At the end of the year 1844 I sold my share in the “Pictorial Times” to Mr. Spottiswoode, to enable me to give greater attention to the largely increasing business which my brother and I were then carrying on, for at this time we were printing illustrated books for all the principal London publishers. Before I left the paper, I remember I had the satisfaction of printing in it Hood's famous poem, “the Bridge of Sighs,” before it was published elsewhere. This arose from Mr. Spottiswoode, who had a mania for speculation, becoming financially interested in “Hood's Magazine,” which, through the shortcomings of its editor, usually made its monthly appearance about a week after the proper time. One day an early proof of Hood's poem was handed to me, and I printed it in the forthcoming number of the “Pictorial Times,” which under ordinary circumstances would have been published simultaneously with “Hood's Magazine.” But as usual the magazine came out very late, and the paper consequently had a day or two's start of it. Hood, I may here mention, had been an old friend of my father's, and introduced him by name in some rambling rhymes in one of the early Comic Annuals.

On Mr. Thackeray's return from his Egyptian tour, Chapman & Hall purchased the MS. of the “Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo,” and sent us the volume to print.