In 1859 founded the , and Thackeray became its first editor. Among his — Sidney Dark

"was with at at the time of the in 1813. She went back to at the request of the , who assured her that the position of herself and her children was perfectly safe. The allied kings and statesmen waited on her. She was treated with the utmost deference, but it was she who grieved for in far more than , and before the began, Josephine, shriven and with her children kneeling by her side, died with the name of Bonaparte on her lips. Twenty thousand persons passed the catafalque where the Empress lay in state. Royal honours were hers at her funeral."

"There is nothing in this wide world more romantic than a great river on the banks of which stands a great city, and of all the cities in Europe, London is luckiest in its river. The Seine at Paris, the Tiber at Rome, are insignificant compared to the wide sweep of the Thames at London."

"... Wells has many affinities with Dickens. He does not possess Dickenss glorious humour. He has never been able to realise that even in mean streets life may have its thrills, but he belongs essentially, as Dickens belonged, to the English lower middle class. Wells is an articulate man of the people. And this is the fact that gives him his peculiar importance in the modern world."

"... Dickens is to me a writer apart. I have been reading and re-reading his novels since I was six. I know his characters as I hardly know any of the men and women I have met in the flesh. Dickens is the novelist of the lettered and of the unlettered. The man at the street corner who has hardly heard of Thackeray knows all about and ."

"... in condemning it should be remembered that the statesmanship of intrigue of which she was a mistress has survived from her time to ours, and was not destroyed even by the . She was the pupil of Machiavelli, and she put the theories of the Italian political philosopher into more successful practice than any other sovereign or statesman in history."

"... The had its . The had its . ... He drank prodigiously, even for the seventeenth century. He was subject to violent bursts of passion, and he had absolutely no self-control. He was the supreme bully. His greatest joy in life was to denounce, to jeer, and to hurt. And nature had eminently fitted him for the rôle that he had chosen. Jeffreyss one passion was a genuine hatred of and ..."