It will not do to say (as is often said) that Thackeray could not draw an admirable or perfect woman.  If he did not leave us a perfect one, it was perhaps for the reason alleged to have been given by Mr. Howells when he was charged with the same misdemeanor:  he was waiting for the Lord to do it first!  But Thackeray does no injustice to the sex:  if Amelia be stupid (which is matter of debate), Helen Warrington is not, but rather a very noble creature built on a large plan:  whatever the small blemishes of Lady Castlewood she is indelible in memory for character and charm.  And so with others not a few.  Becky and Beatrix are merely the reverse of the picture.  And there is a similar balance in the delineation of men:  Colonel Newcome over against Captain Costigan, and many a couple more.  Thackeray does not fall into the mistake of making his spotted characters all-black.  Who does not find something likable in the Fotheringay and in the Campaigner?  Even a Barry Lyndon has the redeeming quality of courage.  And surely we adore Beatrix, with all her faults.  Major Pendennis is a thoroughgoing old worldling, but it is impossible not to feel a species of fondness for him.  Jos.  Sedley is very much an ass, but one’s smile at him is full of tolerance.  Yes, the worst of them all, the immortal Becky (who was so plainly liked by her maker) awakens sympathy in the reader when routed in her fortunes, black-leg though she be.  She cared for her husband, after her fashion, and she plays the game of Bad Luck in a way far from despicable.  Nor is that easy-going, commonplace scoundrel, Rawdon, with his dog-like devotion to the same Becky, denied his touch of higher humanity.  Behind all these is a large tolerance, an intellectual breadth, a spiritual comprehension that is merciful to the sinner, while never condoning the sin.  Thackeray is therefore more than story-teller or fine writer:  a sane observer of the Human Comedy; a satirist in the broad sense, devoting himself to revealing society to itself and for its instruction.  It is easy to use negations:  to say he did not know nor sympathize with the middle class nor the lower and outcast classes as did Dickens; that his interest was in peccadilloes and sins, not in courageous virtues:  and that he judged the world from a club window.  But this gets us nowhere and is aside from the critic’s chief business:  which is that of an appreciative explanation of his abiding power and charm.  This has now been essayed.  Thackeray was too great as man and artist not to know that it was his function to present life in such wise that while a pleasure of recognition should follow the delineation, another and higher pleasure should also result:  the surprising pleasure of beauty.  “Fiction,” he declared, “has no business to exist, unless it be more beautiful than reality,” And again:  “The first quality of an artist is to have a large heart.”  With which revelatory utterances may be placed part of the noble sentence closing “The