pular. It is a remarkable picture of a thoroughly hard, selfish
woman whom even motherhood did not soften; but it is something more
than the chronicle of Becky Sharp's fortunes. It is a panoramic sketch
of many phases of London life; it is the free giving out by a great
master of fiction of his impressions of life. Hence _Vanity Fair_
alone is worth a hundred books filled merely with exciting adventures,
which do not make the reader think. The problems that Thackeray
presents in his masterpiece are those of love, duty, self-sacrifice;
of high aims and many temptations to fall below those aspirations; of
sordid, selfish life, and of fine, noble, generous souls who light up
the world and make it richer by their presence.

Thackeray, in _Vanity Fair_, has sixty characters, yet each is drawn
sharply and clearly, and the whole story moves on with the ease of
real life. Consummate art is shown in the painting of Becky's gradual
rise to power and the great scene at the climax of her success, when
Rawdon Crawley strikes down the Marquis of Steyne, is one of the
finest in all fiction. Though Becky knows that this blow shatters her
social edifice, she is still woman enough to admire her husband in the
very act that marks the beginning of the decadence of her fortunes.
_Vanity Fair_, read carefully a half-dozen times, is a liberal
education in life and in the art of the novelist.

Personally, I rank _Pendennis_ next to _Vanity Fair_ for the pleasure
to be derived from it. From the time when the old Major receives the
letter from his sister telling of young Arthur's infatuation for the
cheap actress, Miss Fotheringay, the story carries one along in the
leisurely way of the last century. All the people are a delight, from
Captain Costigan to Fowker, and from the French chef, who went to the
piano for stimulus in his culinary work, to Blanche Amory and her
amazing French affectations. But _Pendennis_ is not popular.

Nor is _Henry Esmond_ popular, although it is worthy to rank with _The
Cloister and the Hearth_, _Adam Bede_ and _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_.
There is little relief of humor in _Esmond_, but the story has a
strong appeal to any sympathetic reader, and it is the one supreme
achievement in all fiction in which the hero tells his own story.
Thackeray's art is flawless in this tale, and it sometimes rises to
great heights, as in the scenes following the death of Lord
Castlewood, the exposure of the Prince's perfidy, the se