pen-point of the Master Satirist. "An Essay on Thunder and Small Beer," it was called: a mere little octavo pamphlet, extending to the length, or rather the shortness, of some half-a-dozen leaves or so, yet, by turns, within this narrow compass, dignified, ironical, contemptuous, sarcastic, bitter, derisive, eloquentflaying the reviewer from the lips downwards, and then steeping him in the aqua-fortis of a scholarly and gentlemanly ridicule. Scarcely a quarter of a year had well elapsed after this edifying literary One-Two between the "Times" and Thackeray, when-it was upon a certain May-day, thenceforth to be held in popular remembrance-The Thunderer, in token of its magnanimous reconciliation with its eminent Discomfiter, was doing far better than merely Chronicling Small Beer (or souring it), by giving to publicity in its columns that harmonious "May-Day Ode,” with which Mr. Thackeray celebrated in graceful stanzas the inauguration, in Hyde Park, of the World's Exhibition of Art and Industry.

Finally, completing the fairy circle of these Christmas phantasies, by M. A. Titmarsh, there appeared, not, however, until four seasons later, the last of the little series, perhaps among them all the most delightful, certainly the most fanciful, that pretty "Fire-Side Pantomime, for Great and Small Children," "The Rose and the Ring "-giving us the veracious histories of Prince Giglio and Prince Bulbo. If for nothing else, it would live daintily in our recollection, to the music of the little girl's song, as she sings, dancing to herself in the wondrous garden-the sweetest little lisping baby-song, surely, that Great Author ever penned

"O what fun!

Nice plum bun,

How I wis it never was done!"

As it never will be, let us all rest assured! For, that little girl, with her song and her bun, like little Red Shoes in the Fairy Legend of the dear Danish Poet for all Children-Hans Christian Andersen, will go on dancing-" dance she will, and dance she must"-down to the very end of the chapter.

Already, by this time, the Satirist-Humorist had been in the enjoyment, during several years, of a conspicuous popularity. It was immediately after the appearance of the earliest of the little Christmas books here particularized, that Michael Angelo Titmarsh, suddenly, as it were, by a single stride, advanced from idst the crowd of brilliant writers for the periodicals, to a recogplace among the foremost of the great living chiefs of our

imaginative literature. He had served for ten years in the ranks: but, all the while, like one of the true soldiers of the Great Napoleon, he had been carrying his marshal's baton in his knapsack. 66 Vanity Fair" became at once a new starting point in his literary career, and the most lasting trophy of his genius as a Satirist-Humorist. It is understood to have been declined by one publisher, though happily the Sibylline leaves, in this instance, were not diminished in number by that obtuse rejection. The serial issue of the narrative began almost unnoticed. It was scarcely midway, however, in its course of month-by-month publication, when, throughout all the various literary circles of the metropolis, it had become the theme of wondering and delighted conversation. By the period of its completion, in 1848, Mr. Thackeray's fame was already securely established-his name was enrolled forthwith, by right of that one work, upon the list of our great English Novelists-he had assumed his place at once, and permanently, in the inner throng of that illustrious and beloved fraternity.

STEPPING-STONES-THE MEN OF LETTERS.

A FAVOURITE pastime with me, occasionally, is-how shall I express it ?-striding up the broad River of Time like a stalwart traveller from Brobdingnag; taking a whole generation in a single giant step, and so getting rapidly by half-a-dozen zig-zags over the distance of two or three centuries. All this, moreover, being accomplished in the most natural way conceivable, by the homeliest exercise of memory, and not simply by what might be termed a mere stretch of the imagination.

Observe, however, that I altogether and at once disclaim the faintest notion of there being any presumable identity between myself and that excessively dull personage, the Oldest Inhabitant. A fellow who invariably reduces one to the alternative—either (a thing exceedingly probable under the circumstances) that he himself has absolutely no capacity for recollection at all—or (a supposition that common sense and ordinary experience alike repudiate with indignation) that we are perpetually living in the midst of events so entirely unparalleled, as to amount to absolute phenomena. Philosophy having long ago informed us, and having for that matter also thoroughly convinced us, that history is, after all, nothing more than a series of continual repetitions or reproductions. And as with history, so also assuredly is it with matters of every day occurrence-spring blights, let us say, and autumnal crops, sharp frosts and big hail-stones. Yet, according to the vacuum in this wonderfully non-retentive noddle of The Oldest Inhabitant-the green buds were never so prematurely cankered-the apples were never so ciderously plentiful-Jack Frost never held such a pair of atmospheric tweezers to the nose of any community-the lumps of congealed rain were never so preternaturally and stupendously crystallized. He seems to be always going about like an insane constitutionalist in search of precedents, and never finding any-this social non mi ricordo, this dunder-headed, proverbial authority, who assumes to be Everybody's and yet is in reality Nobody's

Remembrancer! No, even were I as white-pated as the summit of Chimborazo, or as wrinkled as Russia leather, I must still protest against, and renounce with unutterable scorn, the supposition that I am in any particular whatever associated with that inconceivable, old, superannuated jackass, "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything," The Oldest Inhabitant.

