I have heard Dickens described by those who knew him as aggressive, imperious, and intolerant, and I can comprehend the accusation; but to me his tem… - Edmund Yates

... No one succeeds better than Mr. Thackeray in cutting his coat according to his cloth. Here he flattered the aristocracy; but when he crossed the Atlantic, George Washington became the idol of his worship, the "" the object of his bitterest attacks. These last-named lectures have been dead failures in England, though as literary compositions they are most excellent.

Gone is , with its very wide open pens and cattle-hutches; and gone with it is a good deal of the scandal of driving the wretched beasts through the streets, and whacking and torturing them in the most dreadful fashion. Enormous hordes of cattle for Smithfield Monday market, then—not as now, sent up by rail, bur driven long tedious journeys—used to arrive at on the Saturday, and pass the Sunday in the fields let out for the purpose.

Seriously, Frank Churchill, it's time you began to look after a wife. In our profession, especially, it's the greatest blessing to have some one to care for and to be petted by in the intervals of business-strife. There used to be a notion that a literary man required to be perpetually 'seeing life,' which meant 'getting drunk, and never going home;' but that's exploded, and I believe that our best character-painters owe half their powers of delineation to their wives' suggestions. Women,—by Jove sir!—women read character wonderfully.