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Went manfully his destined way,
Doing, as far as in him lay,
His daily task without pretence-
With dignity and reticence.'

Peace to his memory-and his type!
Too rare, in times grown over-ripe!
Peace to his memory! Let him rest
Among our bravest and our best;
Secure, that through the years to come,
His voice shall speak, though he be dumb,
Since men unborn, or glad or vext,
Must need his sermon and his text.2

He painted Life-the life he knew:
The roundabout of false and true,
The ups-and-downs of good and bad,
The strange vicissitudes and sad,
The things unsolved, the seeming-chance
Complexities of Circumstance,

Yet failed not humbly to recall
The Power above, controlling all.

AUSTIN DOBSON.

1 'Servetur ad imum

Qualis ab incepto processerit, et sibi constet.'

(Motto to Esmond.)

* See the verses headed Vanitas Vanitatum' in THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE

for July 1860, and particularly

Pray choose us out another text,

O man morose and narrow-minded!

Come turn the page-I read the next,

And then the next, and still I find it.

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4

COCKNEY TRAVELS.

BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY.

NOTE.

My Father used to keep many of his papers in a square mahogany box which his publishers had once given him, and there for years the note books have remained, together with the various diaries and the sketch books and scraps of manuscript and packets of letters; there I have gone from time to time to consult the past and his written words and to clear up the various questions and problems which have arisen.

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When I was asked if any manuscript remained which might be of interest to readers of the Centenary Edition, I remembered the story of the Knights of Borsellen,' and looking for it I found folded up in the same parcel another manuscript which had been also put away by him and forgotten till now and which is here given. In a corner of an outer page he had written Cockney Travels.' Perhaps he never even read it again after writing it down. Writing —especially in his early days—came to him as naturally as thinking did. The impressions arose continuously, following one upon another; he must sometimes have written being alone for companionship, for his own satisfaction as well as at the calls of his profession. Though he knew the worth of his work, he set little store upon the details of it, and just as designs and drawings came to his pencil so the images of life passed before him and were recorded.

It was after this little journey that he crossed to Ireland and wrote the Irish Sketch Book.' Then followed' Cornhill 1 Copyright, 1911, by Smith, Elder, & Co., in the United States of America.

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to Cairo' and Barry Lyndon,' the many plans and projects of that time in their turn, and as likely as not the 'Cockney Journey' passed from his mind. It will be seen that now and again there are passages and descriptions of great beauty and feeling in these chapters. He was in trouble at the time, but how charmingly the aspects of the world appear before his kind eyes! Take the description of the country round about Tintern Abbey, or that sketch of The Bonny Thatch interior. It all seems painted in bright harmonious colour as we read, not in black and white only.

A. I. R.

I.

SPECULATION IN A RAILWAY CARRIAGE.

IT is certain that in the midst of all the speculation, delightful as it is, ten minutes' pause at Swindon, where there are twelve young women behind a counter covered with all sorts of good things which money may buy-ten minutes' stop at Swindon is by no means a disagreeable interruption to those who either have eaten no dinner, or have had the good fortune to gain an appetite since that meal. The little Quakers come back munching biscuits, the red-whiskered hero wipes away from his lips the froth of a pint of Dublin stout, a slight attempt at general conversation takes place, which is carried on for a while pretty briskly and audibly, because the Great Western seems to have over other lines of road this advantage, that one can speak without shouting, and be heard too, so excellently smooth and comfortable are the carriages and the path over which they travel. But hush! In a few minutes the cursed engine sets up his horrible shriek, we enter into a tunnel of three miles long, clap, clap! the great engine gallops through the immense passage-rendered visible by the carriage lamps the darkness flashes swiftly by you-all attempts at conversation are vain. I declare I think it is wicked to talk as one is rushing through one of those awful caverns with mountains piled above, and I have but a poor opinion of the quality of a man's courage who can pass through such places without silence and awe. As long as people think fit to take the lives of criminals, these frightful tunnels would be good places for the operation: a man might be placed upon the top of a carriage (with his back, for mercy's sake we will say, to the dark), looking at the light growing fainter at the tunnel's end, and the horrible darkness closing round and conquering it and somewhere in the midst of the place . . . just when the light was gone . . . a sort of head-cutting machine might be fixed, calculated just to take the patient at the neck, and... against it the rushing engine would come-. . . and it might scream and yell all the while in its own horrid unearthly fashion . . . and when it issued out into the light again the man would be no more, and so no eye would see the murder done upon him. But this is always said to be mawkish sentimentality: well, I wish no man Copyright, 1911, by Smith, Elder, & Co., in the United States of America.

hanged, my humble desire goes no farther than that-and I confess honestly that I am frightened in one of those diabolical dark tunnels, which is very likely mawkish sentimentality and weakness, too.

It is ill to quarrel with these rapid strides which the age is making, but can anybody look back to the dear old coach days and a modest nine miles an hour without regret? You take us from one place to another now, it is true, but where is the pleasure of travelling? And what greater pleasure in life was there than that to a hard-worked man come out of a city, to mount a coach, and to see the thousand incidents of the jolly road-the fresh team at the changing places; the pretty girls at the road-side inn, for whom the coachman had always a wink; the fat pike-men smoking their pipes, or yawning at night after the guard's horn had blown them out of bed, while the coach lamps were shining on the white bars of the turnpike, and the horses were surrounded by a sort of golden smoke? Why, bless my soul, I recollect going home for the holidays by the True Blue Coach, six inside-Bell and Crown at Holborn-and we were three and twenty hours nearly going to Bath! We left London at three, we refreshed ourselves at every stage on the way: and what a supper we had at Reading, and what a snug coffee-breakfast (the first of two) at an early hour some thirty miles on! In those days there was something like travelling; you were a part of the world, not out of it as on those scoundrelly iron rails; the people did not look like pigmies as they do now from the train windows, nor the cows to be about the size of mice; nor did you look down the chimneys of Englishmen, as you do nowadays, but into their front drawing-room windows where the girls were sitting, who blushed and affected to turn away as you flung them a kiss, and wondered who that charming strange young man could be. All this is gone. Grass grows on the Great North Road, comfortable old inns are desolate, all the snug bar fires out, all the gilt liquor bottles mouldy, and creepers and moss growing over the bar. You no longer travel now, you submit your body to be translated from one spot to another, giving up your identity, your natural existence, during the time in which the translation takes place; you have no longer a sympathy with the road and the people among whom you travel-the very people who wait upon you are mere machines, for to the new-fangled porters and policemen you are ordered not to give money. Ah! old friends of the road, where are you? What a pleasant kindly relationship it was which subsisted between the traveller and you! What a deal

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