Coventry Island, is
admirably calculated for the post." The reader, however, is aware that
the officer in question cannot write a sentence or speak two words
correctly.

Our heroine's adventures are carried on much further, but they cannot be
given here in detail. To the end she is the same,--utterly false,
selfish, covetous, and successful. To have made such a woman really in
love would have been a mistake. Her husband she likes best,--because he
is, or was, her own. But there is no man so foul, so wicked, so
unattractive, but that she can fawn over him for money and jewels. There
are women to whom nothing is nasty, either in person, language, scenes,
actions, or principle,--and Becky is one of them; and yet she is herself
attractive. A most wonderful sketch, for the perpetration of which all
Thackeray's power of combined indignation and humour was necessary!

The story of Amelia and her two lovers, George Osborne and Captain, or
as he came afterwards to be, Major, and Colonel Dobbin, is less
interesting, simply because goodness and eulogy are less exciting than
wickedness and censure. Amelia is a true, honest-hearted, thoroughly
English young woman, who loves her love because he is grand,--to her
eyes,--and loving him, loves him with all her heart. Readers have said
that she is silly, only because she is not heroic. I do not know that
she is more silly than many young ladies whom we who are old have loved
in our youth, or than those whom our sons are loving at the present
time. Readers complain of Amelia because she is absolutely true to
nature. There are no Raffaellistic touches, no added graces, no divine
romance. She is feminine all over, and British,--loving, true,
thoroughly unselfish, yet with a taste for having things comfortable,
forgiving, quite capable of jealousy, but prone to be appeased at once,
at the first kiss; quite convinced that her lover, her husband, her
children are the people in all the world to whom the greatest
consideration is due. Such a one is sure to be the dupe of a Becky
Sharp, should a Becky Sharp come in her way,--as is the case with so
many sweet Amelias whom we have known. But in a matter of love she is
sound enough and sensible enough,--and she is as true as steel. I know
no trait in Amelia which a man would be ashamed to find in his own
daughter.

She marries her George Osborne, who, to tell the truth of him, is but a
poor kind of fellow, though he is a brave soldier. He thinks