Newcome? Ethel is not Beatrice, yet she is little better than a proper nineteenth century development of that all-conquering beauty. For our own part, we confess to being in the most perfect bewilderment as to the conclusion of the loves of these cousins, whose fate Mr Thackeray has yet to seal. Though the Bumbelcund bank confers a fortune on Clive, will it confer upon Ethel suitable dispositions to make the young gentleman happy? or is it consistent with the dignity of Mr Clive Newcome to be accepted as a pis aller? or must Clive marry Rosey after all, and sink down into humdrum domestic happiness, and leave the brilliant star for which he sighed to sparkle into a still brighter firmament, or to shoot and fall into the unfathomable darkness which swallowed Beatrice? We flatter ourselves that, in twenty years' experience of novel-reading, we have attained to as clear a prescience of a denouement as most people; but Mr Thackeray, with his tantalising interviews, and all his hints of the future, puzzles and outwits our ordinary penetration. While the conclusion is not as yet, and everything is possible, we do not even find ourselves in a position to advise Mr Thackeray; we can but assure him honestly, that we see no outlet for him, though we expect he is to make himself a brilliant one. If Clive marries Ethel, how shall we vindicate the dignity of these young people, who cannot marry each other without a mutual sacrifice of pride and propriety; and if Clive marries Rosey, alas for Clive! Solemnly assuring Mr Thackeray of this dilemma, we leave him to make the best of it, only warning him of a storm of universal dissatisfaction if Clive marries no one at all—a miserable expedient, to which, we fear, we should be driven were the conclusion of the Newcomes left to our inventive powers.

There is no book of Mr Thackeray which is so worthy of a great reputation as this uncompleted story. As full of character as its predecessors, it redeems their errors gallantly; and we could almost fancy that, in the scorn of genius for that accusation which pronounced him unable to manage the ideal, Mr Thackeray has

showered a glory of manliness and goodness upon the inhabitants of this little world. There has never been a nobler sketch than that of the Colonel. The innocent heart and simple honour of this old man, and his horror of all falsehood and impurity, are enough to cover a multitude of Mr Thackeray's sins. We can understand how every individual worth caring for in the story or out of it rejoices to gain the acquaintance of Thomas Newcome. We are grateful to Lady Anne, and like her ever after, for her true apprehension of our Colonel's courtly manners, and oldfashioned chivalrous politeness. We are as ready to adopt him into our heart as Mr Pendennis and Mr Warrington can be; and Ethel herself gains an additional attraction when we see her beautiful eyes shining with pride for her noble old uncle. The key-note of the story is struck high and sweet in this character, which is at once so lofty and so childlike; and we cannot pass it by without once more admiring Mr Thackeray's skill in the retrospective story-the record of Thomas Newcome's misfortunes and troubles in his boyhood, which is almost as well done as the corre sponding period in the history of Henry Esmond.

It is not easy to thread at a glance the lively maze of Mr Thackeray's story-to tell how pretty Ethel is engaged to Lord Kew by family arrangement, and how the young lady filches a green ticket from the Suffolk Street Gallery, with Sold upon it, and comes down to dinner wearing this label, like a wilful and rebellious young lady as she is; nor how good Colonel Newcome, whose great ambition it was to marry Clive to Ethel, and be a happy man in his old age, is balked by this engagement, and goes away sadly to India, to grow rich, if he can, for his dear boy's sake; how Clive is a painter, and varies between ostentation of his art and the least morsel of shame for being engaged in it; how he makes a brave effort, and tears himself away from Ethel, and has almost got the better of his passion; how, of a sudden, the spirit of his dream is changed by hearing that Lord Kew and Ethel have broken off their engagement, at the first intimation of which poor

young Clive finds out that he has not forgotten her, and comes home posthaste to try his hopeless chance once more; how there is a most noble Marquis of Ferintosh in the field before him; how the hero and the heroine have little sparring-matches of courtship, but never come any nearer a conclusion; and how last month brings us to the climax of a farewell, which we, for our own part, have no faith in. Ethel Newcome, like Beatrice, is sometimes intoxicated with her own beauty, and the applauses it brings sometimes carried off her balance with the afflatus of conquest and victory; but Ethel, we are glad to say, is much improved from her forerunner, and is a much less hopeless character than the beautiful tormentor of Harry Esmond. Is Ethel to consume what remnants are left to her of that fresh girl's heart she had when we first knew her-when she first fell in love with her good uncle-and be a great lady, and blaze her youthful days away in barren splendour? She likes being a great lady, you perceive-such a being was not born for love in a cottage, or for Clive's five hundred a-year, and odd position. Has Mr Thackeray prepared this beautiful victim for Moloch, or is there hope for Ethel still? The oracle preserves inexorable silence, and smiles upon our queries. We are quite as curious as you are, young lady; but we venture to predict that Miss Ethel Newcome, even though Mr Thackeray may have compunctions on her behalf, can never "settle down" to romantic happiness. She will have to fulfil her destiny, and marry a most noble marquis. She is surely not for Clive the painter, whether he is to be made a Crossus or a beggar, by means of umbelcund

demand made upon Clive's goodness throughout the story; yet we are quite content with him, and willing to believe that he will be equal to an emergency when it comes. We cannot refrain from making one quotation to illustrate the character of Clive, and the quality which, of all other qualities, Mr Thackeray expounds best. Clive is talking to his father:

"At Newcome, when they go on about the Newcomes, and that great ass, Barnes ready to die of laughing. That time I Newcome, gives himself his airs, I am went down to Newcome, I went to see old Aunt Sarah, and she told me everything, and showed me the room where my grandfather-you know; and do you know, I was a little hurt at first, for I thought we were swells till then. And when I came back to school, where, perhaps, I had been giving myself airs, and bragging about Newcome, why, you know, I thought it was right to tell the fellows." "That's a man,' said the Colonel with delight; though, had he said, 'That's a boy, he had spoken more correctly."

This is a very delicate touch, and shows the hand of a master. Mr Thackeray's young hero, who is so honest and truthful in his boyish days, does not degenerate as he grows a man.

Lord Kew, too, simple, noble, and manful, is a further example of Mr Thackeray's most felicitous vein. These young men, who have no great intellectual elevation, and whose rank only makes them perfectly humble, unpretending, and free of all temptations to exaggerate themselves, seem characters on whom our author dwells con amore. Then there is the Vicomte de Florac, with his amusing French English, and his middle-aged princess, and that witch and malignant fairy, old Lady Kew, and Barnes Newcome the disagreeable, and the various family circles of this most respectable kindred, with all their nicely-touched gradations of character. There is no mist in this book; every one is an individual, pleasant or otherwise, and detaches himself or herself clearly from the background. The story is not in very good order, broken up as it is by retrospections and anticipations; and it is not good taste of Mr Pendennis to appear so frequently before the curtain, and remind us un

pleasantly that it is fiction we are attending to, and not reality; but we think the great mass of his readers will bear us out in our opinion, that the Newcomes is not only the most agreeable story, but the cleverest book which Mr Thackeray has yet contribated for the amusement and edifica tion of the admiring public.

When all this is said, there still remains a great deal to say which is less complimentary to our novelist. It is not, perhaps, the most agreeable in formation in the world to understand that our innocent schoolboys must plunge into a very equivocal abyss of "pleasure," before they can come forth purged and renovated like Lord Kew. We are not very glad to hear that somebody could make revelations to us of our brothers and sons and fathers, such as the Duchesse d'Ivry did to Miss Ethel Newcome. We cannot acknowledge that between the innocence of youth and the goodness of matured life, there lies a land of darkness through which every man must pass; nor do we perceive the advantage of convincing Mr Thackeray's youthful audience that this is a necessity. The religious circles of our community have of late very much devoted themselves to that class of "young men" for whom so many lectures, and sermons, and "means of improvement," are provided. We are not quite sure of the wisdom of thus making into a class the exuberant young life, which is, in fact, the world. When boys have ceased to be boys, they become human creatures of the highest order of existence. It is no compliment to their discernment to prepare for them mental food which is not suitable for their fathers or their teachers. They are men, with a larger inheritance of hope than their seniors; but their pride is not to be piqued into rebellion, by thrusting them into a half-way position between the man and the boy. But Mr Thackeray has a natural vocation in respect to his youthful countrymen. If he should happen, in fact, to be a grandfather, in disposition he is a young man continually-it is the life and pursuits of young men in which he is most skilled. Manliness, truthfulness, honour, and courage, are the qualities which he celebrates;

