is not an improving sort of maintenance; and there is much to be said for and against; but still you are not one of us, and there is an end to our sympathies and censures.  People who allow their feelings to be lacerated by such a character and career as yours, are doing both you and themselves great injustice.  No author could have openly introduced a near connexion of Satan’s into the best London society, nor would the moral end intended have been answered by it; but really and honestly, considering Becky in her human character, we know of none which so thoroughly satisfies our highest beau ideal of feminine wickedness, with so slight a shock to our feelings and properties.  It is very dreadful, doubtless, that Becky neither loved the husband who loved her, nor the child of her own flesh and blood, nor indeed any body but herself; but, as far as she is concerned, we cannot pretend to be scandalized—­for how could she without a heart?  It is very shocking of course that she committed all sorts of dirty tricks, and jockeyed her neighbours, and never cared what she trampled under foot if it happened to obstruct her step; but how could she be expected to do otherwise without a conscience?  The poor little woman was most tryingly placed; she came into the world without the customary letters of credit upon those two great bankers of humanity, “Heart and Conscience,” and it was no fault of hers if they dishonoured all her bills.  All she could do in this dilemma was to establish the firmest connexion with the inferior commercial branches of “Sense and Tact,” who secretly do much business in the name of the head concern, and with whom her “fine frontal development” gave her unlimited credit.  She saw that selfishness was the metal which the stamp of heart was suborned to pass; that hypocrisy was the homage that vice rendered to virtue; that honesty was, at all events, acted, because it was the best policy; and so she practised the arts of selfishness and hypocrisy like anybody else in Vanity Fair, only with this difference, that she brought them to their highest possible pitch of perfection.  For why is it that, looking round in this world, we find plenty of characters to compare with her up to a certain pitch, but none which reach her actual standard?  Why is it that, speaking of this friend or that, we say in the tender mercies of our hearts, “No, she is not quite so bad as Becky?” We fear not only because she has more heart and conscience, but also because she has less cleverness.

No; let us give Becky her due.  There is enough in this world of ours, as we all know, to provoke a saint, far more a poor little devil like her.  She had none of those fellow-feelings which make us wondrous kind.  She saw people around her cowards in vice, and simpletons in virtue, and she had no patience with either, for she was as little the one as the other herself.  She saw women who loved their husbands and yet teazed them, and ruining their