grace of elocution, and considerable effect, spite | cause of it, and the gallantry and generosity of his odd falsetto voice. The circumstances of De Villay, rendered him irresistible in the occurred at the time Le Noir was minister of eyes of all the women in Paris, while to the the police: I forget the year. heart of Genevieve he became dearer than ever.

Genevieve de Sorbigny was the last of a noble family: young, beautiful, and a rich heiress, she seemed born to command all this world could yield of happiness. When left an orphan, at an early age, instead of being sent to a convent, as was then the universal custom, she was brought up under the care of a maternal aunt, who devoted herself to her education, and doated on her with an almost exclusive affection.

Genevieve resided in the country with her aunt till she was about sixteen; she was then

To gain the favour of the aunt was now the only difficulty; she had ever regarded him with ill-concealed aversion and suspicion. Some mystery hung over his character; there were certain reports whispered relative to his former life and conduct which it was equally difficult to discredit and to disprove. Besides, though of a distinguished family, he was poor, most of his ancestral possessions being confiscated or dissipated; and his father was notoriously a mauvais sujet. All these reports and representations appeared to the impassioned

Genevieve mere barbarous calumnies, invented | Bretagne, and the other eight at Paris, or at her to injure her love; and regarding herself as the uncle's chateau in Auvergne; in fact, so little primal cause of these slanders, they rather was known then in the capital of what was passadded to the strength of her attachment. A ing in the distant provinces, that Genevieve reluctant consent was at last wrung from her only, being prepared by her husband, could aunt, and Genevieve was united to her lover. form some idea of what she was about to encounter.

She

with her, and accompanied her from Paris, moonlight shadows on the pavement. came into the room, pale as ashes; and throw-hastily threw round her a dark cloak or wrapper, ing herself at her feet, told her, that though and followed her husband, whose footsteps regard for her health had hitherto kept her were still within hearing. It was not difficult, silent, she could no longer conceal the dreadful for he walked slowly, stopping every now and secret which weighed upon her spirits. She then then, listening, and apparently irresolute; he proceeded to inform the shuddering and horror- crossed the court and several outbuildings, and struck Genevieve, that the robbers who had ex- part of the ruins of a former chateau, till he cited so much terror, and were now supposed to be came to an old well, which being dry, had long at a distance, were then actually in the chateau: been disused and shut up, and moving aside that they consisted of the very servants and the trap-door which covered the mouth of it, immediate dependants, with the baron himself he disappeared in an instant. Genevieve with at their head. She supposed they had been difficulty suppressed a shriek of terror. She less on their guard during Genevieve's confine- followed, however, with a desperate courage, ment; and many minute circumstances had groped her way down the well by means of at first awaked, and then confirmed her sus- some broken stairs, and pursued her husband's picions. Then embracing her mistress' knees, steps, guided only by the sound on the hollow she besought her, for the love of Heaven, to re- | damp earth. Suddenly a distant light and turn to Paris instantly, with those of her own voices broke upon her eye and ear; and stealattendants on whom she could securely de- ing along the wall, she hid herself behind one pend, before they were all murdered in their of the huge buttresses which supported the beds. vault above; she beheld what she was halfprepared to see-a party of ruffians, who were assembled round a board drinking. They received the baron with respect as their chief, but with sullen suspicious looks, and an ominous silence. Genevieve could distinguish among the faces many familiar to her, which she was accustomed to see daily around her, working in the gardens or attending in the chateau; among the rest the concierge, or housesteward, who appeared to have some authority over the rest. The wife of this man was the nurse of Genevieve's child. The baron took his seat without speaking. After some boisterous conversation among the rest, carried on in an unintelligible dialect, a quarrel arose between the concierge and another villain, both apparently intoxicated; the baron attempted to part them, and the uproar became general. The whole was probably a preconcerted plan, for from reproaching each other they proceeded to attack the baron himself with the most injurious epithets; they accused him of a design to betray them; they compared him to his father, the old baron, who had never flinched from their cause, and had at last died in it; they said they knew well that a large party of regular troops had lately arrived at Saint Brieu, and they insisted it was with his knowledge, that he was about to give them up to justice, to make his own peace with government, &c.

Genevieve, as soon as she had recovered from her first dizzy horror and astonishment, would have rejected the whole as a dream, an impossible fiction. She thought upon her husband, on all that her fond heart had admired in him, and all that till lately she had found him-his noble form, his manly beauty, his high and honourable bearing, and all his love, his truth, his tenderness for her-and could he be a robber, a ruffian, an assassin? No; though her woman's attachment and truth were beyond suspicion, her tale too horribly consistent for disbelief, Genevieve would trust to her own senses alone to confirm or disprove the hideous imputation. She commanded her maid to maintain an absolute silence on the subject, and leave the rest to her.

The same evening the baron informed his wife that he was obliged to set off before light next morning, in pursuit of a party of smugglers who had landed at St. Paul; and that she must not be surprised if she missed him at an early hour. His absence he assured her would not be long he should certainly return before the evening. They retired to rest earlier than usual. Genevieve, as it may be imagined, did not sleep, but she lay perfectly still as if in a profound slumber. About the middle of the night she heard her husband softly rise from his bed and dress himself; and taking his pistols he left the room. Genevieve rushed to the window which overlooked the court-yard, but there neither horses nor attendants were waiting; she flew to another window which commanded the back of the chateau-there too all was still; nothing was to be seen but the

The concierge, who was by far the most insolent and violent of these mutineers, at length silenced the others, and affecting a tone of moderation he proposed, and his proposal was received with an approving shout, that the