To

all he wrote. Thackeray, it has been well said, is best thought of, in some respects,
as a sage, a man of experienced wisdom, and a conclusive grasp of the world and
its worth, expressing himself, partly by accident, through the particular modes of
story-writing and humorous extravaganza. And what was his philosophy?
tell that wholly, to throw into systematic phrase one tithe even of the characteristic
and recurring trains of thought that passed through that grave brain, is what no
man can hope to do. But the essential philosophy of any mind is often a thing of
few and simple words, repeating a form of thought that it requires no elaborate
array of propositions to express, and that may have been as familiar to an ancient
Chaldæan making his camel's neck his pillow in the desert as it is to a sage in
modern London. It is that elementary mode of thought which comes and goes
oftenest, and into which one always sinks when one is meditative and alone. And
so may we not recognise Thackeray's habitual philosophy in a peculiar variation
of these words of the Laureate, which he makes to be spoken by the hero of his
"Maud" ?-

“We are puppets, Man in his pride, and Beauty fair in her flower :
Do we move ourselves, or are moved by an unseen hand at a game
That pushes us off the board, and others ever succeed?
Ah yet, we cannot be kind to each other here for an hour;

We whisper, and hint, and chuckle, and grin at a brother's shame;
However we brave it out, we men are a little breed.

A monstrous eft was of old the Lord and Master of Earth;
For him did his high sun flame, and his river billowing ran,
And he felt himself in his force to be Nature's crowning race.
As nine months go to the shaping an infant ripe for his birth,
So many a million of ages have gone to the making of man:
He now is the first, but is he the last? is he not too base?

The man of science himself is fonder of glory, and vain,
An eye well-practised in nature, a spirit bounded and poor;
The passionate heart of the poet is whirled into folly and vice.
I would not marvel at either, but keep a temperate brain;
For not to desire or admire, if a man could learn it were more
Than to walk all day like the sultan of old in a garden of spice."

Such, in some form, though not, perhaps, precisely in this high-rolled and semigeologic form, was Thackeray's philosophy, breathed through his writings. That we are a little breed-poets, philosophers, and all of us--this is what he told us. Nature's crowning race?-Oh no; too base for that! Many stages beyond the Eft, certainly; but far yet from even the ideal of our own talk and our pretensions to each other. And so he lashed us, and dissected us, and tore off our disguises. He did it in great matters and he did it in small matters; and, that he might draw a distinction between the great matters and the small matters, he generalised the smaller kinds of baseness and littleness of our time, against which he most persistently directed his satires, under the mock-heroic title of Snobbism. AntiSnobbism was his doctrine as applied to many particulars of our own and of recent times-Victorian or Georgian. But he took a wider range than that, and laid bare the deeper blacknesses and hypocrisies of our fairly-seeming lives. And we called him a cynic in revenge. A cynic! No more will that word be heard about Thackeray. How, in these few weeks since he was laid in Kensal Green, have his secret deeds of goodness, the instances of his incessant benevolence and kindheartedness to all around him, leapt into regretful light. A cynic! We might have known, while we used it, that the word was false. Had he not an eye for the piety and the magnanimity of real human life, its actually attained and incalculable superiorities over the Eft; and did he not exult, to the verge of the sentimental, in reproductions of these in the midst of his descriptions of meannesses? And did he not always, at least, include himself

for better or for worse in that breed of men of which the judgment must be so mixed? Not to desire or admire, but to walk all day like a sultan in his garden, was a dignity of isolation to which he had never attained. He did not hold himself aloof. Ah! how he came among us here in London, simply, quietly, grandly, the large-framed, massive-headed, and grey-haired sage that he was-comporting himself as one of us, though he was weightier than all of us; listening to our many-voiced clamour, and dropping in his wise occasional word; nay, not forbidding, but rather joining with a smile, if, in hilarity, we raised his own song of evening festivity :

Here let us sport,
Boys as we sit,
Laughter and wit
Flashing so free:
Life is but short;
When we are gone,
Let them sing on
Round the old tree.

Ah! the old tree remains, and the surviving company still sits round it, and they will raise the song in the coming evenings as in the evenings gone by. But the chair of the sage is vacant. It will be long before London, or the nation, or our literature, shall see a substitute for the noble Thackeray.

D. M.

To the Editor of Macmillan's Magazine.

SIR,-In your last number I made certain allegations against the teaching of Dr. John Henry Newman, which I thought were justified by a Sermon of his entitled "Wisdom and Innocence," (Sermon 20 of "Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day"). Dr. Newman has by letter exprest, in the strongest terms, his denial of the meaning which I have put upon his words. It only remains, therefore, for me to express my hearty regret at having so seriously mistaken him. Yours faithfully,

.CHARLES KINGSLEY.

EVERSLEY, Jan. 14, 1864.

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No. 53.1

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MACMILLAN'S
MAGAZINE

EDITED BY DAVID MASSON,

MARCH, 1864.

Contents.

I. THE HILLYARS AND THE BURTONS: A STORY OF TWO FAMILIES.
By HENRY KINGSLEY, Author of "AUSTIN ELLIOT,
"RAVENSHOE," &c. Chap. XIX.-Samuel Burton goes
into the Licensed Victualling Line. Chap. XX.-James
Burton's Story: Reuben entertains Mysterious and Un-
satisfactory Company. Chap. XXI.-Gerty goes on the
War Trail. Chap. XXII.-James Burton's Story: Very
Low Company.

II. PRIVATE SCHOOLS FOR BOYS: Their Management. By
ARCHIBALD MACLAREN, of the Gymnasium, Oxford.

III-LETTERS FROM A COMPETITION WALLAH. Letter X.-The
Anglo-Saxon " Party in India.

66

IV.-OLD MASTER GRUNSEY AND GOODMAN DODD. (Stratford-
on-Avon, A.D. 1579.) By WILLIAM ALLINGHAM.

V.-A SON OF THE SOIL. Part V.

VI.-CONCERNING THE ORGANIZATION OF LITERATURE.

VII-SIT DOWN IN THE LOWEST ROOM. By CHRISTINA G.
ROSSETTI.

VIII. THE LAW AND THE CHURCH. BY A LAY CHURCHMAN.
IX.-MEMORANDUM ON "A STORY OF THE GREAT MUTINY."
Communicated by Major-General VINCENT EYRE, C.B.
late Royal Artillery (Bengal).

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