does not sketch in any details or personal
adventures from the great fight under the walls of Quebec; he has
fallen back, at this part of the story, into personal narrative, and
_The Warrington Memoirs_ only describe how the news of Wolfe's victory
and death were acclaimed in London. In the War of Independence, George
Warrington, who takes the British side, records the feelings and
situation of an American Loyalist--a class to whom only Mr. Lecky,
among historians, has done fair justice. There is much acute and
well-informed reflection upon the state of the colonies at this time,
the strong currents of party politics, and the exasperation which
brought about the rebellion; but, on the whole, this part of the
narrative has too much resemblance to real history. It has not enough
of the imaginative and picturesque element to lift it above the
comparatively prosaic level of an interesting memoir, though some good
scenes and situations are obtained by making the two Warrington
brothers take opposite sides. When we learn that, in 1759, the English
Lord Castlewood repaired his shattered fortunes by marrying an
American heiress, we are inclined to suspect that our author has taken
a hint from the fashion of a century later.

In the story of _Esmond_ Thackeray dropped the satirical tone, and
indulged very rarely indeed in the habit of pausing to moralise, as
writer to reader, upon social hypocrisy, servile obsequiousness, and
whited sepulchres generally. In _The Virginians_ he is less attentive
to dramatic propriety; he begins again to turn aside and lecture us,
in the midst of his tale, upon the text of _De te fabula narratur_.
Sir Miles and Lady Warrington are scandalised by their nephew's
extravagance, and refuse all help to the spendthrift.

'How much of this behaviour goes on daily in respectable society,
think you? You can fancy Lord and Lady Macbeth concocting a murder,
and coming together with some little awkwardness, perhaps, when the
transaction was done and over; but my Lord and Lady Skinflint, when
they consult in their bedroom about giving their luckless nephew a
helping hand, and determine to refuse, and go down to family
prayers and meet their children and domestics, and discourse
virtuously before them...?'

And so on, for a page or two, in a tone that some may think almost as
sophistical as the reasoning by which the Skinflints might excuse to
themselves their pharisai