The Sun.
London, England, 1857-04-04 00:00:00

1/INIVER TO MR. T;TTAGKERAYAT

EDINBURGH.

Mr. Thackeray was entertained to dinner on
Thursday evening in the new Royal Hotel, Edin-
burgh. The company comprised many of the most
distinguished names connected with literature,
science, and the fine arts in Scotland. Lord Neaves
occupied the chair, the croupier being Mr. W. Stir-
ling, of lair, M.P.
Atter the usual preliminary toaat3,
Tho CHAIRMIN proposed "the health of 'Mr.
Thackeray," their distinguished and honoured
guest. His Lordship paid an eloquent and graceful
tribute to the merits of Mr. Thackeray, and entered
into a lengthened review of his works and style,
and pronounced a high eulogium upon their ten-
dency to promote truth and cultivate virtue. He
defended the distinguished author's recent lectures
from the charge of disloyalty, 'contending that in
dealing with such a subject the voice of truth should
not be stifled by that of flattery, and conclud3d by
remarking on the philosophical treatment and bene-
volent spirit that characterised all hiS writings.
Mr. THACKERAY, in reply, said—My Lord
Neaves and gentlemen, I have to thank you as best

I may for the immense kindness- and hospitality
with which yon have been pleased to receive me,
and for the extraordinary and generous
..welcome
which I have had here, and which I have met with
during the whole time that I have been roaming
through Scotland. Wherever I have been, from
Dumfries to Inverness, I can assure you that I
have met with a welcome as kindly almost and as
great as yourown ; at whatever town I have landed
I have found the kindest hand stretched out to
shake mine, the warmest friends ready to make me
welcome, and the most: extraordinary sympathy,
and goodness, and friendship, and affection—if I
may be allowed to say se=ahown towards me.
(Cheers.) If this kind of reception is to continue—
if such hospitality is to go on—if lamto be feasted
every day in this way, or in a way almost equally
good—allow me to say than, with these dinners, and
with this kindness, and with this hospitality, you
are taking my bread out of my mouth. (Laughter
and cheers.) It is quite an error to suppose that Jam
a man possessing any benevolent feelings or any
generous sympathies with my fellow creatures. My
business is to find out snobbishness, and meanness,
and v-Wgraiity, and base motives in all the people
among whom I go. (Laughter.) I read in scores
and scores of valuable critical works that such is
my only task, that such is 1116 dreary occupation of
my existence. It is said that if I try to speak of a
good man, I render him absurd, `and mean, and
vulgar ; and of a. good woman, that she, too, is
foolish, and vapid, and insignificant—that it is only
with agreeable vice that somehow or other my busi-
ness in life lies ; and, in fine, that to picture
wickedness, and selfishness, and meanness, is my
task. I know that this must be true, because I
read it a very short time ago in a Liverpool news-
paper—(laugleer)—and net only in a Liverpool
newspaper, but in a Liverpool newspaper widen
wog quoting a Scotch newspaper. (Renewed
laughter.) This Scotch newspaper enounced these
facts which I hash been mentioning to you,
to. ally contrary to the theory of Lord Neaves.
"Catch this fellow," says the Scotch newspaper,
"say anything kind about anybody ; and the
Liverpool newspaper which prigged my lecture
backed .up the opinion of the Scotch critic.
" Catch him praising anybody or saying anything
good of anybody." He loves no'.hing that is
lovable ; he praises nothing that is praisable. And
yet I thought that in those lectures, which some of
you were pleased to come and hear, I had certainly
not praised some monarchs who had lived hundreds
of years back, but I had praised Burke, and Rey-
nolds, and Goldsmith, and Johnson, and the lite-
rary men, the men of art and the men of science,
the good men of the time, whom I value more than
the Star and Garter wearers of those old days. I
had thought that itu those lectures I had spoken in
terms not of disrespect or unkindness, and in feel-
ings and in language not un-English, of her Majesty
the Queen; and, wherever I have had to mention
her name, whether it was upon the banks of the
Clyde or upon those of the :Mississippi—whether it
was in New England or in Old England—whether
it was in some great hall in London to the artisans
of the subtirbs of the metropolis, or to the politer
audiences of the West-end, or to the people in the
mightier West by the banks of the Ohio, and away
on the American continent—wherever I *had to
mention her name, it was received with shouts of
applause and with the most heartfelt cheers. And
why was this? It was nut on account of the s p eakt-r ;
it was on account of the truth ; it was because the
English or the Americans—the people of Now Or-
leans a year ago, or the people of Aberdeen a week
ago—all received and acknowledged with due alle-
giance the greet claim to honour which that lady
has who to worthily holds that great and awful
situation which our Queen occaphs. It is my
loyalty that is called in question, and it is my
loyaly that lam trying to plead to you. Suppose,
