future, looming in a golden haze of expectation. A gentleman or lady may
acquire a reputation for wide research by merely making a careful study
of the short paragraphs in the literary papers.

There are three classes of people who take an interest in letters. There
are the persons who read books; the much larger class which reads
reviews; and, again, they who merely skim over the advertisements of new
works. The last set live in a constant enjoyment of the pleasure of
expectation; they pretend to themselves that some day they will find time
to peruse the volumes in the birth of which they are interested, but, in
fact, they live in the future. They are a month ahead of their friends
who read reviews, and six months of the students who actually devour
books themselves. Not only these eager lovers of literary "shop," but
all friends of English humour, must be glad to see that a collection of
Mr. Thackeray's sketches and drawings has been prepared for publication.

When the news spread over England of Mr. Thackeray's sudden death, it was
felt that a personal loss had been sustained by every one who cared for
books and for style. Other men might write themselves out, their
invention might become weary; and, indeed, Mr. Thackeray himself felt
this fatigue. He wished he could get some one to do "the business" of
his stories he told the world in a "Roundabout Paper." The love-making
parts of "the business" annoyed him, and made him blush, in the privacy
of his study, "as if he were going into an apoplexy." Some signs of this
distaste for the work of the novelist were obvious, perhaps, in "Philip,"
though they did not mar the exquisite tenderness and charm of "Denis
Duval." However that might be, his inimitable style was as fresh as
ever, with its passages of melancholy, its ease, its flexible strength,
and unlooked-for cadences. It was the talk about life, and the tone of
that talk, which fell silent when Thackeray died, that we all felt as an