incipal cities, to make a fund for his daughters and
for his old age. It was entirely successful, and he afterwards read them
in England and Scotland. They are very valuable historically, as they give
us the truth with regard to men whose reigns were brilliant and on the
whole prosperous, but who themselves, with the exception of the third of
the name, were as bad men as ever wore crowns. George III. was continent
and honest, but a maniac, and Mr. Thackeray has treated him with due
forbearance and eulogy.

In 1857, Mr. Thackeray was a candidate for Parliament from Oxford, but
was defeated by a small majority; his conduct in the election was so
magnanimous, that his defeat may be regarded as an advantage to his
reputation.

In the same year he began _The Virginians_, which may be considered his
failure; it is historically a continuation of _Esmond_,--some of the
English characters, the Esmonds in Virginia, being the same as in that
work. But his presentation and estimate of Washington are a caricature,
and his sketch of General James Wolfe, the hero of Quebec, is tame and
untrue to life. His descriptions of Virginia colonial life are unlike the
reality; but where he is on his own ground, describing English scenes and
customs in that day, he is more successful. To paint historical characters
is beyond the power of his pencil, and his Doctor Johnson is not the man
whom Boswell has so successfully presented.

In 1860 he originated the _Cornhill Magazine_, to which his name gave
unusual popularity: it attained a circulation of one hundred
thousand--unprecedented in England. In that he published _Lovel the
Widower_, which was not much liked, and a charming reproduction of the
Newcomes,--for it is nothing more,--entitled _The Adventures of Philip on
His Way through the World_. Philip is a more than average Englishman, with
a wicked father and rather a stupid wife; but "the little sister" is a
star--there is no finer character in any of his works. _Philip_, in spite
of its likeness to _The Newcomes_, is a delightful book.

With an achieved fame, a high position, a home which he had just built at
Kensington, a large income, he seemed to have before him as prosperous an
old age as any one could desire, when, such are the mysteries of
Providence, he was found dead in his room on the morning of December 24,
1863.

ESTIMATE OF HIS POWERS.--Thackeray's excellences are manifest: he was the
master of idiomatic English, a great m