...  I have read the third volume of Esmond. I found it both entertaining and exciting to me; it seems to possess an impetus and excitement beyond the other two,—­that movement and brilliancy its predecessors sometimes wanted, never fails here.  In certain passages, I thought Thackeray used all his powers; their grand, serious force yielded a profound satisfaction.  ‘At last he puts forth his strength,’ I could not help saying to myself.  No character in the book strikes me as more masterly than that of Beatrix; its conception is fresh, and its delineation vivid.  It is peculiar; it has impressions of a new kind—­new at least, to me.  Beatrix is not, in herself, all bad.  So much does she sometimes reveal of what is good and great as to suggest this feeling—­you would think she was urged by a Fate.  You would think that some antique doom presses on her house, and that once in so many generations its brightest ornament was to become its greatest disgrace.  At times, what is good in her struggles against this terrible destiny, but the Fate conquers.  Beatrix cannot be an honest woman and a good man’s wife.  She ‘tries, and she cannot’.  Proud, beautiful, and sullied, she was born what she becomes, a king’s mistress.  I know not whether you have seen the notice in the Leader; I read it just after concluding the book.  Can I be wrong in deeming it a notice tame, cold, and insufficient?  With all its professed friendliness, it produced on me a most disheartening impression.  Surely, another sort of justice than this will be rendered to Esmond from other quarters.  One acute remark of the critic is to the effect that Blanche Amory and Beatrix are identical—­sketched from the same original!  To me they are about as identical as a weazel and a royal tigress of Bengal; both the latter are quadrupeds,—­both the former, women.