Douglas Jerrold was at the height of his fame and success in this year; he died, I think, the year following, at the age of fifty-four. He was very popular during his later lifetime, but he seems to have just missed those qualities of the humorist which insure immortality; he is little more than a name to this generation. He was the son of an actor, and had himself been on the stage; indeed, he had tried several things, including a short service as midshipman in his Majesty's navy. He wrote some two-score plays, and was a contributor to Punch from its outset; there are several books to his credit; and he edited Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, which was first called by his own name. But people who have read or heard of nothing else of his, have heard of or read "Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures." Douglas Jerrold, however, is by no means fully pictured by anything which he wrote; his charm and qualities came out in personal intercourse. Nor does the mere quotation of his brightnesses do him justice; you had to hear and see him say them in order to understand them or him. He was rather a short man, with a short neck and thick shoulders, much bent, and thick, black hair, turning gray. His features were striking and pleasing; he had large, clear, prominent, expressive black eyes, and in these eyes, and in his whimsical, sensitive mouth, he lived and uttered himself. They took all the bitterness and sting out of whatever he might say. When he was about to launch one of his witticisms, he fixed his eyes intently on his interlocutor, as if to call his attention to the good thing coming, and to ask his enjoyment of it, quite apart from such application to himself as it might have. It was impossible to meet this look and to resent whatever might go with it. Thus a friend of his, who wished to write telling books but could not quite do it, came to him in haste one day and exclaimed, aggrievedly, "Look here, Douglas, is this true that was told me--that you said my last book was the worst I'd ever written?" Douglas gazed earnestly into the flushed and troubled face, and said, in his softest tones, "Oh no, my dear fellow, that isn't what I said at all; what I did say was that it was the worst book anybody ever wrote." Such a retort, so delivered, could not but placate even an outraged author.