time to sift the matter further, for the door of the parlor opened, and in a moment I was grasping by the hand my poor friend, who had, on my arrival being announced to him by the serving-woman, come down

at once to meet me.

Time and sorrow had wrought sad changes in his once noble countenance, and fearfully ravaged the graceful beauty of his once healthful form. I read at a glance, in his hollow cheek and eye, and heard in his cavernous voice, that the destroyer had marked him, and that however successful I might be in my endeavors to recover him from his depression, it could never be for a long enjoyment of his society. I might minister to his diseased mind, but no earthly power could arrest the progress of consumption. I should restore him only to watch at his death-bed. We sat and conversed of old times, for his affliction did not reach his reason, until I was convinced that he was suffering more from general decay than from any organic affection, arising from what cause soever. He grew faint with the effort of speaking, and was obliged to recover himself by intervals of rest. These his mother by her looks to me evidently considered as simple wanderings of his intellect. She encouraged him accordingly to converse, and urged him to partake more of the tea, which was in the meantime brought in by the housekeeper, than he would have desired. She did not appear to be in the least aware of his actual condition. In her manner towards him she mingled none of that gentleness, none of those kind tones which are so soothing to the exhausted nerves of the sick. On the contrary, she appeared quite rough and dictatorial, as though in my coming she had gained a point, and was now securing the attainment of her wishes. Grim and rigid, she sat in her upright chair and doled us out a thin infusion that kept no promise to the taste, meanwhile talking on in the very presence of her wretched son, of schemes and plans which it was plain he was well aware could never be realized. It seemed she was one of those women who have man's desire for control, and that she had been accustomed to assume the entire management of her son; he deferring to her out of long habit, and because he was too affectionate to wish to undeceive her. I

made one or two attempts to check her by exposing her pride and wickedness, but my friend rebuked me with glances which seemed to say, "Let her alone-it will soon be over!"

After tea I went up with him to his chamber. It was a dark old room, with antique presses and chairs, and cold-very cold-one of those rooms which strike upon the senses with a funereal chilliness. We sat upon a faded sofa that stood against the eastern wall, and talked of former days and hopes departed. My own life had not been unchequered by grief, and in endeavoring to probe the rooted sorrow of my friend, I was obliged to go over much which even now I struggle to forget.

But at length I wrung from him his secret. It was, as I suspected, no excess of application that had jangled the harmony of his soul. Ellen-it was she who was the burden of his lamentations-once she was his, and now she was lost forever. Where was she? He had searched the country over for tidings of her; he lad spent days and weeks, and employed the best assistance money could buy. But never since one fatal evening in the May that was past was he able to hear aught concerning her. She was to have been his bride; they had loved long; they had been patient. He had been dutiful, and his mother he thought would have yielded. She had relaxed so far even as to invite Ellen to the house, and had seemed to countenance her efforts to please. On the very evening, she had come up to the mansion with a boquet of flowers from her own garden; he was to have met her here, and they thought then to have joined in asking his mother's consent to their union. But an accident to his horse had delayed him in returning from a neighboring town; Ellen was forced to walk down alone, and that was the last ever seen of her. Was not this enough to make him weary of life? Had she sickened and died, or even been taken away by some sudden and dreadful accident, he could have borne it with fortitude. But now what might she not have undergone? In what secret den of hell might not her beauty be the spoil of ravishers and murderers?

Feeble as he had seemed, while he

AN Anglo-Saxon can appreciate, although he may not altogether admire Gallic wit; but a Gaul is hopelessly incompetent to understand Saxon humor. It is to him what the Teutonic humor is to both Saxon and Gaul, who suppose it must be humorous to the Teuton because he vastly delights in it, but find it, so far as themselves are concerned, dreary in the extreme, and utterly valueless for purposes of amusement. Here is a book which has a brilliant run in England, where its author is acknowledged as one of the first periodical writers; we doubt if any Frenchman could go through it without falling asleep in spite of the pictures. In our own country, where the original Saxon character has become partially Gallicized, the public opinion (setting aside that class of readers, unfortunately too large, who are the willing slaves of the publishers, and feel bound to read and talk about a book because it is advertised by a big house, in big letters, as "Thackeray's Thackeray's Masterpiece,") is about equally divided, some much enjoying "Vanity Fair," others voting it a great bore.

French wit and English humor! We do not mean to expatiate on this oftendiscussed theme, tempting though it be, affording copious opportunity for antitheses more or less false, and distinctions without differences, but shall merely hint at what seems the most natural way to explain this national diversity of taste and appreciation in respect of the two faculties. Wit consists in the expression more than in the matter-it depends very considerably on the words employed and hence the wittiest French sayings are, if not inexpressible, at least inexpressive in English. Under the homely Saxon garb they generally become very stupid or very wicked remarks-not un

frequently both. But an Englishman with a respectable knowledge of French can understand and be amused by French wit, though he will probably not enter into it very heartily. Humor, on the other hand, depends on a particular habit of mind; so that, to enjoy English humor, a Frenchman must not only understand English, but become intellectually Anglicized to a degree that is unnatural to him. In proof of this, it may be noticed that French-educated or French-minded Americans find Thackeray tedious, and (to take a stronger case, where no national prejudice but a favorable one can be at work,) yawn over Washington Irving.

