even loves a "fogy;" witness his Rawdon Crawley, in "Vanity Fair," on whom he dwells with a lingering love. There is very little excitement, no duelling, no murder. His characters are such as we most of us fancy we have met with in every-day life. We recognise them at a glance, and can't help saying-"How like! how true!" Thackeray is always the gentleman; and yet he does not treat us to fine gentlemen in his portraits. There is no affectation about him, and when he drops one of his most beautiful and heart-searching truths, full of true poetic pathos, he hastens away and seems almost ashamed of having dropt it. He is perfectly frank too, and you see his fine, kind nature always uppermost in what he says. There may be an art, a most finished art, in all this, but it seems very like nature for all that. The height of art is the concealment of art. Thackeray cannot, or at least he does not, paint the physiognomy of places with the minute detail of Dickens; yet there is nothing in Dickens more touching in this way than the Landing on the Stair, in his "Vanity Fair." Dickens seems to take an inventory of everything in the room, or the street, or the landscape he paints, and reproduces the details in all their minutiæ: Thackeray strikes off the scene in a broad, dashing manner, and gives you its spirit in a few words. His characters are more complete. Take his Becky, in "Vanity Fair;" what a picture have you in her, of the designing, selfish, unscrupulous, unprincipled, yet withal, clever and brave woman; full of tact and resources; always having an eye to the main chance, yet not always successful: and then, that admirable portrait of the heavy dragoon, Rawdon Crawley, whose stupid character is quite redeemed by his thorough belief in his wife's honour until almost the last moment, and his touching affection for his boy. The characters in his new novel, "Pendennis," are quite as good in their way. A great number and variety of men and women are brought upon the stage, evidently copies from the life, and they are treated with consummate art. There is no crowding, crossing, or jostling. The number of the characters is probably too great to admit of very close and riveting interest; you cannot "pile up the agony" on a crowded stage; to be concentrated and intense, there must be few characters. But see to what Thackeray treats us in "Pendennis: ". The story introduces us to Major Pendennis, a veteran dandy, a "fogy" at his club in Pall Mall, where he sits opening billets-doux, "invites," &c., from great personages. He is a man who lives in the atmosphere of aristocracy, draws in its breath, eats its dinners, and forms his whole man according to its standard. He is a "made-up" man, and owes much to his hair-dresser and his tailor, we mean as regards the dye of his hair and tournure of his figure. He is a kind of clothes-horse though he thinks too, but it is only after the most approved forms; he is a chum of Lord Steyne's, and a dinerout with Bishops: in short, he is the thorough man of the world, ready to wink at all its vices, provided they are sanctioned by ton; fashion is his "Mrs. Grundy," and he leaves all to serve it. Among his letters he finds one from his sister-in-law, enclosing another from his nephew, the hero of the story. The young scapegrace has fallen violently in love with an actress, and vows to marry her. The Major's proprieties are shocked, and he hastens down to the country to prevent such a stigma being affixed to " the family." Then we are introduced to Mrs. Pendennis and Master Arthur,-the former a loving, simple woman, rather defective in judgment; the latter a self-willed, spoilt boy, very like other boys similarly trained. The book gives the history of this boy up to manhood, and shows who was his greatest enemy throughout, namely, himself. There is not much of the hero about Arthur Pendennis. Thackeray does not care about heroes. But Arthur Pendennis is all the more true to nature, inas much as he is no hero. Your novel heroes are the falsest of all imaginable characters. This boy is true to life; we have not the slightest doubt that he is painted from the life. He is one of the thousands whom over-indulgent mammas pronounce to be geniuses before they are out of petticoats. They are educated without an object, and enter the world purposeless; their history is one of failures and disappointments, often of follies and extravagances; and if they do succeed, it is because of some hidden seeds of manliness and self-dependence in their nature springing into life, and inciting them to struggle onwards to success, in spite of the defective training of their youth. Every man who