lost, the moment you convict Becky of a capital crime.  Who can, with any face, liken a dear friend to a murderess?  Whereas now there are no little symptoms of fascinating ruthlessness, graceful ingratitude, or ladylike selfishness, observable among our charming acquaintance, that we may not immediately detect to an inch, and more effectually intimidate by the simple application of the Becky gauge than by the most vehement use of all ten commandments.  Thanks to Mr. Thackeray, the world is now provided with an idea, which, if we mistake not, will be the skeleton in the corner of every ball-room and boudoir for a long time to come.  Let us leave it intact in its unique fount and freshness—­a Becky, and nothing more.  We should, therefore, advise our readers to cut out that picture of our heroine’s “Second Appearance as Clytemnestra,” which casts so uncomfortable a glare over the latter part of the volume, and, disregarding all hints and inuendoes, simply to let the changes and chances of this moral life have due weight in their minds.  Jos had been much in India.  His was a bad life; he ate and drank most imprudently, and his digestion was not to be compared with Becky’s.  No respectable office would have ensured “Waterloo Sedley.”

“Vanity Fair” is pre-eminently a novel of the day—­not in the vulgar sense, of which there are too many, but as a literal photograph of the manners and habits of the nineteenth century, thrown on to paper by the light of a powerful mind; and one also of the most artistic effect.  Mr. Thackeray has a peculiar adroitness in leading on the fancy, or rather memory of his readers from one set of circumstances to another by the seeming chances and coincidences of common life, as an artist leads the spectator’s eye through the subject of his picture by a skilful repetition of colour.  This is why it is impossible to quote from his book with any justice to it.  The whole growth of the narrative is so matted and interwoven together with tendril-like links and bindings, that there is no detaching a flower with sufficient length of stalk to exhibit it to advantage.  There is that mutual dependence in his characters which is the first requisite in painting every-day life:  no one is stuck on a separate pedestal—­no one is sitting for his portrait.  There may be one exception—­we mean Sir Pitt Crawley, senior; it is possible, nay, we hardly doubt, that this baronet was closer drawn from individual life than anybody else in the book; but granting that fact, the animal was so unique an exception, that we wonder so shrewd an artist could stick him into a gallery so full of our familiars.  The scenes in Germany, we can believe, will seem to many readers of an English book hardly less extravagantly absurd—­grossly and gratuitously overdrawn; but the initiated will value them as containing some of the keenest strokes of truth and humour that “Vanity Fair” exhibits, and not enjoy them the less for being at our neighbour’s expense.  For the thorough