ss, and at their close he made an
amend which was graceful and proper; so that when he departed from our
shores his former errors were fully condoned, and he left an admiring
hemisphere behind him.

In the glow of health, and while writing, in serial numbers, a very
promising novel entitled _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_, he was struck by
apoplexy, in June, 1870, and in a few hours was dead. England has hardly
experienced a greater loss. All classes of men mourned when he was buried
in Westminster Abbey, in the poets' corner, among illustrious writers,--a
prose-poet, none of whom has a larger fame than he; a historian of his
time of greater value to society than any who distinctively bear the
title. His characters are drawn from life; his own experience is found in
_Nicholas Nickleby_ and _David Copperfield_; _Micawber_ is a caricature of
his own father. _Traddles_ is said to represent his friend Talfourd.
_Skimpole_ is supposed to be an original likeness of Leigh Hunt, and
William and Daniel Grant, of Manchester, were the originals of the
_Brothers Cheeryble_.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.--Dickens gives us real characters in the garb
of fiction; but Thackeray uses fiction as the vehicle of social
philosophy. Great name, second only to Dickens; he is not a story-teller,
but an eastern Cadi administering justice in the form of apologue. Dickens
is eminently dramatic; Thackeray has nothing dramatic, neither scene nor
personage. He is Democritus the laughing philosopher, or Jupiter the
thunderer; he arraigns vice, pats virtue on the shoulder, shouts for
muscular Christianity, uncovers shams,--his personages are only names.
Dickens describes individuals; Thackeray only classes: his men and women
are representatives, and, with but few exceptions, they excite our sense
of justice, but not our sympathy; the principal exception is _Colonel
Newcome_, a real individual creation upon whom Thackeray exhausted his
genius, and he stands alone.

Thackeray was born in Calcutta, of an old Yorkshire family, in 1811. His
father was in the civil service, and he was sent home, when a child of
seven, for his education at the Charter House in London. Thence he was
entered at Cambridge, but left without being graduated. An easy fortune of
L20,000 led him to take life easily; he studied painting with somewhat of
the desultory devotion he has ascribed to Clive Newcome, and, like that
worthy, travelled on the Continent. Partly by unsuccessful