But here, when I have just disposed of one objection, I am met by another. I have just now spoken of men and women with warm hearts and honest purposes; whereas it is well known that several of Thackeray's leading characters are of a very different order. I suppose this old and favourite objection will not be so frequently urged in the present day, as it was some twenty years ago; for sensational novels and dramas have made heroes and heroines out of such queer materials, that the iniquities of Becky Sharp pale before the scarlet sins of her later rivals. However, there is substance enough left in the objection to render it worthy of some better reply than the tu quoque retort. What does this charge against our author amount to? Is it not this, that in his first (and in some respects his best, and certainly his most popular) novel, he has made his chief character, his heroine (it is a "novel without a hero") a person of very dubious reputation. I cannot say one word in favour of Miss Rebecca Sharp-neither does Thackeray, and herein lies the force of my vindication.

Let us consider the general question before we deal with the particular case. The novelist, still more than the dramatist, must deal with all characters. Shakespeare himself has told us what is his special work: "To hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." He is to depict the world as he finds it-"nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice”—and undoubtedly there are but too many bad characters in it. His moral tone is shown in the way in which he treats these. He cannot altogether avoid them, if he would show "the very age and body of the time his form and pressure;" but there is all the difference in the spirit in which he executes this difficult and delicate task. This is a crucial test to apply to an author. Try it with Thackeray, and I maintain he will come out triumphant. Examine Vanity Fair from this point of view, and let Becky Sharp be called into court. As counsel for the defendant (the author, not the heroine), I maintain that no attempt has been made on his part to whitewash a dingy character, or to throw any halo of respectability over a disreputable personage. The author has told every one who has made inquiries in his book, that he has no particle of respect for the said personage, and he has painted her character in very unmistakable colours. If she has been described as clever, it was but to explain the partial success of her worldly schemes; if she has been represented as amusing, it was only because she

could not have worked her way in life as she did had she been otherwise. But no one passage can be pointed out, in the whole chronicle of her eventful life, in which she is held up to respect, or any virtues assigned to her by the defendant. Will not all moral persons gives us a verdict?

In truth, we have more reason to dread an action for libel on the part of Rebecca, Lady Crawley, than a verdict for conspiracy with her to defraud the public out of its sympathy and right principles. But, seriously speaking, from first to last there seems not to be one redeeming feature in her character. And this, which at first sight appears so inartistic, so unnatural, is, I believe, not only a stroke of high art, but something far higher — the instinct of a pure and lofty mind. Let us dwell a moment on this. There is something so fascinating in great power, even when misused, that we need all the safeguards which can be given to shield us from its evil influences. The intellectual superiority of this designing woman over those with whom she comes in contact, her triumphs over social and moral difficulties by resolute will and untiring energy, are in themselves quite enough to make her a heroine, and so to blind us, for a time at least, to her moral delinquencies; and when, moreover, we remark the low tone of many with whom she contends, we are in some danger of lowering proportionately our moral estimate, and of thinking that perhaps, after all, she is not so very bad. Herein, I imagine, lies the reader's danger when studying a character of this class; and from this but few writers would care to guard him. But Thackeray, like a true artist, rises with the difficulty, and, by a few skilful touches, shows us how utterly bad is the heart of the woman, and how stern our judgment ought to be in condemnation. For example: poor Rawdon Crawley, the heavy dragoon, her husband, has but few redeeming traits; but one at least he has, in which his wife is wholly wanting—his love for his child. The affection she neither seeks nor reciprocates centres in his boy; and some of the tenderest and truest passages in Vanity Fair paint this most touchingly. But the mother has no such love. What would we not pardon in Becky, did she but love her child! What more simple than to give her this common attribute; but what more artistic, what more heroically true, than for the author to deny it to her? No, she could not have this virtue—so natural a virtue that we often regard it but as an instinct--she could not have it without possessing others, which come ever in its train; and these would have changed altogether her character, she would not have been what the author designed her to be; the

lesson which the great moralist wished to draw would have faded away. And why? Surely because the heartless career must have its source in a want of natural affection, and the bitter waters must flow on, unsweetened thereby, to their appointed end. Surely such a character, thus portrayed, claims for itself a high place in the noblest ranks of novel literature.

I think justice is hardly done to Thackeray when Amelia is quoted by way of contrast to Rebecca; when it is implied that the one is intended as a foil to the other. No one would have thus placed them side by side, but for the circumstance of their appearing in the same novel. Indeed, I imagine such a contrast as is here implied would have been unworthy of Thackeray as an artist. Anyhow, Amelia is not a model character, but merely a weak and irresolute woman, who clings, with an affection that rises but little above obstinacy, to the memory of an unworthy and faithless husband, and who, in the very selfishness of her cherished sorrow, overlooks the devoted love of one who is at last but poorly rewarded with her hand.

No, if we would seek for Thackeray's ideal of female character, wherein a pure, unselfish life is elevated still higher by the genial influence of religion, we must look elsewhere. We may instance the hero's mother in Pendennis, Lady Castlewood in Esmond, and Léonore de Florac in the Newcomes. We must, I say, seek for it, for so delicately is it drawn, so unobtrusive are its traits, that, like the character itself in real life, it is recognised as a gracious presence, an influence which is felt rather than seen. This is a class of character altogether after Thackeray's own heart, and upon it he has bestowed his tenderest care. Could I say more in praise of an author than thus to record that upon a mother's love he has lavished his holiest thoughts, that upon the delineation of that least worldly of affections he has poured out the warmest utterances of his manly and pure heart?

