[Illustration: WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ It is not pleasant to look upon the face of Thackeray—the face of which we love to think so pleasantly—as distorted by death. He was found dead in his bed on the morning of December 24, 1863:—“So young a man,” as Dickens wrote, “that the mother who blessed him in his first sleep blessed him in his last. The final words he corrected in print,” continued Dickens, “were—‘And my heart throbbed with an exquisite bliss.’ God grant that on that Christmas eve when he laid his head back on his pillow, and threw up his arms as he had been wont to do when very weary, some consciousness of duty done, and Christian hope throughout life humbly cherished, may have caused his heart so to throb when he passed away to his Redeemer’s rest!” “And, lo,” said Thackeray himself once, of the most beautiful character in all fiction, his own Thomas Newcome—“And, lo, he whose heart was as that of a little child had answered to his name, and stood in the presence of The Master!” “We think of Thackeray,” wrote Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh, “as of our Chalmers, found dead in like manner: the same childlike, unspoiled, open face, the same gentle mouth, the same spaciousness and softness of nature, the same look of power. What a thing to think of—his lying there alone in the dark, in the midst of his own mighty London; his mother and his daughters asleep, and, it may be, dreaming of his goodness. Long years of sorrow, labor, and pain had killed him before his time. It was found after death how little life he had to live. He looked always fresh with that abounding silver hair, and his loving, almost infantile face; but he was worn to a shadow, and his hands wasted as if by eighty years.” The cast of Thackeray’s face was made by Brucciani on that sad Christmas morning, at the request of Dr., now Sir, Henry Thompson; and a cast of his right hand was made at the same time—that honest, faithful, beautiful, wasted right hand, which “never writ a flattery, Nor signed the page that registered a lie.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: THOMAS CHALMERS] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thomas Chalmers was another man of great heart and of great head. He died, as we have seen, as Thackeray died, without warning, but without pain or conflict. He was discovered sitting half erect in his bed, his head reclining quietly on his pillow, the expression of his countenance that of fixed and majestic repose. He had responded cheerfully when his name was called. Thackeray heard the summons evidently in a moment of physical distress; but his “_Adsum_” was just as ready, and no doubt it was quite as willingly uttered.