by those who knew him at this time. In a great school,
where nearly all the boys bullied those who were beneath them, he was
noted for his invariable kindness to the smaller boys, and it was
remarked of him, even at this age, that for one who had such powers of
sarcasm he made very few wounds by his tongue. At eighteen he entered
Cambridge University, but left it at nineteen and went to study art in
Paris. Here he remained for several years, and began his literary work.
Here, too, he was married, when twenty-six years of age, to Miss
Isabella Shawe, and here they passed the first happy days of their
married life together. He has himself sketched a picture of the time, in
these words:--

"The humblest painter, be he ever so poor, may have a friend
watching at his easel, or a gentle wife sitting by with her work in
her lap, and with fond smiles or silence, or both, cheering his
labors."

For a few short years they were very happy together, and three children
were born to them. Then the most terrible misfortune of his life fell
upon him,--his wife, after a severe illness, became hopelessly insane.
For some time Thackeray refused to believe that it was more than an
illness from which she would recover, but at last the terrible truth was
forced upon him that he had lost her forever, and in a way so much more
cruel than death. She was placed in the home of a kind family employed
to care for her, and there she remained until death released her. His
grief was of the most hopeless kind, and it made a melancholy man of him
throughout life. At times and seasons his natural gayety would return to
him; but he was a sad man at heart from that dreadful day when the
horror of her fate was revealed to him. He never spoke directly of his
grief, but once in a while he would speak of it in parable, as when he
talked to a friend about somebody's wife whom he had known becoming
insane, and that friend says:--

"Never shall I forget the look, the manner, the voice, with which
he said to me, 'It is an awful thing for her to continue to live.
It is awful for her so to die. But has it ever occurred to you how
awful the recovery of her lost reason would be, without the
consciousness of the loss of time? She finds the lover of her youth
a gray-haired old man, and her infants young men and women. Is it
not sad to think of this?'"

His mother came to live with him, and his children grew to