* * * * * MR. THACKERAY, who promises to come and see us, and who, of course, will talk about us with the world afterwards, is delivering a course of six lectures in London upon the English humorists. The first was good, and as good as was expected, which is great praise--for few things are so difficult as for a famous man to satisfy public expectation. The London _Leader_ thus speaks of it: "On Thursday the great satiric painter of social life--the Fielding of our times--commenced at Willis's rooms the first of those 'Lectures on the English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century,' which many months ago we announced as in preparation. We have never heard a lecture that delighted us more. It was thoughtful and picturesque, with some wonderful traces of pathos and far-reaching sentences. Dwelling upon the moral aspects of Swift's position and career, rather than attempting a criticism on his works, Thackeray held his audience from first to last. He gave a vivid picture of the early life and loneliness of the great satirist amidst the exasperating servilities and insults endured from Temple's household, as also of the turbulent political bravo coming up to London to carve for himself a pathway among lords whom he despised. In this part of the lecture it was felt that, while satirizing that condition of political corruption which made Swift a bravo, and used him as such, the censor still touched upon living foibles; at the allusion to the South Sea Bubble, with its railway parallel, we observed some fair shoulders wince! Nor were religious cant and formalism untouched in the admirable picture of Swift's sacrifice of his life to an hypocrisy. The audience was of the elite--Thomas Carlyle, Macaulay, Milman, Milnes, Sir Robert Inglis, the Duke and Duchess of Argyle, the Duchess of Sutherland, Lady Constance Leveson Gower, Lady Lichfield, with many others, not a few lovely women, and several men well known in literature and art." Of his second lecture we quote the _Times_: