and
scene of fierce fighting and carnage; nor does he, like Lever, produce
Wellington and Bonaparte acting or speaking up to the popular
conception of these mighty heroes. He is content to follow his own
personages into that famous field, and to show how perilous
circumstance brings out the force or feebleness of each character,
male and female, whether of the wives left behind at Brussels, or the
soldiers in the fighting line at Waterloo. It is only at the end of
his chapter, after some seriocomic incidents and dialogues exhibiting
the behaviour of the non-combatants--of Jos Sedley, Mrs. O'Dowd, Lady
Bareacres, and the rest--that his narrative rises suddenly to the epic
note in a brief passage full of admirable energy and pathos:

'All our friends took their share and fought like men in the great
field. All day long, whilst the women were praying ten miles away,
the lines of the dauntless English infantry were receiving and
repelling the furious charges of the French horsemen. Guns which
were heard at Brussels were ploughing up their ranks, and comrades
falling, and the resolute survivors closing in. Toward evening the
attack of the French, repeated and resisted so bravely, slackened
in its fury ... they were preparing for a final onset. It came at
last, the columns of the Imperial Guard marched up the hill of St.
Jean.... Unscared by the thunder of the artillery, which hurled
death from the English line, the dark rolling column pressed on and
up the hill. It seemed almost to crest the eminence, when it began
to wave and falter. Then it stopped, still facing the shot. Then at
last the English troops rushed from the post from which no enemy
had been able to dislodge them, and the Guard turned and fled.

'No more firing was heard at Brussels; the pursuit rolled miles
away. Darkness came down on the field and city; and Amelia was
praying for George who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet
through his heart.'

The military critic might pick holes in this description, and
Thackeray might as well have thrown the English infantry into squares
instead of into line. Yet the passage is instinct with compressed
emotion; and the sudden transition from the general battle to the
single death is a good touch of tragic art.

In _Pendennis_ (1850) we may discern the slowly softening influences
of years that bring the philosophic min