for example, that in America—in. Pi i ade,lphta or
in New York—that I had spoki-n about George
IV. in terms of. praise and affected reverence, do
you believe they would have hailed his name with
cheers, or have heard it with anything like re-pect ?
They would have laughed in my face if I had so
spoken, of him. They know what I know and you
know, and what numbers of squeamish ley alists who
affect to cry out ageitist my lectures know, that
that man's life was not a good life—that that
king was not such a king as we ouglit to love, or
regard, or honour. (Cheers.) Anil I believe, for
my part, that in apeaking the truth, as we h id it,
of a bad Sovereign, we are paying no disrespect at
all t) a good one. (Cheers.) Farfrom it. On the
contrary we degrade our own honour and the Sove-
reign's' by unduly and unjustly praising him ; and
the mere slaverer or flatterer is one who comes f.ir-
-ward, as it were, with flash-notes, and pays with
false coin his trioute to ac.sar. (Cheers.) I don't
disguise that I feel somehow on my trial here for
loyalty, for honest English feeling. (" No, no !"
and cheers.) Ido not hold any dangerous revolu-
tionary opinions. lam sure there is many a Con-
servative here who might follow my opinions, or at
any rate who might hear them out, and not be very
much alarmed at them when I had got to the end.
As f=r as I know of my political opinions I belong
to the class that I see around me here, the class of
lawyers, and merchants, and scholars, and men who
are striving on in the world, of men of the educated
middle classes of the c quitry. And, belonging to
them, my sympathiep and my desires are with them.
If it happened that we were all here an assembly
of noblemen and earls,.we should no doubt form a
Viscounts' Government, and think it the best of all
Governments possible. If a difficulty arose in
China, for instance, we should look for my Lord
DUke A. to go and settle the difficulty, or we should
ask Earl B. to go if my Lord Duke A. were not in-
clined. If a Minister were wanted at Washington
we should send my Lord A. to fill the place ; or if
a Minister were wanted elsewhere there would be
some other lord who would be quite ready to accept
the office. If we bad a war we should salect a noble
lord from the Horse Guards to fill the place of Com-
mander-in-Chief, we should select a couple Of noble
earls to command the cavalry—(laughter and cheers)
—and we should find out a number of gentlemen
of the bestfamilies to go on the staff of these noble
lords. (Cheers and laughter.) If I, for example,
were the noble lord who occupied a high position at
home, and especially if I should possibly have a rela-
tive in a far distant land where the war was-- going
on, I should most undoubtedly and Most justifiably
write out to those in authority at head-quarters to
take care of my relative. (Great laughter.) Against
that system I could scarcely protest, because it is
perfectly natural. I think it is quite fair that a
noble lord should send out and say, "For Heaven's
sake talc() care of Dowb"—(renewed laughter)—but
for us on our side T think that we are bound also to
look after Tull and Mac. Tull and Mac belong to
our faintly ; they are of the working, sturdy, middle
classes. (Cheers.) They are men l• n whom lie, as I
believe, the safety, the hope, and the main pert of the
intelligence of our country; It is
I would like to say that 1 belong, aihitotdeilphope party that
my confession will carry no disloyattyiappiroval from the
with it, and
will meet with no very sincere d
ritrongest Conservative present.
kindness with which you, my LotilNalleve'e.) Of the
me, and
("have
. been pleased personally to speak of
esteem in which you hold my works, it d..es notu e
e-
come me to speak; but I assure you that I am most
grateful and thankful to think if I can have in the
course of my life's labours merited such an enco-
mium as I .have had from you—(cheers)—and if,
after the night is over, you, gentlemen, ate pleased
to confirm the sentence which my kind judge, here
seated, has passed upon me, it will always be a source
of great gratification to me to think that he hasi
made a righteous award, and it will be a source of
immense pleasure to my children to remember how
very kindly, how very hospitably, and how very
generously you have treated me. (Continued cheers).
Mr. STIRLING, M.P., in proposing" the Scotch
Universities," remarked that they could not boast
the great endowments, or the great patronage, or
the political consideration which their sister uni-
versities in England and Ireland possessed ; they
had had the privilege sometimes of educating men
like the Marquis of Lansdowne, Lord Palmerston,
or Lord 3 ohn Russell, but they never had the chance
of sending them to Parliament. (Hear, hear.)
Professor BLACKIE returned thanks, wishing
rather that this duty had fallen on him some 30 or
40 years ago, as he could then have spoken of the
Scotch as the best echicated people in the world,
language which could now scarcely be ventured
upon even in a Wigtown or a Caithness
presbytery.
With the single exception of the Medical Facility,
represented here by the breadth and majesty of the
learned professor (Simpson), whom a recent poet