rence of his loose conduct. This is, as Colonel
Newcome properly points out, the great and obvious blot upon the story,
which no critics have missed, and we cannot even follow the leniency of
Coleridge, who thinks that a single passage introduced to express
Fielding's real judgment would have remedied the mischief. It is too
obvious to be denied without sophistry that Tom, though he has many good
feelings, and can preach very edifying sermons to his less scrupulous
friend Nightingale, requires to be cast in a different mould. His whole
character should have been strung to a higher pitch to make us feel that
such degradation would not merely have required punishment to restore
his self-complacency, but have left a craving for some thorough moral
ablution.

Granting unreservedly all that may be urged upon this point, we may
still agree with the judgment pronounced by the most congenial critics.
Fielding's pages reek too strongly of tobacco; they are apt to turn
delicate stomachs; but the atmosphere is, on the whole, healthy and
bracing. No man can read them without prejudice and fail to recognise
the fact that he has been in contact with something much higher than a
'good buffalo.' He has learnt to know a man, not merely full of animal
vigour, not merely stored with various experience of men and manners,
but also in the main sound and unpoisoned by the mephitic vapours which
poisoned the atmosphere of his police-office. If the scorn of hypocrisy
is too fully emphasised, and the sensitiveness to ugly and revolting
objects too much deadened by a rough life, yet nobody could be more
heartily convinced of the beauty and value of those solid domestic
instincts on which human happiness must chiefly depend. Put Fielding
beside the modern would-be satirists who make society--especially French
society[17]--a mere sink of nastiness, or beside the more virtuous
persons whose favourite affectation is simplicity, and who labour most
spasmodically to be masculine, and his native vigour, his massive
common-sense, his wholesome views of men and manners, stand out in solid
relief. Certainly he was limited in perception, and not so elevated in
tone as might be desired; but he is a fitting representative of the
stalwart vigour and the intellectual shrewdness evident in the best men
of his time. The English domestic life of the period was certainly far
from blameless, and anything but refined; but if we have gained in some
ways, we are hardl