An ordinary memory, indeed, is really, I take it, about the only endowment in any respect positively requisite for the complete enjoyment of this new species of intellectual recreation. An ordinary memory meaning nothing more than the average memory of any moderately educated individual. Endowed so far and no farther, any one—you, reader, I, writer-may, in another sense, not less than Julius Cæsar himself, according to Shakspere's definition of him

"Bestride this narrow world like a Colossus."

Traversing the long, sweeping current of history, after the gigantesque fashion aforesaid, by what may be called its Stepping-Stones, we may any of us readily enough saunter back from this present time, until we find ourselves, after a few careless paces, standing as it were spell-bound, hundreds of years off, in some remote antiquity, employing our book-born recollections in the way here directly afterwards to be explained. It is for all the world like putting on the Seven League Boots of our tiny friend Hop-o'-my-thumb, and swaggering with a Polyphemian gait up the Silent Highway of the past, to the "tune" (figuratively or literally, just as we may like to express it) of Thirty Years at a Stretch, or of "Over the Hills and Far Away." It gives one, so to speak, the sensation mentally of having buckled on a pair of goblin stilts, like those familiar to the Shepherds of the Landes, and of stalking so mounted up the flood of ages by steps wider, chronologically, than the vast and awful steppes of Russia are geographically. Memory, so used, becomes in fact the Wishing Carpet of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. Otherwise, to illustrate the same identical thought, another little nursery-hero comes tripping in to the rescue, and we slip on, as with a magic shoe-horn-better than the petasus of Dan Mercury—the springheeled Shoes of Swiftness appertaining, of yore, to the errant feet of Jack the Giant-Killer. However, to attest at once the literal truth of all this by a few simple illustrations, come with me, dear reader, while I take one of these same Titanic strolls back towards the fountain-head of antiquity! Starting from now-adays-striding from Stepping-stone to Stepping-stone-I warrant you we shall find ourselves carried back, as already premised, in

just half a dozen paces, to a period removed from this present hour by at least some three good centuries. At every movement of the pilgrim's staff, it will be as at the waving of the wand of a necromancer, of one whose magical" Presto!" might be the most aptly expressed by a genuine Yankee "Go-a-head!"

STARTING POINT. A.D. 1864.

It is about four of the clock upon an afternoon in the early part of this season that I am sauntering along the pavement in front of Whitehall, over against the Horse Guards, directing my steps in a leisurely stroll down Parliament Street towards Westminster. I know the precise time, less by means of the dingy clock-dial over the way-a sort of a tantalising, opaque transparency, neither white by midday nor bright by midnight-than by a casual glance on either hand at my fellow foot-passengers.

Honourable gentlemen straggling from the clubs to what may be designated the rival Commons of Britain-and-Bellamy. The choicest residue of the session, bearing somewhat the same relation to the House that pure gold does to the well-rocked cradle of the Californian. Legislators who have been gradually sifted down in the cradle of debate. Everybody is familiarly acquainted with them, who knows anything about the precincts of St. Margaret's. They are what that Junius of St. James's, the mysterious and illustrious author of the Court Circular, would term the habitués of the House of Commons. Honourable gentlemen, right honourable gentlemen, and noble lords, who stick to the benches with as much tenacity as Theseus to the diabolical chair originally handed to him (no doubt with a polite flourish) by Rhadamanthus. The limpets (to say nothing of the Barnacles) of the state vessel. A select few, who begin the dreary fun of the session by chasing Black Rod to the bar of the Lords in February, and end it by meekly shaking hands with Mr. Speaker in August, somewhat according to the exemplary fashion with which the good-conduct boy tails after his corded trunk from the awful, but relaxing, presence of the schoolmaster. A wonderful set of indefatigables, grinding away, systematically, on committees, with a stolid perseverance worthy of the Brixton treadmills-told out into one or other of the lobbies on every division-haunting the doorkeeper like the memories of an evil conscience-contributing, each of them, ever a certain unit to every uncertain minority upon every count-out recorded in the newspapers. Everybody else, when the autumn comes, will betimes pull on his fishing-boots, or don his tweed jacket, away to the trout-stream, or to the heathery region of the