h a rose-
coloured medium: Thackeray, on the other hand, shows you life _as it
is_. He takes you behind the scenes and lets you perceive for yourself
how the `dummies' and machinery are managed, how rough the distemper
painting, all beauty from the front of `the house,' looks on nearer
inspection, how the `lifts' work, and the `flats' are pushed on; besides
disclosing all the secrets connected with masks and `properties.' He is
not content in merely allowing you to witness the piece from before the
curtain, in the full glory of that distance from the place of action
which lends enchantment to the view, and with all the deceptive
concomitants of music and limelights and Bengal fire! To adopt another
illustration, I should say that Dickens was the John Leech of fictional
literature, Thackeray its Hogarth. Even Jerrold, I think, in his most
bitter, cynical moods, was truer to life and nature than Dickens. Did
you ever read the former's _Story of a Feather_, by the way?"

"No," answered Mawley, testily, "I can't say I ever did; and I don't
think it likely I ever will."

"Well, I dare say you are quite right, Frank," said the kindly voice of
my usual ally little Miss Pimpernell, interposing just at the right
time--as she always did, indeed--to throw oil on the troubled waters.
"But, still, I like Dickens the best. Do you know, children," she went
on, looking round, as we all sat watching her dear old wrinkled face
beaming cheerily on us through her spectacles, "do you know, children,
I've no doubt you'll laugh at me for telling you, but, when I first read
`David Copperfield'--and I was an old woman then--I cried my eyes out
over the account of the death of poor Dora's little dog Gyp. Dear
little fellow! Don't you recollect how he crawled out of his tiny
Chinese pagoda house, and licked his master's hand and died? I think
it's the most affecting thing in fiction I ever read in my life."

"And I, too, dear Miss Pimpernell," said Min, in her soft, low voice,
which had a slight tremor as she spoke, and there was a misty look in
her clear grey eyes--silent witnesses of the emotion that stirred her
heart. "I shed more tears over poor Gyp than I can bear to think of
now--except when I cried over little Tiny Tim, in the `Christmas Carol,'
where, you remember, the spirit told Uncle Scrooge that the cripple boy
would die. That affected me equally, I believe; and I could not read it
dry-eyed now."

"Nor I," lisped Baby B