More vivid still is my recollection of the Lecture Room on the occasion when Thackeray delivered his lectures on the Four Georges to an audience more select than numerous. I was at the age when, as the author of "Vanity Fair" himself has said, "to behold Brown, the author of the last romance, in the flesh, is a joy and a delight." Anybody who had written a book seemed to me to be a hero; what was it then to see and to hear the literary idol of my youth? Thackeray, with his tall figure, his silvery hair, his upturned face, expressive and striking, though by no means beautiful, seemed to me as I sat on my bench and listened to him to be nothing less than one of the gods. He was an admirable lecturer; his voice was musical and clear, his pronunciation singularly distinct and accurate, and the little touches of sarcasm and humour which he conveyed to his audience by a tone or an inflection, quite inimitable. I heard, as I sat listening to his lecture on George the Third--by far the best of the series--someone near me yawn, and my soul was filled with horror at what I thought nothing less than an act of sacrilege. I never saw the great novelist except on the occasion of his visit to Newcastle, but to the end of my days it will be a delight thus to have beheld him in the flesh. Dickens I heard read several times, though never in the Lecture Room; yet I cannot say that any of his readings made upon me the impression produced by Thackeray's lectures. The actor and the arts of the popular entertainer were too plainly visible in all that he did, and I received something like a shock when, having written an enthusiastic but juvenile panegyric upon him on the occasion of one of his visits to Newcastle, I learned that he had sent his secretary to buy a dozen copies of the paper to send to his friends. That so great a man should have thought a mere newspaper effusion worth noticing seemed to me altogether incredible. The reader may smile at the confession, but I own I never thought quite so much of Dickens, as a man, after this incident. This only shows how high was the pedestal upon which I had placed him, and how slight was my knowledge of human nature. CHAPTER III. MY LIFE-WORK BEGUN. On the Staff of the _Newcastle Journal_--In a Dilemma--Lord John Russell and Mr. Gladstone at Newcastle-upon-Tyne--Mr. Gladstone's Triumphal Progress--A Memorable Colliery Disaster--A Pit-Sinker's Heroism--Adventure at a Dickens Reading.