reads "Pendennis" will testify to its truthfulness. There is the first dream of life-the whirl of passionate, but innocent love for some fair being whom, in the blindness of our infatuation, we invest with all the charms, mental and moral, of an angel. We are rudely shaken out of our dream, wonder how we could have been so blind; we gather knowledge, but it is at the cost of our affections; the dream never returns again, only a dim memory of it; we learn to close the heart against such illusions, and often do we close it up altogether, taking refuge in a miserable selfishness, wandering through the world as through a mere gallery of pictures. Pendennis goes to college, and passes through its dissipations with éclát, though, when examined, he is "plucked." He lives the life of a fast man, and runs his poor mother deeply in debt. Then he returns home in the horrors; leads for some time the life of a male flirt; has no pursuit, no object in life; and at last, in a desperate fit, runs up to London with two hundred pounds in his pocket, borrowed from a female relation, who seems to have a secret affection for him; his intention being there to study the law, and make a living at the bar. In the pursuit of his law studies he is as purposeless as ever. He eats his dinners, and spends his two hundred pounds. But he falls in with a generous, rough diamond, Stunning Warrington, a character capitally hit off, and to the life. They live together in chambers in the Temple. When Pen has got to his last guinea, Warrington advises him to replenish his purse by writing for the press; and then we have a graphic sketch of a young man's experience in newspaper editing and literary lionizing. The incidental characters in the history are admirably drawn. Captain Costigan-"honest Jack Costigan"who has "borne Her Majesty's colours in the Hundred and Third," an "old soldier and a fond father," who is great on the subject of "me family," and "the Costigans of Costigan town." This Captain Costigan is a gem of the first water, a sparkling Emeralder, full of lustre and vivacity; and Harry Foker, the high-born swell, the fast youth, "not clever, but rather downy," who " tell what's o'clock," is ready to tool the mail-coach, to drink bitters, to patronize the "Fancy," to astonish bar-maids, and to row at Cambridge: he is also a genuine character after the life, as any of us could avow. Old Bows, the crooked actor, who had the making of "the Fotheringay," is also a fine character, and so is the curate, Smirke, who sighs like a furnace after the unconscious widow Pendennis. can Further on, we are introduced to one or two knaves of considerable calibre, Bloundell Bloundell, one of your gambling roués, studying divinity at the university, for the purpose of succeeding to " a living," the gift of which is in the family; Sir Francis Clavering, Colonel Altamont, and others. Captain Strong is a trump, capitally hit off; and so are "fatal" Mirabolant, the French cook, and Mr. Waag, the literary man. But we cannot dwell upon these characters in this necessarily brief sketcb. Thackeray is equally at home in his female characters. They are all true women, none of them "heroines." They, too, have all some mixture of infirmity which holds The Major was very consoling :-" Make yourself easy about him," said he, to Pen's mother; half a fellow's pangs at losing a woman result from vanity more than affection. To be left by a woman is the deuce and all, to be sure; but look how easily we leave 'em." them to humanity. Pen's mother, in her almost blind love for her husband and for her son, is unmistakeably human. The former she reverenced "as the best, the most upright, wise, high-minded, accomplished, and awful of men." "If the women did not make idols of us, and if they saw us as we see each other, would life be At Oxford, Pen forgets his first folly in a round of bearable, or would society go on? Let a man pray that dissipation and extravagance. This picture of college-life none of his womankind should form a just estimation of is one which parents would do well to study. No one who him. If your wife knew you as you are, neighbour, she is familiar with Oxford and Cambridge will deny its truth. would not grieve much about being your widow, and would Pen runs into debt, and fails in his studies, except in dice let your grave-lamp go out very soon, or, perhaps, not and loo. He returns home in despair, and the mother even take the trouble to light it. Whereas, Helen Penden-impoverishes herself to pay off his debts. "There must nis put up the handsomest of memorials to her husband, and constantly renewed it with the most precious oil." And then her