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chief peculiarities. He draws our attention to some little incident, and then by innuendo, rather than explanation, points out the trait which it illustrates. This is very different from the manner of Fielding, who delights to watch a thought or an emotion as it rises in the mind, to trace it through all its eddies, and to follow it to its confluence with other feelings, or until it is absorbed into action. We shall quote a single example from Tom Jones. The gamekeeper, "Black George," who is under great obligations to Tom, has found and appropriated a purse containing five hundred pounds, which the heedless foundling received from Mr. Allworthy when dismissed from his house, and lost on his way across the fields. Subsequently, George is the bearer of sixteen guineas, which Sophia sends to her lover.

"Black George, having received the purse, set forward towards the alehouse; but in the way a thought occurred to him, whether he should not detain this money likewise. His conscience, however, immediately started at this suggestion, and began to upbraid him with ingratitude to his benefactor. To this his avarice answered, that his conscience should have considered the matter before, when he deprived poor Jones of his five hundred pounds; that having quietly acquiesced in what was of so much greater importance, it was absurd, if not downright hypocrisy, to affect any qualms at this trifle. In return to which, Conscience, like a good lawyer, attempted to distinguish between an absolute breach of trust, as here where the goods were delivered, and a bare concealment of what was found, as in the former case. Avarice presently treated this with ridicule, called it a distinction without a difference, and absolutely insisted, that when once all pretensions of honor and virtue were given up in any one instance, that there was no precedent for resorting to them upon a second occasion. In short, poor Conscience had certainly been defeated in the argument, had not Fear stepped in to her assistance, and very strenuously urged, that the real distinction between the two actions did not lie in the different degrees of honor, but of safety; for that the secreting the five hundred pounds was a matter of very little hazard, whereas the detaining the sixteen guineas was liable to the utmost danger of discovery. By this friendly aid of Fear, Conscience obtained a complete victory in the mind of Black George; and after making him a few compliments on his honesty, forced him to deliver the money to Jones."

Fielding, as we see, exercises over his characters an abso

lute right of property. He establishes himself in the inmost. recesses of their minds, and displays the secret thoughts which no conjecture founded on action could have revealed. Thackeray takes no such unfair advantage of the offspring of his imagination. Having placed them before us, he retires among the spectators, and discovers more than the rest of us, not because his position is better, but because his sight is keener. We open one of his books, as we enter a company of strangers. What we first notice is their outward appearance their features and dress, their occupations and their peculiarities of action; and on these observations we found our conjectures as to their characters. Major Pendennis is disclosed, seated at his breakfast-table in a club-house in Pall Mall. His boots are the best blacked in all London; his linen is spotless; his buff waistcoat bears the crown of his sovereign on the buttons; he wears a checked cravat, which will not be rumpled till dinner time; and his coat, his white gloves, his whiskers, his very cane, are "perfect of their kind, as specimens of the costume of a military man en rétraite.” At a distance you would take him to be not more than thirty years old; but, on a nearer inspection, the factitious nature of his rich brown hair appears, and you notice a few crows'feet round the somewhat faded eyes of his handsome mottled face." On that table" by the fire and yet near the window"- which by prescriptive right is now his own, his letters are laid out, the seals and franks of which excite the wonder of the younger habitués of the club. While the waiters bring him his toast and his hot newspaper, he surveys his letters through his gold double eye-glass, which he carries so gaily, you would hardly know it was spectacles in disguise. One letter, marked " Immediate," in a pretty, delicate, female hand, he puts under the slop-basin, to be read after he has disposed of the notes of invitation from the Marquis of Steyne, the Bishop of Ealing, &c., &c. When at length the humbler epistle obtains an audience, the major's countenance assumes such an expression of rage and horror that Glowry, the surgeon, who has been watching him with ill-concealed envy while he read the letters with the large seals and the franks, thinks his respected friend is going into a fit, and

feels in his pocket for his lancet. And thus we are gradually led into an intimate acquaintance with the Major, just as our knowledge of a real person begins with his outward man, grows deeper as we get a closer view of his peculiarities of conduct and opinion, until at last we know him more thoroughly than he himself imagines, and can tell how he acted and what he thought on occasions when we were not present. We obtain the same knowledge of Thackeray's characters as we do of the persons whom we see most nearly and most frequently, and not a whit more. We think of them afterwards as we do of absent acquaintances; -we recall distinct images of bodily forms. In this respect, we know them better than we know the fictitious personages of any other writer. The depths of Hamlet's soul are revealed to us; but who ever imagines a Hamlet that is "fat, and scant of breath?" The simple nature, the honest, kindly hearts of Parson Adams and of My Uncle Toby are as clear and transparent as the waters of a summer's brook; but although we have some description of their personal appearance to assist us, we should doubtless have much difficulty in recognizing either of them if he were to enter the room. But Major Pendennis and Captain Costigan - how could we mistake their lineaments, when a faithful daguerreotype of each lies before us on the table? Nor is it only the principal actors who are thus carefully costumed. Where there is no opportunity to bring out individual peculiarities, the stamp of caste and profession is at least made plainly visible. If "Jeames" does but enter the room to announce that the carriage is at the door, our attention is forced away from the most interesting dialogue, and fixed upon the plush and the calves, the mincing tones and the dislocated aspirates. The characteristics of a particular class are always depicted with minute fidelity. Many of the characters are admirable specimens of the genus to which they belong. Morgan, for instance, is the very type of the English valet, the most serviceable animal of the whole race, but with an extraordinary mass of vulgar insolence underneath the intensely servile exterior. The Irishmen in Thackeray's books, both as regards brogue and all the well-known propensities of the Hibernian nature, are certainly

