He dressed well, but unpretendingly, and his voice and manner were always courteous and cordial. He smiled easily, and had a humorous look when not oppressed with sadness, which was often the case in later life. He died suddenly in middle life, leaving, like Dickens, an unfinished novel in the press. No other literary man, save perhaps Macaulay, has been mourned as Thackeray was mourned. There was universal sorrow for his premature loss, and great personal grief among his friends. Twenty-three years have passed since that time, and no successor has arisen to repay the world for that loss. When the curtain fell upon Becky Sharpe and Beatrix, upon Ethel Newcome and the good Colonel, upon Laura and Pendennis, upon Esmond and Warrington, and upon all the deeply studied characters of his mimic stage, that curtain fell to rise no more upon such creatures as his hands had made. He will have no successor. He is the One, the Only. Such pathos, such wit, such wisdom, will not dawn upon us again--in time. When he wrote Finis for the last time at the close of one of those matchless volumes, it was an epoch closed in the history of literature. When the recording angel wrote Finis at the close of that sad and weary but bravely spent and useful life, it was a sad day for the world of men, who will not look upon his like again. Who that felt a love for the writer and the man could fail to rejoice that the end was quick and painless? One of our own poets has well described the scene:-- "The angel came by night (Such angels still come down), And like a winter cloud Passed over London Town, Along its lonesome streets, Where want had ceased to weep, Until it reached a house Where a great man lay asleep; The man of all his time Who knew the most of men,-- The soundest head and heart, The sharpest, kindest pen. It paused beside his bed And whispered in his ear; He never turned his head, But answered, 'I am here.' Into the night they went; At morning, side by side, They gained the sacred place Where the greatest dead abide; Where grand old Homer sits, In godlike state benign; Where broods in endless thought The awful Florentine; Where sweet Cervantes walks, A smile on his grave face; Where gossips quaint Montaigne, The wisest of his race; Where Goethe looks through all With that calm eye of his; Where--little seen, but light-- The only Shakspeare is! When the new spirit came, They asked him, drawing near, 'Art thou become like us?' He answered, 'I am here.'" [Illustration] [Illustration] CHARLES DICKENS.