equally blind love of her son. "The maternal passion is a sacred mystery to me. What one sees symbolized in the Roman churches in the image of the virgin Mother, with a bosom bleeding with love, I think one may witness (and admire the Almighty bounty for) every day. I saw a Jewish lady, only yesterday, with a child at her knee, and from whose face towards the child there shone a sweetness so angelical, that it seemed to form a sort of glory round both. I protest I could have knelt before her too, and adored in her the Divine beneficence in endowing us with the maternal storgé, which began with our race, and sanctifies the history of mankind." And yet this mother's love is not always for an object so pure and unstained, as they in their fond hearts suppose. Pen's education at a great public school had introduced him to something very different from the purity of home the fear of such contamination was a thing that never ceased to haunt the mind of the good Dr. Arnold. We quote Thackeray again :-" Ye tender mothers and sober fathers of Christian families, a prodigious thing that theory of life is, as orally learned at a great public school. Why, if you could hear those boys of fourteen, who blush before mothers, and sneak off in silence in the presence of their daughters, talking among each other, it would be the woman's turn to blush then. Before he was twelve years old, and while his mother fancied him an angel of candour, little Pen had heard talk enough to make him quite awfully wise upon certain points,-and so, madam, has your pretty little rosy-cheeked boy, who is coming home from school for the Christmas holidays. I don't say that the boy is lost, or that the innocence has left him which he had from Heaven, which is our home,' but that the shades of the prison-house are closing very fast over him, and that we are helping as much as possible to corrupt him." : "The Fotheringay," Pen's first love, is an unmistakeable specimen of a woman; a lump of physical beauty, without either soul or culture, but whom nature has furnished with the gifts of black eyes, long eyelashes, good skin, regular features, dazzling white teeth, and a large, well-formed figure, which suddenly takes captive the whole unreflective nature of our too-susceptible Pen. The girl has, however, a notion of the main chance, and so has her father, the emerald Captain Costigan; and when it is discovered that Pen is penniless, comparatively speaking, he is "cut" by the actress and her father, and left to his fate. "" Perhaps (says Thackeray) all early love affairs ought to be strangled or drowned, like so many blind kittens." "As for Pen, he thought he should die. Have not other gentlemen been balked in love besides Mr. Pen! Yes, indeed; but few die of the malady." "I never knew a man die of love, certainly, but I have known a twelve-stone-man go down to nine stone five, under a disappointed passion, so that pretty nearly a quarter of him may be said to have perished-and that is no small portion. He has come back to his old size subsequently; perhaps is bigger than ever: very likely some new affection has closed round his heart and ribs, and made them comfortable, and young Pen is a man who will console himself like the rest of us." be some sort of pleasure," says our author, "which we After this, Pen becomes tired of the slow life at home, and he proceeds to London to study law; as usual he studies not at all; but forced by his necessities, he is driven to work in some way, and accident brings him into connection with the press. He edits a newspaper, the Pall Mall Gazette, and writes a novel. He becomes lionized, and moves through the gay world, aided by his uncle, the Major, who is becoming painfully battered by age and dining-out, and more indebted to his tailor and barber than ever. Pen again scrapes acquaintance with the Claverings and Miss Amory, and meditates " proposing" to her; but he finds that she has got Harry Foker in her toils, and he forbears. Foker comes out quite naturally. As in Rawdon Crawley, there is some true stuff in his heart, and we begin almost to love him. But we need not say that tearful Blanche Amory sustains her character of the heartless flirt to the last. We need not introduce the reader to the literary life in town of our hero; nor to his dealings with Bacon and Bungay, the publishers, and their Sunday dinners; nor to the Honourable Percy Popjoy, a noble litterateur; nor to Captain Shandon, the newspaper hack; nor to Lady Mirabel (who is only The Fotheringay, at last wedded to a rich old fogy); nor to an old friend, Captain Costigan, her father. Sir Francis Clavering gets into difficulties, through