name of the great author. Even in this Courant, is marked by discrimination and age of steam it was not to be expected full of personal interest. But still more that within a few weeks of Thackeray's complete and valuable is the elaborate death any volume, even though only seek- paper in our cotemporary, the North ing to fill a place between "the news- British-rich in its personal recollections, paper or review article, and the more minute and pains-taking in its record of elaborate biography which may be expect the author's literary career, acute and ed in due course," could be produced, thoughtful in its critical observations, and which would do credit to the author, or every where breathing that spirit of hearty be of any real service to the public. The admiration which Thackeray never failed volume to which we allude has equaled, to inspire in those who were brought into if not surpassed, our worst anticipations. personal contact with him. The contrast For a small book of two hundred and between this paper and the more pretentwenty pages, in the preparation of which tious biography to which we have referred the scissors and paste have been very ex- above, is very striking. Much as we adtensively put in requisition, that portion mire it, however, we do not feel that it of her majesty's lieges who desire to has at all preoccupied the ground which learn something more of the great author we had marked out for ourselves prior to whose yellow-covered serials have so often its appearance. With the personal history delighted and instructed them, are ex- we have nothing to do, save as it has left pected to pay no less than seven shillings its impress on the writings of our great and sixpence. Let no man order the work satirist. It is our purpose to discuss here under the expectation of finding any the literary characteristics and moral and critical analysis of Thackeray's character- religious tendencies of Mr. Thackeray, istics as a man of letters, or gaining any and to pass from that to a general survey great information relative either to the of recent works of fiction, and an estimate man or the author. The arrangement is of the influence which they are likely to not lucid, the style is not vigorous, very exert. We fear that we shall find that few of the facts are new. Of the anec- the loss of Thackeray is specially to be dedotes and reminiscences," the great major-plored, because of the rise of a school ity had previously appeared in the newspapers; and though we are glad enough to have them collected and put in this more permanent form, we had a right to expect that a seven-and-sixpenny memoir should contain something more than bis crambe repetita. Nor do our complaints end here; for, of what is inserted, we could very well have dispensed with twelve pages devoted to the unhappy episode connected with the Garrick Club. No doubt Thackeray was right in the main, though possibly a little too sensitive; no doubt, too, the criticism which led to the dispute was ungenerous and unjust; probably Mr. Dickens erred in the course he pursued between the disputants: but it would, in our judgment, have been better if the whole affair had been relegated to the "tomb of all the Capulets;" and assuredly the space which it occupies in these brief memorials is utterly disproportioned to its real importance.

formed after an entirely different model, and inculcating very opposite lessons from those which it was his constant study to. enforce. His course as a novelist began with efforts to counteract the morbid tendencies of such books as Bulwer's Eugene Aram and Ainsworth's Jack Sheppard; both of which, though very dissimilar in many respects, were alike objectionable, as serving to throw a romantic interest round vice. An epidemic of the same character has recently broken out with even increased violence; and we know no one who could have done more to restore the diseased appetite of the reading public to a more healthy tone. Unhappily, he is gone, and we can only hope that in some other way the desired corrective may be supplied. Meanwhile we may do some little service by pointing out the marked contrast between a writer like Thackeray and the Eliots, Braddons, Collinses, and other favorites of the circulating library; and by indicating some of the mischief which these latter are working with much subtlety, but not with less fatal effect.

It is somewhat singular that we are indebted to our northern friends for the fullest and most genial sketches of Thackeray that have yet appeared. The brief, Thackeray is in fiction what the Prenotice by Mr. Hannay, which originally Raphaelites are in painting. Whether appeared in the Edinburgh Evening the characteristics of that school be a

find the memorandum of the legacy which her grandmother had intended to leave to her step-son, he does not appear to advan tage. The device is so awkward that we might have suspected the presence of a

of his art. It was elsewhere that his strength lay; and he showed practical wisdom, as regarded his own reputation, by cultivating the gift that was in him, while he did more good to his generation by laboring to become its instructor, instead of being content merely to cater for its amusement.

