During these eighteen years there have been hard times and good times, so called; seasons of activity and seasons of depression-in the course of which the country has been "saved"-I forget how often- our city has doubled in population and more than doubled in wealth, and yet the laboring class as a class is just where it was when I came here, or, if anything, in a worse condition, as the increased valuation of property has caused advance in rents and in some other necessaries of life. Individuals have risen out of the laboring class, becoming buyers of labor and sellers of its products, and grown rich thereby; but the condition of the laboring class, as such, has not improved, and I think is less favorable than it was twenty years ago.

Why should it not investigate, determine and develop the causes of this? Why not consider the practicability of securing work and homes to all willing to work for them? Can we imagine that inprovement is to come without effort or even inquiry? Is it the order of nature or of providence that it should? Do blessings come to other classes without foresight or calculation? I have heard complaints that machinery and invention do not work for the laboring class, but rather against them.

Concede the assumption, and is not the inquiry a fair one, What has the laboring class ever done to make machinery work in its favor? When has it planned, or sought, or calculated, to render machinery its ally and aid rather than its enemy and oppressor?

I am here to-night to tell you that you, and our trade and the laboring class of our city have been glaringly unfaithful in this respect to yourselves, your posterity, and your race, and that the workers of Paris, for example, are in advance of their brethren here in knowledge of and devotion to the

interests and rights of labor.

And I am here, not to find

fault merely, but to exhort you to awake from your apathy and heed the summons of duty.

I stand here, friends, to urge that a new leaf be now turned over, that the laboring class, instead of idly and blindly waiting for better circumstances and better times, shall begin at once to consider and discuss the means of controlling circumstances and commanding times, by study, calculation, foresight, union. We have heard to-night of a union of printers and a printers' library, for which latter one generous donation has been proffered.

I have little faith in giving, as a remedy for the woes of mankind, and not much of any effort for the elevation or improvement of any one section of producers of wealth in our city. What I would suggest would be the union and organization of all workers for their mutual improvement and benefit, leading to the erection of a spacious edifice at some central point in our city to form a Laborers' Exchange, just as commerce now has its exchange, very properly.

Let the new exchange be erected and owned as a jointstock property, paying a fair dividend to those whose money erected it; let it contain the best spacious hall for general meetings to be found in our city, with smaller lecture-rooms for the meetings of particular sections or callings - all to be leased or rented at fair prices to all who may choose to hire them, when not needed for the primary purpose of discussing and advancing the interests of labor.

Let us have here books opened, wherein any one wanting work may inscribe his name, residence, capacities and terms, while any one wishing to hire may do likewise, as well as meet personally those seeking employment. These are but hints toward a few of the uses which such a labor exchange

might subserve, while its reading-room and library, easily formed and replenished, should be opened freely and gladly to all. Such an edifice, rightly planned and constructed, might become, and I confidently hope would become, a most important instrumentality in the great work of advancing the laboring class in comfort, intelligence and independence. I trust we need not long await its erection.

THACKERAY

W

ILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, an English novelist, by many critics considered the most eminent of the century, was born at Calcutta, July 18, 1811. His father and grandfather were both connected with the East India Company. In 1816 his father died, and, his mother having married again, the boy was sent to England and entered at the famous Charterhouse school, where he remained six years. In 1829 he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, but at the end of two years withdrew without taking his degree. He visited the Continent, intending on his return to adopt the law for his profession; but having lost most of his small patrimony he turned his attention to literature. In 1833 he became editor and proprietor of the National Standard," a weekly journal to which he had already regularly contributed. This venture proved a failure and he went

66

66

papers.

to Paris to study art. In 1835 he offered his services to illustrate the "Pickwick Papers," and the following year married the dowerless daughter of an East Indian colonel. Six months later the Constitutional Company, of which his stepfather was chairman, failed disastrously, and Thackeray was left penniless. He moved to London and engaged actively in literary work. After the birth of his third daughter, in 1840, Mrs. Thackeray became hopelessly insane and his home was broken up. In 1840 appeared his first volume, the "Paris Sketchbook," but this and the Conic Tales and Sketches" of the following year were failures. His work in Fraser's Magazine" and elsewhere was beginning to attract attention, and in 1842 he joined the staff of "Punch" in which he published his " Snob " "Vanity Fair," completed in monthly parts in July, 1848, made the author's fame secure. "Pendennis " was begun in November of that same year, and Henry Esmond" followed in 1852. He had been lecturing in London on the English humorists with great success and was invited to deliver them in the United States. On his return i 1853 he began "The Newcomes,' which was completed in 1855. In that year he gave in America his famous lectures on "the Four Georges." After his return to England he stood for Parliament as a Radical member or Oxford, but failed of election. In 1857 "The Virginians" began and three years later he became the editor of the new "Cornhill Magazine," to which he contributed "Lovell, the Widower,” “ Philip," and his " Roundabout Papers," and the first chapters of his unfinished Dennis Duval," which was interrupted by his sudden death, December 24, 1863. Thackeray's master in style was Fielding; he had the same power of natural characterization; of telling a story with epic vividness and motion, the same hatred of shams, hypocrisy, and meanness, and the same keenness of humor. He satirizes with telling irony, but beneath the mask one realizes that there is a face beaming with good nature, and that though the voice may sometimes be stern the heart within is warm and human. He is not so successful in depicting attractive feminine types as in strong, lovable men. "Becky Sharp is his masterpiece of character-drawing, but she is true to her name. It was said that "the only faculty with which he gifted his good women was the supreme faculty of tears." But "Colonel Newcome " "" and "Henry Esmond are Vol. 17-G

(7135)

unsurpassed in their combination of noble, lovable qualities-as true English gentlemen as ever lived. Thackeray gave a great semblance of reality to his last stories by introducing the actual characters of their times-Dick Steele, Addison, Washington, and others. Personally he was reserved and uncommunicative with strangers, but his friends found him open-hearted, generous, and sympathetic. Charlotte Bronté called him a Titan of mind," and the impression that he made on his own day and generation has been no less deep since his death.

LECTURE: CHARITY AND HUMOR

[This lecture was first delivered in New York on behalf of a charity at the time of Mr. Thackeray's visit to America in 1852, when he had been giving his series of lectures on the English humorists. It was subsequently repeated, with slight variations, in London (once under the title of "Week-Day Preachers ") for the benefit of the families of Angus B. Reach and Douglas Jerrold.]

S

EVERAL charitable ladies of this city, to some of whom I am under great personal obligation, having thought that a lecture of mine would advance a benevolent end which they had in view, I have preferred, in place of delivering a discourse, which many of my hearers no doubt know already, upon a subject merely literary or biographical, to put together a few thoughts which may serve as a supplement to the former lectures, if you like, and which have this at least in common with the kind purpose which assembles you here, that they rise out of the same occasion and treat of charity.

Besides contributing to our stock of happiness, to our harmless laughter and amusement, to our scorn for falsehood and pretension, to our righteous hatred of hypocrisy, to our education in the perception of truth, our love of honesty, our knowledge of life, and shrewd guidance through the world, have not our humorous writers, our gay and kind week-day preachers, done much in support of that holy cause which has assembled you in this place; and which you are all abetting, the cause of love and charity, the cause of the