gambling and other causes, and is evidently in a state of rapid collapse-haunted by his evil genius, Colonel Altamont, who turns out to be a former husband of his wife. In the midst of all this whirl of London life, Pen continues to be human, and not altogether palled in his appetites. He even gives signs of revival of his old desire of loving; and takes a penchant for a girl whom he accidentally meets at Vauxhall Gardens, in the company of Captain Costigan and her mother. And yet Fanny Bolton is only a poor and humble girl, the daughter of Captain Costigan's portress. Those who would know the rest will, doubtless, read the story for themselves. In conclusion, we would say, that no man has had better opportunities than Mr. Thackeray for treating such a subject as that of the History of Arthur Pendennis." It looks so like life, that we cannot help sometimes fancying that it is an autobiography he is writing. Mr. Thackeray is himself of good family, and, like Mr. Pen, was originally intended for the bar. He kept several terms at Cambridge, but left the university without taking a degree, intending to become an artist. After two or three years of desultory application, he gave up the notion of being a painter, and took to literature. He set up a weekly journal, in the style of the Athenæum, but it failed. The success, however, of some sketches of his in Fraser's Magazine, where he assumed the nanie of Michael Angelo Titmarsh, induced him to become a regular man of letters; and his "Great Hoggarty Diamond," his "Jeames's Diary," The Snob Papers" in Punch, his 'Irish Sketch-book," his " Vanity Fair," and " Pendennis," sufficiently mark his characteristics as a writer. His own past history tends in some manner to illustrate his works, more especially the last-named; and we cannot help perceiving and admitting that, in his best and most graphic pictures, as in his subordinate sketches (for instance the "Coal Hole," in Pendennis), Thackeray draws his materials mainly from the life. MISS MARTINEAU AT AMBLESIDE. There was no reason why I should not live where I pleased. Five years and more of illness had broken all bonds of business, and excluded me from all connection with affairs. I was free to choose how to begin life afresh. The choice lay between London and pure country; for no one would prefer living in a provincial town for any reasons but such as did not exist for me. I love London, and I love the pure country. As for the choice between them now, I had some dread of a London literary life, for both its moral and physical effects. I was old enough to look forward to old age, and to have already some wish for quiet, and command of my own time. Moreover, every woman requires for her happiness some domestic occupation and responsibility,-to have some one's daily happiness to cherish; and a London lodging is poorly supplied with such objects; whereas, in a country home, with one's maids, and one's neighbours, and a weary brother or sister, or nephew, or niece, or friend coming to rest under one's trees, or bask on one's sunshiny terrace, there is prospect of abundance of domestic interest. If I choose the country, I might as well choose the best; and this very valley was, beyond all controversy, the best. Ilere, I could write in the serenest repose; here, I could rove at will; here, I could rest. Here, accordingly, I took up my fest, and I have never repented it. TOIL. Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands idleness. But when man toils and slays himself for or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of masters who withhold the life he gives to them-then, then, the soul screams out, and every sinew cracks. CLOUDS. Englishmen are laughed at for perpetually talking of the weather. But there is great excuse for this, when we consider the fickleness of our climate, and the influence which the continual change of weather has upon our mental and bodily faculties. How inspirited and exhilarated do we feel on one of those bright autumnal mornings, when the fresh wind chases the dazzlingly white clouds across the sky, rendered more deeply blue by the contrast! how renovated by its influence, and how ready to do or to suffer anything that lies before us! But when the sun is hidden by dense and cloudy vapours, and the sky looks pale and sickly, the spirits are low and the body languid, and we feel inclined to lie down all day, and long for a wind. Consequently, in bright weather we rejoice with our friends in the beauty of the sky, and when it is wet or oppressive we mutually condole with, and pity each other. Yet we wish not the weather less changeable, and above all, we