There is one peculiarity of his writings. which, in less skillful hands, might have only exposed the author to ridicule, but which, as managed by him, has always seemed to us to throw an air of greater reality around his stories. We refer to the allusions which abound in each, to some or all of the others. We do not here refer to the link by which Esmond, the Virginians, and the Newcomes are connected, after the manner of the old Greek Trilogies, but rather to the little incidental references in one to events narrated at full length in some of the others. The doings of the illustrious Becky in the season of her prosperity in London, are introduced both in Pendennis and The Newcomes; and the Marquis of Steyne, though not playing a part in either of them, yet is one of the figures in the background as a great leader of fashion of the day. This is natural enough. The scene of the three tales is laid in the same

striving after purity and simplicity, a scru- | happy accident which led Ethel Newcome pulous fidelity to nature, or extreme accu- to open Orme's History of India, and racy in minute detail, and perfect finish, they are all found in him. As mere tales, his novels are open to many exceptions; as pictures of life, they are to the extent of their range all but perfect, singularly true, and full of important practical sug-poor 'prentice, and not of a great master gestions. In every case the plot is subordinate to the greater object the writer has in view, of introducing to us real men and women, in whose characters, as de. veloped in the commonplace incidents of every day life, he holds up to us a mirror in which we may see ourselves, and so be taught to reform our own faults. There is little to hold the reader in breathless suspense, as he watches the gradual unfolding of some mystery round which the whole interest of the tale gathers; and those who need stimulating food of this character may very probably be surprised at the attraction which Mr. Thackeray's homely dishes possess for so many. Their great charm, indeed, is the air of reality that is diffused over the whole. There is hardly a character to which it would not be easy to find numerous counterparts, or an incident that might not be paralleled from the events of an ordinary career. The difficulties, misunderstandings, delays, and disappointments which, according to the common notion, generally checker the course of true love, and which, in the case of the majority of novelists, form the main thread of the story, occupy in his tales the place that they hold in actual life. They may serve as a connecting thread by which to unite a number of characters and incidents; but they are far from hold-period and the same city. What could ing an exclusive, and sometimes they hardly gain a prominent place in the attention of the reader. The romantic occurrences which are so common in the pages of fiction, so very uncommon in the experience of any of us, find little place in these stories. No stroke of the magician's wand suddenly converts his wonderful heroes into noblemen or princes: in truth, he has no heroes on whom to confer such elevation, but very commonplace men, who make no pretensions to superhuman excellence of any kind, and who rarely achieve any thing beyond a moderate share of success. Where Thackeray pursues another course, as, for example, in the sudden enriching of Philip by the discov

ery
of the will in the sword-case that had
lain for years in the old chariot, or in the

stamp upon all a greater impress of reality, than to regard them as having a common relation, being, in fact, the narrative of occurrences in different circles, all forming part of the "Upper Ten Thousand," and so brought more or less into contact with each other, and having certain knowledge of the leading events in each other's history? The part taken by Arthur Pendennis and that wonderful Laura, so singularly good, ever so ready for kindly services, and yet, strange to say, so very unattractive, is much more open to question. Yet, the pair serve naturally to connect the several circles, and there are few admirers of Thackeray who would be content to dispense with the scenes in which they fill a prominent place.

In the delineation, or rather in the de

velopment, of character, (for he rarely sketches portraits, but leaves events to reveal the real spirit of the actors,) he is a master, seldom rivaled, and scarcely ever surpassed. To have this quality, it is necessary that an author should possess not only a thorough familiarity with men, but also a genuine sympathy with them in the temptations, the sorrows, and the difficulties that go to make up the great battle of life. Nor must he be a mere theorist: he must himself have mingled in its fray, and known something of its terrible struggles, its cruel disappointments, its humbling reverses, its bitter agonies. Thackeray had all these qualifications. The sorrows which clouded his path have possibly given a hue of sadness to his views of life; but they certainly prepared him to be a kindly judge of his brethren. While, therefore, few have had a keener insight into the workings of the human heart, or could more thoroughly unmask those hypocrisies by which it often succeeds even in imposing upon itself, none have ever been more ready to discern and recognize those elements of good which are frequently to be found mingling with much that is mean and selfish and base. Longfellow has said that woman-and, though possibly more applicable to her, it is not true of one sex exclusively-even in her deepest degradation,

