g that he hears the rattling of dice, makes his way into Pen's
room, Pen and his two companions are found with three _Homers_ before
them, and Pen asks the tutor with great gravity; "What was the present
condition of the river Scamander, and whether it was navigable or no?"
He tells his mother that, during a certain vacation he must stay up and
read, instead of coming home,--but, nevertheless, he goes up to London
to amuse himself. The reader is soon made to understand that, though Pen
may be a fine gentleman, he is not trustworthy. But he repents and comes
home, and kisses his mother; only, alas! he will always be kissing
somebody else also.

The story of the Amorys and the Claverings, and that wonderful French
cook M. Alcide Mirobolant, forms one of those delightful digressions
which Thackeray scatters through his novels rather than weaves into
them. They generally have but little to do with the story itself, and
are brought in only as giving scope for some incident to the real hero
or heroine. But in this digression Pen is very much concerned indeed,
for he is brought to the very verge of matrimony with that peculiarly
disagreeable lady Miss Amory. He does escape at last, but only within a
few pages of the end, when we are made unhappy by the lady's victory
over that poor young sinner Foker, with whom we have all come to
sympathise, in spite of his vulgarity and fast propensities. She would
to the last fain have married Pen, in whom she believes, thinking that
he would make a name for her. "Il me faut des emotions," says Blanche.
Whereupon the author, as he leaves her, explains the nature of this Miss
Amory's feelings. "For this young lady was not able to carry out any
emotion to the full, but had a sham enthusiasm, a sham hatred, a sham
love, a sham taste, a sham grief; each of which flared and shone very
vehemently for an instant, but subsided and gave place to the next sham
emotion." Thackeray, when he drew this portrait, must certainly have
had some special young lady in his view. But though we are made unhappy
for Foker, Foker too escapes at last, and Blanche, with her emotions,
marries that very doubtful nobleman Comte Montmorenci de Valentinois.

But all this of Miss Amory is but an episode. The purport of the story
is the way in which the hero is made to enter upon the world, subject as
he has been to the sweet teaching of his mother, and subject as he is
made to be to the worldly lessons of his old uncle the