covet not cloudless skies. Oh, no! There is more beauty in the various forms and colours of the glorious cloud-land than in aught upon earth, if we only take the trouble to look upon them. In summer, how lovely the little wave-like clouds dappling the blue, or the long filmy stretches of vapour so white and thin! And at night, to watch the moon silvering the tiny cloudlets, as they sweep across her face, driven by the gentle breeze; or to behold her as she calmly looks down between immense, still masses of vapour upon a sleeping world. One would not, indeed, wish for clouds on a bright frosty night, when the stars look large and intensely brilliant through the crystal ether, and almost overwhelm by the little glimpse they give of the immensity of space. Let us, then, not complain if we have occasional weeks of leaden skies and drenching rain, but be thankful for the sunny, bright, and lovely days that so often bless us. Sailing cloudlets of summer, varied tints of autumn skies, snow-fraught masses of winter cloud, fructifying vapours of tender spring, ye are all welcome! and a sorry day would it be for Old England, if, for your fickleness, were substituted a weary, unvarying, though bright and gorgeous monotony. THE DIGNITY OF LABOUR. A people's treasure is in useful labour; there is no wealth, and can be none, but what it creates. Every good, great or small, is purchased by it. Savages, with boundless territories and fertile lands, are indigent and often destitute, because they work not. A single day's labour of a peasant or a mechanic, tends to relieve human wants, and increase human comforts, It produces that which is not to be had without it, and to which tons of glittering ore can contribute nothing. In fine, there is no wealth but labour-no enjoyments but what are derived from it. FRUITS. THE roses are bright, in their summer days' light, When Midsummer comes, we see cherries and plums How delicious and sweet is the strawberry treat, Don't you think we can find in the nectarine rind The apricot, yellow, so juicy and mellow, Is tempting as any fresh cowslip of Spring, DIAMOND DUST. Do nothing to-day that thou wilt repent of to-morrow. On the heels of folly treadeth shame; at the back of anger standeth remorse. PAST opportunities are gone, future are not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer tasting them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age. IGNORANCE is a blank sheet, on which we may write ; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase. Ir thou wouldst live long, live well; there are two things which shorten life, folly and wickedness. ACCOUNT him thy real friend who desires thy good, rather than thy good-will. ENVY-punishing ourselves for being inferior to our neighbours. Ir is the bounty of nature that we live, but of philosophy that we live well; which is, in truth, a greater benefit than life itself. LARGE minds, like large pictures, are seen best at a distance, this is the reason, to say nothing of envious And the currants' deep blushes come through the green bushes, motives, why we generally undervalue our contemporaries, Or hang in white bunches like pearls on a string. and overrate the ancients. Misadventure, as well as mischance and misfortune, is the daughter of misconduct, and sometimes the mother of goodluck, prosperity and advancement. CONSENT to common custom, but not to common folly. TONGUE-the mysterious membrane which turns thought into sound. Drink is its oil, eating its drag-chain. GENEROSITY, wrong placed, becometh a vice; a princely mind will undo a private family. We did not make the world, we may mend it, and must live in it. MAL-INFORMATION is more hopeless than non-information; for error is always more busy than ignorance. THE acquirements of science may be termed the armour of the mind; but that armour would be worse than useless that cost us all we had, and left us nothing to defend. It is to be doubted whether he will ever find the way to heaven, who desires to go thither alone. Do nothing in thy passion; why wilt thou put to sea in the violence of a storm? LET others act as they please; but do thou always act according to the dictates of thy own judgment, and take heed of being self-condemned. WISDOM is generally an acquisition purchased in proportion to the disappointments which our own frailties have entailed upon us; for few are taught by the sufferings of another. NOBLEMAN-one who is indebted to his ancestors for a name and an estate, and sometimes to himself for being unworthy of both. PHYSIOGNOMY-reading the hand-writing of nature upon the human countenance. LET the bent of thy thoughts be to mend thyself, rather