more despicable in our eyes
than the decided villain. There are the irretrievably wretched
education, and the unquenchably manly instincts, both contending in the
confirmed _roue_, which melt us to the tenderest pity. There is the
selfishness and self-will which the possessor of great wealth and
fawning relations can hardly avoid. There is the vanity and fear of the
world, which assist mysteriously with pious principles in keeping a man
respectable; there are combinations of this kind of every imaginable
human form and colour, redeemed but feebly by the steady excellence of
an awkward man, and the genuine heart of a vulgar woman, till we feel
inclined to tax Mr. Thackeray with an under estimate of our nature,
forgetting that Madame de Stael is right after all, and that without a
little conventional rouge no human conplexion can stand the stage-lights
of fiction.

But if these performers give us pain, we are not ashamed to own, as we
are speaking openly, that the chief actress herself gives us none at
all. For there is of course a principal pilgrim in Vanity Fair, as much
as in its emblematical original, Bunyan's "Progress"; only unfortunately
this one is travelling the wrong way. And we say "unfortunately" merely
by way of courtesy, for in reality we care little about the matter. No,
Becky--our hearts neither bleed for you, nor cry out against you. You
are wonderfully clever, and amusing, and accomplished, and intelligent,
and the Soho _ateliers_ were not the best nurseries for a moral
training; and you were married early in life to a regular blackleg, and
you have had to live upon your wits ever since, which is not an
improving sort of maintenance; and there is much to be said for and
against; but still you are not one of us, and there is an end to our
sympathies and censures. People who allow their feelings to be lacerated
by such a character and career as yours, are doing both you and
themselves great injustice. No author could have openly introduced a
near connexion of Satan's into the best London society, nor would the
moral end intended have been answered by it; but really and honestly,
considering Becky in her human character, we know of none which so
thoroughly satisfies our highest _beau ideal_ of feminine wickedness,
with so slight a shock to our feelings and properties. It is very
dreadful, doubtless, that Becky neither loved the husband who loved her,
nor the child of her own flesh and blood, nor indeed any