in the number of Temple Bar for March, 1864, and the story was continued from month to month for ten or twelve numbers. During its progress I received great encouragement from the short criticisms of such of the press as noticed periodical literature, and from the kindly letters of Miss Braddon, who wrote to me several times in its praise.

When the book appeared in three volumes I had no cause to complain, for it was extensively and very favorably received. The notice in the dread Athenæum was written, as I afterwards discovered, by the editor, Mr. Hepworth Dixon, and said, “It is a first novel, and a better work of fiction has not for many a week come under our notice." The Standard mentioned it as 66 very far above the average of the tales which overload our table." The Globe said, "There is an easy cleverness, a pleasant sparkling increasing to brilliancy at times, a freshness of spirit which makes the whole thing, from beginning to end, delightful reading for wearied or idle people ;" and the Morning Star, "for vigor and fidelity," infinitely preferred my sketches of life in a Government office to those of a brother novelist.

My Pretty Horsebreaker, her life and death, was, as I hoped and almost anticipated, the success of the book. On all sides I received the doubtful compliment that no one thought I could have done anything so good. The Spectator said: "Mr. Yates has developed power which, to many who have read his previous writings, will be quite unexpected. They expected, of course, good, pointed, salted writing, pleasant to read even apart from its subject, full of humor and free of that affectation of buffoonery which ruins so many of his school, but they hardly looked for anything quite so good as Kate Mellon. The Pretty Horsebreaker who despises conventionalisms, makes a proposal of marriage, cannot become a lady, yet is a good and pure woman-is almost as clear to the reader's eyes as if she had been photographed. She is alive, and so are most of the subordinate characters," etc. The best character in the book, said the then existent Press, is Kate Mellon, "a fresh face in the long gallery of modern

fiction. When all the world writes novels, he must have a quick invention who can produce something new."

I sent the book to Dickens, who paid me the compliment of reading it at once, and writing to me immediately he had read it. "I have read your book with much delight and some surprise," he said, "and have been profoundly affected by the last portions of it. It has touched me deeply, and moved me to many tears."

Thenceforward it was plain I must continue to write

novels.

Mr. Maxwell had already secured me to follow on my success in Temple Bar by writing a story for the same magazine, the first chapters of which were to appear within a month or two. The flattering notices of "Broken to Harness no sooner appeared than I was waited upon by Mr. Edward Tinsley, senior partner of the firm of Tinsley Brothers, who offered me what I then considered large terms for a novel to be complete in three-volume shape within a certain given and, as I thought, very short time. But I had struck a new vein, my writing was in great demand, and it was evident that I must make the most of the good-fortune which had unexpectedly fallen upon me. From that time until the end of 1874 I was never without a novel or two in progress.

The year previously I lost my excellent friend Frank Smedley. By the death of a distant cousin he had long been in easy circumstances, and after his father's death continued to reside in the winter with his mother in Grove Lodge, Regent's Park, where he could get fresh air without going beyond the precincts of his garden, and where he was in the immediate neighborhood of the Zoological Gardens, his favorite resort. He had purchased for himself a charming estate called Beechwood, within a very short distance of Marlow, where he resided in the summer months. Late in April, 1864, I dined with him at Grove Lodge, and thought him better and brighter than I had seen him for some long time. When the other guests left the dining-table he asked me to remain, and talked to me with great spirit and interest about the work on which I was then engaged, about some horses he had bought, about

his desire to get away speedily into the country and enjoy the beauties of the coming summer, about a dozen little trifles, into all of which he entered with even more than his ordinary zest.

I left him, promising to return the next week and to settle an early date for visiting him at Beechwood. On Sunday morning, the 1st May, he was found by his servant, who came to call him, in a state of stupor, speedily followed by a succession of epileptic fits, and by Sunday evening he was dead.

By his death I lost one of my kindest and best friends.

Having given up the "Lounger" in the Illustrated Times, I commenced a series of articles of the same nature, which were published every Monday in the Morning Star. They were entitled "The Flâneur," and attracted a good deal of attention. The editor of the journal at that time was Mr. Samuel Lucas, a brother-in-law of Mr. John Bright, and a man of singular sweetness of disposition and charm of manner. At his death he was succeeded by Mr. Justin McCarthy, now the well-known member of Parliament, with whom I have since lived on intimate terms; while Mr. Russell, now editor of the Liverpool Daily Post, Mr. Charles Cooper, now editor of the Scotsman, and other men of mark were on the staff.

My connection with the Star, in which, besides the "Flâneur," I wrote leading articles and reviews, and contributed some stories and essays to the series called "Readings by Starlight" in the evening edition, lasted for several years, and was much valued by me.

When Mr. Sala retired from the editorship of Temple Bar, I succeeded him, and was in that position in 1866, when the magazine was purchased by Mr. Bentley, for whom I edited it for about twelve months. I resigned the berth, to Mr. Bentley's regret, expressed in a kindly letter in June, 1867, for the purpose of taking the editorship of Tinsleys' Magazine, then about to be established. This new enterprise was started with all liberality and energy, with a number of excellent contributors, with the advantage of having the first-fruits of Dr. Russell's at

he was so large a feature in min friend, counsellor, companion, a erful, and his regard for me so my career during that period of terest it may possess to his con tion, therefore, to these passing it advisable to devote a separa my experience of him in such as were familiar to me, not with new insight into his character. the "Letters" collected and p already before the world, this difficult task; but my relations my childhood I had, I may alm so close, the intimacy into w nineteen years of seniority, he a in our views and sympathies th to say it, so much in common, t think he felt my society conge me an exceptional insight into 1 The nineteen years' seniority terms of our companionship o my being nineteen years older one day to his eldest daughter shoulder. The young lady pro a mistake somewhere, and that the two. And certainly, excep mestic troubles, Dickens, until