than the world. DESPOTISM-allowing a people no other means of escape from oppression, than by the assassination of their oppressor. SOME pleasures, like the horizon, recede perpetually as we advance towards them; others, like butterflies, are crushed by being caught. THE hate which we all bear with the most christian patience is the hate of those who envy us. Printed and Published for the Proprietor, by JOHN OWEN CLARKE, (of No. & CHANCES, CHANGES, AND CHARACTERS, IN as to the form and fashion of her garments, and added AN OLD NEIGHBOURHOOD. to the peculiarity of her appearance by her strange dress. Mr. Dalton never interfered with her domestic arrangements, only stipulating that a small room, he called his study, should never be entered by either of her handmaidens, Belle or Beenie, or her cat Bawdrons, and by herself as rarely as might be. It was a small room looking into a paved court, where flourished a large Crauford pear tree in the centre; and under the window a luxuriant growth of wall-flower, and some straggling mignonette, that sowed themselves among the stones, threw up their fragrant perfume in their respective seasons. There, in his old black leathern chair, sat the good minister, close to the open casement in sum The BIRKENBRAE is a thriving manufacturing town, and as dirty, dull, and noisy, as it is thriving; the houses are well-built enough, but black, and the immediately surrounding country, bleak to a degree. Pale, slender, dissipated-looking young men and women encumber the streets at certain times, and blear-eyed hags, and deformed children abound at all times; however, it is a thriving place for all that, many rich men have risen into mercantile importance from it, and many more are rising. A dull, dark stream, which duly receives all the drainage and dead cats of Birkenbrae, rolls its chocolate-mer, and to the fire in winter, poring over some old coloured liquid-by courtesy called water-through it; and tall chimneys, vomiting smoke, send their blighting influence so far, that all vegetation languishes in its vicinity; but with what Birkenbrae is, I have nothing to do, I am going back full sixty years or more, when it was a very different place. In those days, a long straggling village and several detached farm-houses were scattered up and down the site it now covers; the church steeple then towered above several fine old trees, the stunted remains of some of which yet stand to tell they once flourished there. The manse peeped forth from its clustering apple-orchard, looking as peaceful as its worthy pastor, the Rev. Ebenezer Dalton, who with his halfsister, Miss Mysie Macdragon, the daughter of his mother by a former marriage, dwelt there, dispensing charitable deeds, and kind words, to all who needed them. In the first mentioned occupation, they acted in concert, but Miss Mysie's deeds were kinder than her words, and she deemed it her "duty" she said, "to tak' the flytin' on hersel', for the minister, honest man, liket aye to keep a caum sugh aboot things, an' didna like a din." She was affectionately attached to her brother, kept his house and wardrobe in perfect order upon half his stipend, and never begrudged the other half to the poor; but she seldom, as Belle, her factotum, declared, "gaed a bawbee without a bark, an' mony wad rather want the taen than thole the tither," so bitter were her words. Miss Macdragon was tall and straight, lean in body, strong in mind, and stern in reproof; she was a very plain woman, and she knew it; so that although accurately clean for her own comfort, she was quite careless worm-eaten tome, or transcribing, into large parchment- Bird-nesting boys, and idle girls fled at her approach, and, excepting when any one was really ill, when broths, and jellies, for the time being, replaced reproaches, there was not a matron in the village but would rather see her pass her door than enter it. Their nearest neighbour was Graham of Larix Ha', a small proprietor of easy fortune, and old family, whose wife was Miss Mysie's particular friend, although two people more diametrically opposite to each other, in every respect, could scarcely be conceived; for Lady Larix Ha', as she was universally called, was short, plump, and handsome, homely, hearty, and always ready for a jest, which she sometimes pushed (but that was not uncommon in the times I write of) to the very brink of all we hate; she stopped there, however, which all old ladies did not. "Whawr's the paper?" cried she, one morning, to General Shaw, whom she had observed sometime before reading the newspapers, but who was then standing with his back to the fire, apparently unoccupied. |