and though Mr Thackeray is a favourite in countless households, it is not to be disputed that his stronghold is among those whose portraits he draws so truthfully, and whose life he describes with so much zest. Now here is scope and verge enough for any amount of genius; but surely it is not advisable that our teacher should lead his pupils to great harm on the way to great good. Is not that the loftiest purity which does not find it needful to fall?

We are afraid Mr Thackeray is beyond the reach of advice in respect to his female characters. Ethel is very attractive, very brilliant; but we would rather not have our daughters resemble this young lady, it must be confessed; and poor pretty Rosey, with all her goodness, is nobody, and Mr Thackeray intends that she should be so. If this is not good morals, it is still less good art. Providence has exempted woman from the grosser temptations, and romance has gifted her with a more ethereal life. If we do not bid Mr Thackeray create a woman of the highest order, or if we are doubtful of his capacity for this delicate formation, we may still beg him to add a little common-sense to his feminine goodness. When these tender pretty fools are rational creatures, the world of Mr Thackeray's imagination will have a better atmosphere; for besides marrying, and contriving opportunities to give in marriage, besides the nursery and its necessities, there are certain uses for womankind in this world of ours, and we are not so rich in good influences as to forfeit any of them. A coronet is certainly not an idol the worship of which gives much elevation to the spirits of its adorers; but when Lord Kew is so little ostentatious of his decoration, why should Ethel, and her friends for her, compass heaven and earth to obtain such another? Does not Mr Thackeray think this is too hackneyed a subject for his fresh and unexhausted invention? Might not the next Ethel do something better by way of novelty, and leave this field to Mrs Gore and Mrs Trollope, and the host of lesser ladies who devote their talents to the noble art of making matches?

We are not sure how far the Eng

lish language will be benefited by the dialogues of Mr Thackeray; they are very clever, very entertaining, and their slang is admirable; but it is very doubtful if it, will be an advantage to make these Islands no better than a broad margin for the witticisms and the dialect of Cockaigne. Our light literature begins to have a great savour of the Cockney in it. Our noble ally on the other side of the Channel does not seem so much the better of making Paris France, that we should repeat the experiment. London is the greatest town in existence, but it is not England, though the dialect of its many vagabonds seems in a fair way for becoming the classic English of our generation. Mr Thackeray's narrative is so pure and vigorous in its language, and his colloquial freedoms are so lively and` entertaining, that there are no real exceptions to be taken to him; but every Thackeray and every Dickens has a host of imitators, and it is not an agreeable prospect to contemplate the English of Shakespeare and Bacon overwhelmed with a flood of Cockneyisms a consummation which seems to approach more nearly every day.

Mr Thackeray is no poet; for one of the highest of the poet's vocations, and perhaps the noblest work of which genius is capable, is to embody the purest ideal soul in the most lifelike human garments; and this is an

effort which our author has not yet attempted. Perhaps the title which Mr Thackeray would rather choose for himself would be that of an historian of human nature. In his sphere he is so eminently. Human nature in its company dress, and with all its foibles on, is the subject he delights to treat of; but Mr Thackcray is not great in home scenes, where the conventional dress is off, and the good that is in a man expands under the cheerful glow of the domestic fire. Mr Thackeray does not drape his hero in the purple, or make pictures of him as he walks loftily among suffering men; but takes him to pieces with wicked mirth, calling upon all men to laugh with him at the idol's demolition. We are no advocates for idol or for hero worship; but when we remember that there was once in this world a Man who was at once divine and human, whom we are all encouraged to make our example, and following whose wonderful footsteps some have attained to a life grander than that of common humanity, we feel that the highest ideal of the poets is but a fit and seemly acknowledgment of the excellence which has been made possible to our favoured race; and that the circle of life and manners is not complete, till we have admitted into it the loftiest as well as the lowest example of human existence-the saint no less than the sin

ner.