e and two
o'clock,--time certainly for all decent diners out to be at rest.
Thackeray put on one of his most quizzical expressions, and said to
John, in answer to his question, "I think we will make a morning call on
the Lord Bishop of London." John knew his master's quips and cranks too
well to suppose he was in earnest, so I gave him my address, and we went
on. When we reached my lodgings the clocks were striking two, and the
early morning air was raw and piercing. Opposing all my entreaties for
leave-taking in the carriage, he insisted upon getting out on the
sidewalk and escorting me up to my door, saying, with a mock heroic
protest to the heavens above us, "That it would be shameful for a
full-blooded Britisher to leave an unprotected Yankee friend exposed to
ruffians, who prowl about the streets with an eye to plunder." Then
giving me a gigantic embrace, he sang a verse of which he knew me to be
very fond; and so vanished out of my sight the great-hearted author of
"Pendennis" and "Vanity Fair." But I think of him still as moving, in
his own stately way, up and down the crowded thoroughfares of London,
dropping in at the Garrick, or sitting at the window of the Athenaeum
Club, and watching the stupendous tide of life that is ever moving past
in that wonderful city.

Thackeray was a _master_ in every sense, having as it were, in himself,
a double quantity of being. Robust humor and lofty sentiment alternated
so strangely in him, that sometimes he seemed like the natural son of
Rabelais, and at others he rose up a very twin brother of the Stratford
Seer. There was nothing in him amorphous and unconsidered. Whatever he
chose to do was always perfectly done. There was a genuine Thackeray
flavor in everything he was willing to say or to write. He detected with
unfailing skill the good or the vile wherever it existed. He had an
unerring eye, a firm understanding, and abounding truth. "Two of his
great master powers," said the chairman at a dinner given to him many
years ago in Edinburgh, "are _satire_ and _sympathy_." George Brimley
remarked, "That he could not have painted Vanity Fair as he has, unless
Eden had been shining in his inner eye." He had, indeed, an awful
insight, with a world of solemn tenderness and simplicity, in his
composition. Those who heard the same voice that withered the memory of
King George the Fourth repeat "The spacious firmament on high" have a
recollection not easily to be blotted from the m