Originally published in Thackeray's Cornhill Magazine from 1860 to his retirement as editor in 1862, this series of essays was published as a single volume in 1863, the year of his death. Contents: On a Lazy Idle Boy; On Two Children in Black; On Ribbons; On Some late Great Victories; Thorns in the Cushion; On Screens in Dining-Rooms; Tunbridge Toys; De Juventute; On a Joke I Once Heard from the Late Thomas Hood; Round about the Christmas Tree; On a Chalk-Mark on the Door; On Being Found Out; On a Hundred Years Hence; Small-Beer Chronicle; Ogres; On Two Roundabout Papers which I intended to Write; A Mississippi Bubble; On Letts's Diary; Notes of a Week's Holiday; Nil Nisi Bonum; On Half a Loaf--A Letter to Messrs. Broadway, Battery and Co., of New York, Bankers; The Notch on the Axe: A Story a la Mode; De Finibus; On a Peal of Bells; On a Pear-Tree; Dessein's; On some Carp at Sans Souci; Autour de mon Chapeau; On Alexandrines--A Letter to some Country Cousins; On a Medal of George the Fourth; "Strange to say, on Club Paper"; The Last Sketch.