his portals on nights of reception; but only as a distinguished leader of the world of fashion would he have been known—not as the greatest of living novelists, the poet, and the philosopher." We quote from memory, but most of our readers must have remembered passages as fulsome and ridiculous as the above in our public journals. Those who did not make their apologies for old neglect and abuse to the satirist, on the ground of not knowing that he was a gentleman "by birth," justified their former severity and subsequent softening, by avowing that the author had. altered very much, that "Pendennis" and "Esmond" gave indications of benevolence and true humanity not to be found in "Vanity Fair," and that the creator of Colonel Newcome, was not the same man as he who placed old Sir Pitt Crawley and Miss Horrocks upon canvass; possibly the sun of prosperity had called into play a geniality of temper, which the cold chill of neglect and comparative penury had for a time repressed.

But it is needless to enumerate all the many amusing ways in which the world ate its words, and preserved its self-complacency. The recantation was made, and Mr. Thackeray is the favourite author of the day in the world of fashion. He is triumphant. There can be no doubt that just now he is regarded in some classes as having surpassed his great contemporary Charles Dickens. In our own minds also there is no doubt that ere long those admirers will reverse their decision, and will again return to their old allegiance to "Boz." We do not like to compare two such men as Thackeray and Dickens; but the remarks we have already made necessitate our doing so. For the genius of Charles Dickens, so varied, of such boundless resource, and so rich in almost every great poetic quality, we have a far higher esteem than we have for Thackeray's; as artists they are totally opposed, save that a warm heart animates every line they pen; the one

has never drawn a character that is not an ideal; the other cautiously avoids crossing the limits of the actual. If Dickens had a bad heart, and his moral aim as a writer was just the reverse of what it is, his humour and imaginative powers would still secure him the high rank he holds in our literature. But Thackeray's success is almost solely owing to his moral influence. Much as we respect his intellectual powers, we have a far higher admiration of his heart--that noble courageous generosity for which language has no word. He is emphatically the true gentleman of our generation, who has appealed to our best and most chivalric sympathies, and raising us from the slough and pollution of the Regency has made us once more a nation of gentlemen."

Mr. Thackeray has acquired fame, and is generally understood to have secured wealth with it. We wish that of the life he has yet before him between this and the grave, he would devote a portion of the leisure he does not require for money-taking, to writing his biography, as faithfully and philosophically as he has written his novels. The world will want it when he is gone. It will be instructive to watch the world dealing with his reputation when he is no longer one of it. We believe that his memory standing up in the past, in colossal calm, will be the object of more love, than the applauding world will ever give him during his life.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHARLOTTE (BRONTË) NICHOLLS.

THE rudeness and barbarism of the more retired districts of the Northern counties are, at this day, such as Southcountrymen, who have not visited them, find it difficult to imagine. In the manufacturing neighbourhoods of Yorkshire and Lancashire, the common people are characterised by obtuseness of feelings and sharpness of intellects; and their manners are the language of dogged ferocity and brutal insolence. During the present generation of railroads and social intercourse, they have perceptibly improved in morality, but their harshness of demeanour and savage instincts still remain. Thirty years ago, and even more recently, their wealthier gentry were devoted to pleasures and crimes, the bare mention of which makes us shudder; their nearest approach to love of art was a passion for "the ring" and "cock-fighting;" and their county magistrates, when they began to be weary of drunkenness, of oppressing their wretched tenants, and of the ordinary sensual indulgences, sought a novel excitement in deeds of lustful violence and murder.

In a part of Yorkshire where these pleasant practices remained in full vigour after they had disappeared in more favoured vicinities, stands Bradford. Nigh to Bradford is Keighley, and about four miles from Keighley is Haworth, the parish that now especially interests us. The neigh bourhood is populous, and abounds with wealth; but its aspect is bleak and desolate, and it is the home of impoverished, lawless, improvident, and rebellious multitudes,

The lords of it are the wealthy manufacturers;-the people are herds of wretched slaves who hold their destitution and bondage up to contempt by prating of their rights and privileges as freemen. The parish itself contains some two thousand eight hundred persons, who alternately starve and toil in the production of our national greatness. The village is composed of houses built of grey stone, ample and durable, but devoid of architectural graces or adornment of any kind. No flower gardens are to be seen, partly because the climate is hostile to them, principally because the inhabitants have neither leisure nor desire to cultivate the beautiful. Around are tracts of moor-land, on which the snow lies almost till midsummer, and over which the cold, biting winds sweep, plaining miserably, and unbroken by a single tree. Damp and ill-drained, this hamlet is frightfully unhealthy; in certain seasons it is scarcely better than a pest-house; every spring typhus rages in it, and the ill-fated population, unprovided with medicines, fuel, food, and wine, necessary to make head against the terrible disease, is decimated.

One of the chief residences is the parson's house, an oblong erection of stone, containing about eight rooms; it stands alone, hard and graceless, unprotected by a single tree, surrounded on three sides by a foul grave-yard, its front looking out on an ugly-looking little church, its back abutting on the moors. The massive tenement has one, and only one, recommendation-it is strong enough to bear the winds that unceasingly beat against it, and the torrents of rain that almost without cessation pour upon it during nine months of the year.

To this parsonage came, in the February of 1820," a new parson." He was a tall, fine man, over forty years of age, having been born in 1777; and he was accompanied by a dying wife, and six little children. The man had a character-but not in all respects an agreeable one.

He was one of nature's aristocracy whom fortune had not smiled on, and whom foiled ambition had soured. The son of an Irish cottier (or small peasant farmer) he had early applied himself to the task of self-education, and from sixteen to twenty-four years of age, maintained himself as a village-schoolmaster; had then gone into a private gentleman's family, as a tutor, and thence, by the aid of a sizarship at St. John's College, had worked on to a B.A. degree at Cambridge, and holy orders. He had cherished literary aspirations destined to be disappointed; and now he found himself with a poor dying wife (a gentle creature, the daughter of a Cornish tradesman)-six wee brats, and scarce any means, save the income derived from the small incumbency to which he had been appointed--the perpetual curacy of Haworth, valued in the "Clergy List" at £170 per annum.

"A rare

He found his parish a hot-bed of dissent, and distracted with sectarian contentions; but he found a way of rendering himself agreeable to all parties, and became, in a certain way, popular. "What kind of a clergyman have you?" one of his parishioners was once asked. good one," was the reply; "he minds his own business, and ne'er troubles himself with ours." He was neither a bad man, nor naturally an unamiable man; but bodily suffering and unkind circumstances had reduced him to a state of gloomy egotism-usually called misanthropy. He lived much apart from his family; had his meals alone; and though he associated in some sort with his children, he would not stoop to them, but made them strain up to him; he did not play with them, and tell them fairy stories, but they, ere they could well lisp, were in the habit of hearing him read the parliamentary debates, and discoursing with him on the characters of statesmen and the principles that ought to regulate taxation. His digestion was bad, and he was in consequence full of sombre crotchets and humours.