y sure
that our girls do not hide their novels. The more freely they are
allowed, the more necessary is it that he who supplies shall take care
that they are worthy of the trust that is given to them.

Now let the reader ask himself what are the lessons which Thackeray has
taught. Let him send his memory running back over all those characters
of whom we have just been speaking, and ask himself whether any girl has
been taught to be immodest, or any man unmanly, by what Thackeray has
written. A novelist has two modes of teaching,--by good example or bad.
It is not to be supposed that because the person treated of be evil,
therefore the precept will be evil. If so, some personages with whom we
have been made well acquainted from our youth upwards, would have been
omitted in our early lessons. It may be a question whether the teaching
is not more efficacious which comes from the evil example. What story
was ever more powerful in showing the beauty of feminine reticence, and
the horrors of feminine evil-doing, than the fate of Effie Deans? The
Templar would have betrayed a woman to his lust, but has not encouraged
others by the freedom of his life. Varney was utterly bad,--but though a
gay courtier, he has enticed no others to go the way that he went. So
it has been with Thackeray. His examples have been generally of that
kind,--but they have all been efficacious in their teaching on the side
of modesty and manliness, truth and simplicity. When some girl shall
have traced from first to last the character of Beatrix, what, let us
ask, will be the result on her mind? Beatrix was born noble, clever,
beautiful, with certain material advantages, which it was within her
compass to improve by her nobility, wit, and beauty. She was quite alive
to that fact, and thought of those material advantages, to the utter
exclusion, in our mind, of any idea of moral goodness. She realised it
all, and told herself that that was the game she would play.
"Twenty-five!" says she; "and in eight years no man has ever touched my
heart!" That is her boast when she is about to be married,--her only
boast of herself. "A most detestable young woman!" some will say. "An
awful example!" others will add. Not a doubt of it. She proves the
misery of her own career so fully that no one will follow it. The
example is so awful that it will surely deter. The girl will declare to
herself that not in that way will she look for the happiness which she
hopes to enjo