as can be anything that is human. If there is to remain among us a
sovereign, that sovereign, even though divested of political power,
should be endowed with all that personal respect can give. If we wish
ourselves to be high, we should treat that which is over us as high.
And this should not depend altogether on personal character, though we
know,--as we have reason to know,--how much may be added to the firmness
of the feeling by personal merit. The respect of which we speak should,
in the strongest degree, be a possession of the immediate occupant, and
will naturally become dim,--or perhaps be exaggerated,--in regard to the
past, as history or fable may tell of them. No one need hesitate to
speak his mind of King John, let him be ever so strong a stickler for
the privileges of majesty. But there are degrees of distance, and the
throne of which we wish to preserve the dignity seems to be assailed
when unmeasured evil is said of one who has sat there within our own
memory. There would seem to each of us to be a personal affront were a
departed relative delineated with all those faults by which we must own
that even our near relatives have been made imperfect. It is a general
conviction as to this which so frequently turns the biography of those
recently dead into mere eulogy. The fictitious charity which is enjoined
by the _de mortuis nil nisi bonum_ banishes truth. The feeling of which
I speak almost leads me at this moment to put down my pen. And, if so
much be due to all subjects, is less due to a sovereign?

Considerations such as these diminished, I think, the popularity of
Thackeray's second series of lectures; or, rather, not their popularity,
but the estimation in which they were held. On this head he defended
himself more than once very gallantly, and had a great deal to say on
his side of the question. "Suppose, for example, in America,--in
Philadelphia or in New York,--that I had spoken about George IV. in
terms of praise and affected reverence, do you believe they would have