ral and efficacious; but in a larger work of
fiction they cause an absence of that dignity to which even a novel may
aspire. You feel that each morsel as you read it is a detached bit, and
that it has all been written in detachments. The book is robbed of its
integrity by a certain good-humoured geniality of language, which causes
the reader to be almost too much at home with his author. There is a
saying that familiarity breeds contempt, and I have been sometimes
inclined to think that our author has sometimes failed to stand up for
himself with sufficiency of "personal deportment."

In other respects Thackeray's style is excellent. As I have said before,
the reader always understands his words without an effort, and receives
all that the author has to give.

There now remains to be discussed the matter of our author's work. The
manner and the style are but the natural wrappings in which the goods
have been prepared for the market. Of these goods it is no doubt true
that unless the wrappings be in some degree meritorious the article will
not be accepted at all; but it is the kernel which we seek, which, if it
be not of itself sweet and digestible, cannot be made serviceable by any
shell however pretty or easy to be cracked. I have said previously that
it is the business of a novel to instruct in morals and to amuse. I will
go further, and will add, having been for many years a most prolific
writer of novels myself, that I regard him who can put himself into
close communication with young people year after year without making
some attempt to do them good, as a very sorry fellow indeed. However
poor your matter may be, however near you may come to that "foolishest
of existing mortals," as Carlyle presumes some unfortunate novelist to
be, still, if there be those who read your works, they will undoubtedly
be more or less influenced by what they find there. And it is because
the novelist amuses that he is thus influential. The sermon too often
has no such effect, because it is applied with the declared intention of
having it. The palpable and overt dose the child rejects; but that which
is cunningly insinuated by the aid of jam or honey is accepted
unconsciously, and goes on upon its curative mission. So it is with the
novel. It is taken because of its jam and honey. But, unlike the honest
simple jam and honey of the household cupboard, it is never unmixed with
physic. There will be the dose within it, either curative or p