prey upon the self-denying sister who had devoted herself to minister to his comfort and the good of his children. Dr. Firmin is a smoother-tongued but certainly not less odious and repulsive villain-one of those men who not only live upon their brethren, but appear to think that their victims ought to feel themselves infinitely honored by being permitted to minister to their ease and comfort-men of ineffable selfcomplacency, imperturbable assurance, boundless love of personal enjoyment, and an equal amount of callous insensibility to the happiness of others. The picture of this man is one of Thackeray's cleverest conceptions; and the execution is as masterly as the idea was original. In him, with his grand expectations and miserable failures, his readiness to use the affection of every one who trusted him as the instrument of his own avarice, the utter heartlessness which he hid under an exterior formed after the most approved laws of conventionalism, there is nothing to admire. Perhaps Blanche Amory might be cited as an example of a similar character; and she is certainly a sufficiently disagreeable specimen of unrelieved selfishness. But there is something in the circumstances of her history and the character of her surroundings, even from her infancy, which makes us feel that in her case justice must be tempered with pity; while there are now and then flashes of a better nature, that indicate a capability of something better, had there been any thing to aid its development. Becky Sharp is thoroughly bad; but she could feel admiration for her husband's Into the spirit of this Thackeray has en- manliness in that attack on Lord Steyne tered, and it has influenced and imparted which ruined her own prospects; and her a truthfulness to most of his portraits. remembrance of the early kindness of He has nowhere painted monsters acting Amelia, though it had not hindered her under the dominion of fiendish passions from drawing away from her side the and possessed of no redeeming qualities. husband whom the poor creature so madBarnes Newcome, and perhaps Dr. Fir- ly idolized, induced her to interpose on min, are, so far as we remember, the soli- behalf of the long-suffering and devoted tary exceptions to the last part of this Dobbin, and, by promoting his union rule. Barnes is an insufferable little with the woman he so truly loved, to conwretch, a singular mixture of the puppy tribute to the happiness of both. Lady and the brute, with all the insolence and Kew is hardly less worldly, less intrigucowardice of a bully-a man who dis- ing, less unprincipled than Becky-indeed graced himself in every relation which he she is Becky placed in a different position; filled, who sneered at his too indulgent with the same predominant selfishness, the father, insulted and wronged his gentle same cynical contempt of goodness, the mother, goaded his unhappy wife to an same resolute determination in working act of mad wickedness, made himself out her own plans, and the like disregard merry with the simplicity of his noble-of all the feelings and interests of any minded uncle, and was mean enough to who might stand in her way; but, per

"Holds something sacred, something undefiled,
Some pledge and keepsake of her better nature:
Some pledge and keepsake of her better nature;

And like a diamond in the dark retains
Some quenchless beam of its celestial glow."

haps, with a trifle more heart than Mrs. | Rawdon Crawley. Her affection for Ethel, debased though it was by the coolness with which she sought to sell her beauty and wit to the greatest possible advantage; and her pity for poor Lady Clara, whom she would fain have shielded from harm, though she would not or could not learn the obvious lesson of her unhappy story-plead on behalf of this miserable creature, in whom Thackeray has sketched, as it never was drawn be fore, a likeness of the woman of the world, a being whom none can love, and whose life appears to serve no purpose but to act as a beacon to warn others against the indulgence of like vices.

selfish and loving heart to all gifts of intellect or fortune. But we question whether in the desire to point the contrast between goodness clothed in the least attractive form, and selfishness, even when associated with all those graces of manner and powers of mind which never fail to fascinate, he has not gone into an extreme, and run the risk of exciting in many minds a feeling of pity, where he sought only to create one of admiration. Colonel Newcome stands alonecharming all who make his acquaintance by his beautiful simplicity, his lofty principle, his unselfish devotion to the boy he loved so well, his chivalrous sense of honor, his superiority to the corrupting But while Thackeray's charity-which, influences of the world. A little more of however, is never debased by the alloy of the "wisdom of the serpent" would cermorbid sentimentalism-finds lingerings of tainly better have fitted him for the batthe good even in hearts where the evil is tle of life; but it could not have been predominant, he, on the other hand, never introduced without marring the effect of seeks to depict perfect heroes. Arthur a portrait which, as it stands, is singularPendennis and Philip Firmin are not ly beautiful and impressive. To appremen who can excite very deep sympathy ciate it fully, we should place it side by or profound admiration. Henry Esmond side with that of Major Pendennis, a very is a fair specimen of a dashing cavalier, respectable man, as society deemed him, with a good deal of chivalrous feeling, ca- who found his way into the best circles, pable of acts of self-sacrifice, constant in and secured for himself a certain éclat, his attachments, and pure in his princi- who possessed an inexhaustible fund of ples, yet hardly coming up to our ideal that selfish sagacity which the world of a hero. Clive Newcome, despite many esteems wisdom, but who was always excellences, is yet deficient in many of emphatically "of the earth, earthy." He the qualities necessary to command the had some measure of affection for his reverence of generous and virtuous hearts. nephew, but it only serves to bring out Dobbin is a noble specimen of singleness in bolder relief the essential worldliness of purpose, purity of heart, disinterested of the man. He never seeks to rouse and constant love, and untiring self-sacri- Arthur to any noble aspirations, or to set fice. We can not fail to admire the true before him any principle of truth or hearted man, yet is there the absence of honor as his guide; but, on the contrary, any thing that could awaken veneration; is ever pouring into his ear the subtle and the impression conveyed, unintention- counsels of a debasing selfishness, that ally, perhaps, but not less certainly, is, could only poison every spring of generthat had he been more brilliant he would ous feeling in his heart; he can apologize not have been so good; and we lay down for any youthful vice, or, indeed, incite the book with the feeling that, though he to its indulgence; he is severe only on and his beloved Amelia may be very what he regards as acts of imprudence, good people, they would not be those the sacrifices of worldly advantages in whom we should select for bosom friends, deference to principle or honor; and withor in whose future fortunes we could take al he would have himself esteemed a very a very profound interest. Yet, with the model of propriety and wisdom. Placed exception of Colonel Newcome, Dobbin in contrast with a poor worldling like (with all his simplicity and gaucherie, so this, the character of the good colonel well expressed, with the author's charac- stands out to special advantage. There teristic skill, in his name) is the nearest are few things more touching in the approach to a hero among Mr. Thacke range of fiction than the record of his ray's characters. In him, undoubtedly, last days-the genuine independence that the writer intended to teach a very im- led him to take his place among the poor portant lesson; the superiority of an un-brothers of the Charterhouse, rather than

