Thackeray would have been very handsome but for the broken nose which he himself so often caricatured, but which with his round face gave him a sort of cherubic look, like one of Raphael’s winged heads, rather robbing it of its masculine vigour and seeming almost absurdly in contrast with his great size and strong nature. It was delightful to see him beaming behind his spectacles with his long legs stretched out in front of him, the picture of placid content, and to listen to his words, kindly, witty, full of old-world anecdote, told in the English of Addison—the fruit of his studies for Esmond and his lectures on the eighteenth century Essayists—with just a little delightful spice of good-natured cynicism which was as cayenne pepper animating the _olla podrida_ of his talk. Sometimes he was so gay and so young that he seemed just what he must have been when he called out “adsum” at the Charter House. Thackeray was very fond of Millais. He admired his art, and the great painter’s large, honest, bluff and rough nature, his innocence of all humbug or affectation, which Thackeray loathed above all things, appealed to him. The two were perfectly happy together, so in that studio Thackeray was at his best. And what a best it was! Less than a month after I reached St. Petersburg the news that Thackeray was dead was flashed along the wires to a capital where he was almost as well known by those who had never seen him as he was in his own familiar Kensington. I had been greatly struck by his popularity in Russia, and had looked forward to some day telling him how great was his greatness in that land of cold snow and warm hearts. The fatal 24th of December robbed me of that pleasure. It created a sad gap among his friends, who loved him as dearly for himself as others did for his work. The last time I saw Millais was in February, 1896, a few days after Leighton’s funeral. He stopped me in St. James’s Street, and we had a little talk, chiefly about the friend whom we had so recently lost. He was looking well and hearty, but was closely muffled up. The terrible disease in his throat made him almost inaudible. He spoke in a hoarse whisper, and at the end of the summer one more President of the Royal Academy was carried to St. Paul’s Cathedral. The careers of the two men were a curious sequel to the prophecy which Thackeray wrote to Millais from Rome in 1852: “I have seen in Rome a versatile young dog who will run you hard for the Presidentship some day!” * * * * *