Of course in novels which aim at representing society as it really is, we must look to meet with characters that stand in utmost need of all the purifying influence of a manly and cleanly pen; for they bring with them perfumes which are not certainly of the violet. But while there is charity and kindly warning for them, there is no sympathy with them. When Thackeray touches upon vice, it is with clean hands and fewest words. Such characters he brings to the pure light, and exposes their vileness there; we are never carried down, as by a congenial spirit, into their depths, or taught to feel ourselves at home in so unwholesome and tainted an atmosphere.

But there is another class of female characters somewhat intermediate between the two, who are not altogether bad, and yet are certainly very far from good: worldly, self-willed women, who have been placed by rank or wealth in positions of influence and authority, and who, while they sway with iron rule their dependents, have sense enough to despise their flatterers, and frankness enough to show that contempt. Thackeray has drawn several varieties of this species with great vigour and no small discrimination. One such is the old Dowager Viscountess Castlewood in Esmond; Miss Crawley is another, whom Becky Sharp hits off in a few lines thus—

"Miss Crawley has arrived with her fat horses, fat servants, fat spaniel—the great rich Miss Crawley, with seventy thousand pounds in the five per cents., whom, or I had better say which, her two brothers adore. She looks very apopletic, the dear soul; no wonder her brothers are anxious about her. You should see them struggling to settle her cushions, or to hand her coffee! 'When I come into the country,' she says (for she has a great deal of humour), 'I leave my toady, Miss Briggs, at home. My brothers are my toadies here, my dear, and a pretty pair they are!""

Lady Kew, in the Newcomes, is a capital specimen of the class; their isolation in the midst of a crowd is marked out with terrible force, and the contrast between such worldly minds and those similarly circumstanced, but which are influenced by the Catholic faith, is finely discriminated. I will venture to quote a few paragraphs, which thus bring together two very opposite characters—

Between two such women as Madame de Florac and Lady Kew, of course there could be little liking and sympathy. Religion, love, duty, the family, were the French lady's constant occupation-duty and the family, perhaps, Lady Kew's aim too-only the notions of duty were different in either person. Lady Kew's idea of duty to her relatives being to push them on in the world; Madame de Florac's to soothe, to pray, to attend them with constant watchfulness, to strive to mend them with pious counsel. I don't know that one lady was happier than the other. Madame de Florac's eldest son was a kindly prodigal; her second had given his whole heart to the Church; her daughter had centred hers on her own children, and was jealous if their grandmother laid a finger upon them. So Léonore de Florac was quite alone. It seemed as if Heaven had turned away all her children's hearts from her. Her daily business in life was to nurse a selfish old man, into whose service she had been forced in early youth, by a paternal decree which she never questioned; giving him obedience, striving to give him respect,-everything but her heart, which had gone out of her keeping. Many a good woman's life is no more cheerful; a spring of beauty, a little warmth and sunshine of love, a bitter disappointment, followed by pangs and frantic tears, then a long monotonous story of submission. "Not here, my daughter, is to be your happiness," says the Priest; "whom Heaven loves it afflicts." And he points out to her the agonies of suffering Saints of her own

sex, assures her of their present beatitudes and glories, exhorts her to bear her pains with a faith like theirs, and is empowered to promise her a like reward.

The other matron is not less alone. Her husband and son are dead, without a tear for either—to weep is not in Lady Kew's nature. Her grandson, whom she had loved, perhaps, more than any human being, is rebellious and estranged from her; her children separated from her, save one whose sickness and bodily infirmity the mother resents as disgraces to herself. Her darling schemes fail somehow. She moves from town to town, and ball to ball, and hall to castle, for ever uneasy, and always alone. She sees people scared at her coming; is received by sufferance and fear rather than by welcome; likes, perhaps, the terror which she inspires, and to enter over the breach rather than through the hospitable gate. She will try and command wherever she goes, and trample over dependents and society, with a grim consciousness that it dislikes her, a rage at its cowardice, and an unbending will to domineer. To be old, proud, lonely, and not have a friend in the world-that is her lot in it. As the French lady may be said to resemble the bird which the fables say feeds her young with her blood, this one, if she has a little natural liking for her brood, goes hunting hither and thither, and robs meat for them. And so, I suppose, to make the simile good, we must compare the Marquis of Farintosh to a lamb for the nonce, and Miss Ethel Newcome to a young eaglet. Is it not a rare provision of nature (or fiction of poets, who have their own natural history), that the strong-winged bird can soar to the sun and gaze at it, and then come down from heaven and pounce on a piece of carrion?

Thackeray had advantages of position which he turned to good account, and these give a reality to his characters which no amount of reading could supply. In affluent circumstances, he studied men and manners in University life at Cambridge, he lived among artists in Rome (not as a patron, but as a brother painter), and when he returned to London it was to fill his natural position, and move of right in good society. His artist life had trained alike his eye and hand, and thus he came with pen and pencil to study and portray mankind, and give us those works which have ever been best esteemed by those who could best judge of their accuracy. With all educated persons Thackeray has been well received, but he has always found his most enthusiastic admirers among University men and artists. In him they hailed a brother of whom both classes were, and still are, naturally proud; and he has well repaid their love by doing justice where justice is too often denied.

We have dwelt upon his female characters; let me say a word or two about Thackeray's men. His best, purest, and noblest men are all soldiers. This is a noble testimony to a profession which is often defamed, and coming from a civilian, the son of a civilian, is unimpeachable. I know not if I am right, but I cannot help imagining that our author must have had some real