accede to the wishes of the generous such women, and that it would be no friends who would have provided another difficult task to find the originals of every asylum for his old age; the uncomplaining meekness with which he bent his head before the terrible storm of adversity that beat upon him; the gentle resignation of the broken-hearted old man under the reproaches with which he was so unjustly assailed, the child-like faith and tenderness that shed a soft beauty over the sadness of the closing scene. Where do we find any thing more exquisite than the brief sentences that give the story of his departure? "Just as the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, and he lifted up his head a little and quickly said, 'Adsum,' and fell back. It was the word we used at school, when names were called; and lo! he, whose heart was that of a little child, had answered to his name, and stood in the presence of the Master."

The colonel is an exception to the ordinary run of Thackeray's characters, who rarely combine the elements of strength and goodness. Despite all that has been said in his defense, we think that women especially have good right to complain of the part that the sex plays in his stories. He has certainly drawn some of the most execrable women who ever appeared on the pages of fiction. Becky Sharp, Blanche Amory, and Beatrix Esmond, are one group with sufficiently distinctive points of difference, yet all of the same type of character-beings who have not a single thought beyond themselves, and whom no scruple restrains from any pursuit which promises to gratify their own desires. Not less offensive are the more decorous, but not more honorable mammas, who carry on precisely the same game as these young ladies, but, have some more regard, albeit very slight, to the proprieties of society-Mrs. Bute Crawley, of the Queen's Crawley Rectory; Philip Firmin's scheming and pretentious mother-in-law; and, worst of all, the creature whom of all others we most dislike, the old "Campaigner," whose face, ever beaming with smiles on the outside world, concealed as mean and base a heart as ever throbbed in human breast, a heart which even the misfortunes of the noble old colonel could not move to pity, and in which the troubles of the child she professed to love so fondly could not awaken a feeling of honor.

It may be said, indeed, that there are

portrait. Perhaps even the limited experience of each indidivual reader may enable him to point out some answering to the description; and it may be that it is in the very truthfulness of the representation that the gravamen of the offense lies. But were all this true, there would still be reason to object to the number of such characters, and the lack of representatives of the highest style of female excellence. We must confess that there is not one of Mr. Thackeray's heroines (a title which can only be given to any of them by courtesy), that commands our hearty admiration. We need not speak of Amelia or Laura Pendennis; for we do not fancy that the most thorough devotee of Mr. Thackeray will ask for a verdict in their favor. Lady Castlewood is a much finer character, and has been described by a very acute critic, the late George Brimley," as one of the sweetest women that ever breathed from canvas or from book since Raffaelle painted Maries, and Shakspeare created a new and higher consciousness of woman in the mind of Germanic Europe." In this judgment we are not prepared to acquiesce. We readily admit the existence of many traits of exquisite loveliness in this devoted, self-denying, greatly-suffering, and deeply-loving woman; but there is a great want of decision and force; and the relations which she sustains to Esmond leave a painful impression upon the mind, and, unlike most of our author's portraitures, are not true to nature. There is, too, an occasional waywardness in her conduct, as, for example, in her unjust treatment of Esmond after the death of her husband, which is hardly consistent with the general tone of her character. On the other hand, we are free to confess the originality of the conception, the singular tenderness and pathos which are revealed in many of her words and actions,. and the charm which the portrait can hardly fail to exert on all thoughtful beholders.

But in our eyes Ethel Newcome has far greater attractions. She is thoroughly natural, and in the gradual refinement and elevation of her character we see one of the highest triumphs of Mr. Thackeray's skill. Had we found her at first a fair flower of unselfishness blooming in those gardens of fashion in