. "Sir," said the mighty
warrior, "dislodge those damn pests in the chimney, without delay."

Two soldiers were ordered to climb the roof and dislodge the enemy. Yet
the swallows were not dislodged, for the soldiers could not reach them.

So Jeffrey's tirades were unavailing, and Wordsworth was not dislodged.

"He might as well try to crush Skiddaw," said Southey.

WILLIAM M. THACKERAY

TO MR. BROOKFIELD
September 16, 1849

Have you read Dickens? Oh, it is charming! Brave Dickens! "David
Copperfield" has some of his prettiest touches, and the reading
of the book has done another author a great deal of good.

--W.M.T.

[Illustration: W.M. THACKERAY]

There are certain good old ladies in every community who
wear perennial mourning. They attend every funeral, carrying
black-bordered handkerchiefs, and weep gently at the right time. I have
made it a point to hunt out these ancient dames at their homes, and, over
the teacups, I have discovered that invariably they enjoy a sweet
peace--a happiness with contentment--that is a great gain. They seem to
be civilization's rudimentary relic of the Irish keeners and the paid
mourners of the Orient.

And there is just a little of this tendency to mourn with those who mourn
in all mankind. It is not difficult to bear another's woe--and then there
is always a grain of mitigation, even in the sorrow of the afflicted,
that makes their tribulation bearable.

Burke affirms, in "On the Sublime," that all men take a certain
satisfaction in the disasters of others. Just as Frenchmen lift their
hats when a funeral passes and thank God that they are not in the hearse,
so do we in the presence of calamity thank Heaven that it is not ours.

Perhaps this is why I get a strange delight from walking through a
graveyard by night. All about are the white monuments that glisten in
the ghostly starlight, the night-wind sighs softly among the grassy
mounds--all else is silent--still.

This is the city of the dead, and of all the hundreds or thousands who
have traveled to this spot over long and weary miles, I, only I, have the
power to leave at will. Their ears are stopped, their eyes are closed,
their hands are folded--but I am alive.

One of the first places I visited on reaching London was Kensal Green
Cemetery. I quickly made the acquaintance of the First Gravedigger, a
rare wit, over whose gray head have passed full seventy ple