And yet, if we wished to give an idea of Thackeray's writings to a person who had never read them, we should go to France for our first illustration; but it would be to French art, not French literature. No one who has ever been familiar with the pictured representations of Parisian life which embellish that repository of wicked wit, the Charivari -no one who knows Les Lorelles, Les Enfans Terribles, &c., would think of applying to the designs of Gavarni and his brother artists the term caricatures. He would say, "There is no caricature about them; they are life itself." And so it is with Thackeray's writings; they present you with humorous sketches of real life-literal comic pictures-never rising to the ideal or diverging into the grotesque. Thus, while his stories are excellent as a collection of separate sketches, they have but moderate merit as stories, nor are his single characters great as single characters. Becky Sharpe is the only one that can be called a firstrate hit; for "Chawls Yellowplush" is characterized chiefly by his ludicrous spelling, and his mantle fits "Jeemes"

just as well. And just as Gavarni differs | from and is inferior to Hogarth, should we say Thackeray differs from and is inferior to Dickens, a writer with whom he is sometimes compared, and to whom he undoubtedly has some points of resemblance, though he cannot with any propriety be called "of the Dickens school," or "an imitator of Dickens," any more than Gavarni could be called an imitator of Hogarth.

Thackeray has his points of contact, also, with another great humorous writer, Washington Irving. Very gracefully and prettily does Mr. Titmarsh write at times; there is many a little bit, here and there, in the "Journey from Cornhill to Cairo,' that would not disgrace Geoffrey Crayon in his best mood. But his geniality is not so genuine, or so continuous. Not that there is anything affected about his mirth -he is one of the most natural of modern English writers: Cobbett or Sidney Smith could hardly be more so; but it is dashed with stronger ingredients. Instead of welling up with perennial jollity, like our most good-humored of humorous authors, he is evidently a little blaze, and somewhat disposed to be cynical.

To compare Thackeray with Dickens and Irving, most of our readers will think paying him a high compliment, but we are not at all sure that his set would be particularly obliged to us; for it is the fortune-good in some respects, evil in others of Mr. Titmarsh to be one of a set. But wherever there are literary men there will be sets; and those who have been bored and disgusted by the impertinence and nonsense of stupid cliques will be charitable to the occasional conceits of clever ones. Having had some happy experience of that literary society which is carried to greater perfection in England than in any other country, we can pardon the amiable cockneyism with which Michael Angelo's thoughts revert to his Club even amid the finest scenery of other lands, and the semi-ludicrous earnestness with which he dwells on the circumstance of your name being posted among the "members deceased, as if that were the most awful and striking circumstance attendant on dissolution. And, inasmuch as all his books are really books to be read, we can excuse the quiet way in

which he assumes that you have read them all, and alludes, as a matter of course, to the Hon. Algernon Deuceace and the Earl of Crabs, and such ideal personages, much after the manner of that precious Balzac who interweaves the same characters throughout the half-hundred or more volumes which compose his panorama of Parisian society-a society in which, as Macauley says of another school, "the women are like very bad men, and the men too bad for anything."

This mention of Balzac brings to mind a more serious charge than that of occasional conceit or affectation which we have more than once heard urged against our author; namely, that his sketches contain too many disagreeable characters. A queer charge this to come from a reading generation which swallows copious illustrated editions of Les Mystères and Le Juif, and is lenient to the loathsome vulgarities of Wuthering Heights and Wildfell Hall. But let us draw a distinction or "discriminate a difference," as a transcendentalist acquaintance of ours used to say. If a story is written for mere purposes of amusement, there certainly ought not to be more disagreeable characters introduced than are absolutely neces sary for relief and contrast. But the moral and end of a story may often compel the author to bring before us a great number of unpleasant people. In a former volume of this Review the opinion was pretty broadly stated that no eminent novelist writes merely for amusement without some ulterior aim; most decidedly Thackery does not at any rate. We shall have occasion to refer to this more than once, for it is doing vast injustice to Mr. T. to regard him merely as a provider of temporary fun. He does introduce us to many scamps, and profligates, and hypocrites, but it is to show them up and put us on our guard against them. His bad people are evidently and unmistakably bad; we hate them, and he hates them, too, and doesn't try to make us fall in love with them, like the philosophers of the "Centre of Civilization," who dish you up seraphic poisoners and chaste adulteresses in a way that perplexes and confounds all established ideas of morality. And if he ever does bestow attractive traits on his rogues, it is to expose the worthlessness and emptiness