ure and accentuated by the music of his voice. Of
the actor and the actress who have long passed away we can know nothing
but what their contemporaries have told us, and can form no judgment of
our own. We can hardly be wrong, however, in regarding Mrs. Siddons as
by far the greatest tragic actress who has ever appeared on the English
stage, and Edmund Kean as the greatest actor of Shakespearian tragedy
whom England has seen since the days of Garrick. In mentioning these two
names, we must also be reminded of the name of Charles Mathews the elder,
an actor of extraordinary versatility and genuine dramatic power, who is,
however, best remembered as the originator of the style of theatrical
entertainment which may be described as the "At Home" performance, in
which he probably never had a rival. Many of us can still remember his
yet more gifted son, the younger Charles Mathews, the incomparable light
comedian of a later day.

We have told thus far, in this chapter, only of lights going out in
literature, art, philosophy, theology, and science. Let us relieve the
picture by recording that one rising star of the first magnitude in
literature cast its earliest rays over these latest years of William the
Fourth. Early in 1836 the "Sketches by Boz" were published in a {286}
collected form, and a little later in the same year appeared the first
number of "The Pickwick Papers." Then the world began to know that a man
of thoroughly original genius had arisen, and before the reign was out
the young author, Charles Dickens, was accorded by all those whose
judgment was worth having that place among the foremost English novelists
which he has ever since retained and is ever likely to retain. "The
Pickwick Papers" opened a new era in the history of English
novel-writing. By a curious coincidence, the proposal of a young art
student to furnish illustrations for Dickens's books being declined by
the author, led the young art student to believe that he had mistaken his
vocation in trying to illustrate the works of other men, and he turned
his attention to literature, and afterwards became the one great rival of
Dickens, and will be known to all time as the author of "Vanity Fair" and
"The Newcomes." None of the writings which made Thackeray's fame
appeared during the time of William the Fourth, but his name may be
associated with the close of the reign by the incident which brought him
into an acquaintanceship with Dickens, and