ch we do not
expect to have done for us in literature because they are done so
seldom. Novelists are apt to describe the rural scenes among which their
characters play their parts, but seldom leave any impression of the
places described. Even in poetry how often does this occur? The words
used are pretty, well chosen, perhaps musical to the ear, and in that
way befitting; but unless the spot has violent characteristics of its
own, such as Burley's cave or the waterfall of Lodore, no striking
portrait is left. Nor are we disappointed as we read, because we have
not been taught to expect it to be otherwise. So it is with those
word-painted portraits of women, which are so frequently given and so
seldom convey any impression. Who has an idea of the outside look of
Sophia Western, or Edith Bellenden, or even of Imogen, though
Iachimo, who described her, was so good at words? A series of
pictures,--illustrations,--as we have with Dickens' novels, and with
Thackeray's, may leave an impression of a figure,--though even then not
often of feminine beauty. But in this work Thackeray has succeeded in
imbuing us with a sense of the outside loveliness of Beatrix by the mere
force of words. We are not only told it, but we feel that she was such a
one as a man cannot fail to covet, even when his judgment goes against
his choice.

Here the judgment goes altogether against the choice. The girl grows up
before us from her early youth till her twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth
year, and becomes,--such as her mother described her,--one whose
headlong will, whose jealousy, and whose vanity nothing could restrain.
She has none of those soft foibles, half allied to virtues, by which
weak women fall away into misery or perhaps distraction. She does not
want to love or to be loved. She does not care to be fondled. She has no
longing for caresses. She wants to be admired,--and to make use of the
admiration she shall achieve for the material purposes of her life. She
wishes to rise in the world; and her beauty is the sword with which she
must open her oyster. As to her heart, it is a thing of which she
becomes aware, only to assure herself that it must be laid aside and
put out of the question. Now and again Esmond touches it. She just
feels that she has a heart to be touched. But she never has a doubt as
to her conduct in that respect. She will not allow her dreams of
ambition to be disturbed by such folly as love.

In all that there might be somet