y of _Esmond_, leaving with it, as does all Thackeray's
work, a melancholy conviction of the vanity of all things human.
_Vanitas vanitatum_, as he wrote on the pages of the French lady's
album, and again in one of the earlier numbers of _The Cornhill
Magazine_. With much that is picturesque, much that is droll, much that
is valuable as being a correct picture of the period selected, the gist
of the book is melancholy throughout. It ends with the promise of
happiness to come, but that is contained merely in a concluding
paragraph. The one woman, during the course of the story, becomes a
widow, with a living love in which she has no hope, with children for
whom her fears are almost stronger than her affection, who never can
rally herself to happiness for a moment. The other, with all her beauty
and all her brilliance, becomes what we have described,--and marries at
last her brother's tutor, who becomes a bishop by means of her
intrigues. Esmond, the hero, who is compounded of all good gifts, after
a childhood and youth tinged throughout with melancholy, vanishes from
us, with the promise that he is to be rewarded by the hand of the mother
of the girl he has loved.

And yet there is not a page in the book over which a thoughtful reader
cannot pause with delight. The nature in it is true nature. Given a
story thus sad, and persons thus situated, and it is thus that the
details would follow each other, and thus that the people would conduct
themselves. It was the tone of Thackeray's mind to turn away from the
prospect of things joyful, and to see,--or believe that he saw,--in all
human affairs, the seed of something base, of something which would be
antagonistic to true contentment. All his snobs, and all his fools, and
all his knaves, come from the same conviction. Is it not the doctrine on
which our religion is founded,--though the sadness of it there is
alleviated by the doubtful promise of a heaven?

Though thrice a thousand years are passed
Since David's son, the sad and splendid,
The weary king ecclesiast
Upon his awful tablets penned it.

So it was that Thackeray preached his sermon. But melancholy though it
be, the lesson taught in _Esmond_ is salutary from beginning to end. The
sermon truly preached is that glory can only come from that which is
truly glorious, and that the results of meanness end always in the mean.
No girl will be taught to wish to shine like Beatrix, nor will any youth