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the best to be found in either comedy or novel. The military portraits are not less faithful; and the British army — or the representative portion of it-entertains, for the delineator of its heavy young dragoons," its dashing light-guardsmen, and its veteran braves, those sentiments of grateful esteem which it might be expected to feel. With what truthful and delicate touches does touches does Thackeray portray childhood! No Nellys or Evas, but veritable children, are those that he sketches. The selfish indifference with which Master George Osborne repays the lavish affection of his mother, is painfully true to nature; and the boy's resemblance to his father in this particular is wonderfully maintained. Little Rawdon Crawley, among the fox-hounds at Queens Crawley, should have been painted by Landseer; and how like an infant Jove does he launch that innocent thunderbolt at the redoubtable Becky, when, following the example of her sister-in-law and the other ladies in the drawing-room, she calls the child to her, and caresses him, and he, looking up in her face, his large eyes filled with a grave surprise, says, "you never kiss me at home, mamma!" The little housekeepers, in the "Curate's Walk," are in our author's happiest style; and the following sketch, from the same paper, of a group of ragged children in one of the streets of St. Giles, is worthy of Murillo.

"There was one small person occupied in emptying one of these rivulets with an oyster-shell, for the purpose, apparently, of making an artificial lake in a hole hard by, whose solitary gravity and business struck me much, while the Curate was very deep in conversation with a small coalman. A half dozen of her comrades were congregated round a scraper and on a grating hard by, playing with a mangy little puppy, the property of the Curate's friend. I know it is wrong to give large sums of money away promiscuously, but I could not help dropping a penny into the child's oyster-shell, as she came forward, holding it before her like a tray. At first, her expression was one rather of wonder than of pleasure at this influx of capital, and was certainly quite worth the small charge of one penny, at which it was purchased. For a moment she did not seem to know what steps to take; but having communed in her own mind, she presently resolved to turn them towards a neighboring apple-stall, in the direction of which she went without a single word of compliment passing between us. Now, the children round the scraper were witnesses to the transaction.

"He's

give her a penny," one remarked to another, with hopes miserably disappointed that they might come in for a similar present. She walked on to the apple-stall, meanwhile, holding her penny behind her. And what did the other little ones do? They put down the puppy as if it had been so much dross; and one after another, they followed the penny-piece to the apple-stall."

Nor will it be disputed that Thackeray's heroines, whatever objections there may be to them as specimens of that class, have such virtues and such foibles as are peculiarly feminine. No portraiture of the female mind that shall be complete, and altogether satisfactory, is to be expected from one of the other sex. It is hardly possible that any being should see deeper into the mind of a being of another race, than the point where those qualities lie from which arises the interrelation of the two races. If a mortal should undertake to write the life of an angel, it would be only that of a guardian angel, weeping, praying, and rejoicing for the sinner over whom it watched. If a human being should write the memoirs of a dog, they would be merely those of humble Tray, trotting at his master's heels, and pining away at his grave. What dramatist ever puts a soliloquy into the mouth of a woman, of which the subject is not love or a lover? Thackeray himself acknowledges this difficulty, or rather impossibility for a man, of fully comprehending the female character, in a remarkable passage in Mr. Brown's Letters to his Nephew.

"When I say I know women, I mean I know that I don't know them. Every woman I ever knew is a puzzle to me, as I have no doubt she is to herself. Say they are not clever? Their hypocrisy is a perpetual marvel to me, and a constant exercise of cleverness of the finest sort. You see a demure-looking woman, perfect in all her duties, constant in house-bills and shirt-buttons, obedient to her lord, and anxious to please him in all things; silent, when you and he talk politics, or literature, or balderdash together, and, if referred to, saying with a smile of perfect humility, 'O, women are not judges upon such and such matters; we leave learning and politics to men.' Yes, poor Polly,' says Jones, patting the back of Mrs. J's. head goodnaturedly; 'attend to the house, my dear, that's the best thing you can do, and leave the rest to us.' Benighted idiot! She has long ago taken your measure and your friends'; she knows your weaknesses, and ministers

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