we are not prepared to say, neither do we know whether Noah took a pair of them into the ark; but we presume, from philosophical reflection, that their primogenitors date from a very ancient period. To be their historian, one would require the years of a Methusaleh, to say nothing of other qualifications. It would take a long time even to enumerate those which have lived within the memory of living men. The railway, the steamship, scientific machinery, were, at their birth, bugbears to many of the fearful, unbelieving, and obstinate among human kind. Nay, we once saw a ferry-boat placed under the same ban, by an old lady, on a sunny day in June. The skies were as calm as the surface of the stream, the distance to be performed was nearly fifty yards, and the ferryman had plied his toil from a wellnigh forgotten boyhood. Boatman," said the old lady, are you sure it [meaning the craft] won't sink?" Well, I hope not, mum," was the reassuring answer. "Shall we be very long crossing, boatman ?" queried the trembling fair. "Not abune an hour or so, I hope, mum-if the wind's fair," replied the encouraging pilot. Whether any more half-pence from his timorous passenger flowed into the pockets of the humorous ferryman we never heard; but we should think that two-minute voyage and a safe landing on the other side must have effectually opened the eyes of the old lady to the cruel fresh-water chaff.

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Of bugbears that dwell in retirement, apart from public view, it is not our purpose to say much. Nearly every man has one of his own. To some in comfortable England, the sound of "India" brings indescribable palpitations. Tender mothers have fancied that their sons were going to a land where, if they survived the scorching sun, they were almost sure to die of a snake-bite; and, in the event of neither of these alternatives coming to pass, loa tiger in the thicket glaring horribly on the beloved one. Have not they done this, in one form or another? Nor would we have it altogether otherwise. To speak reverently: who would not have some pure one at home lifting up that prayer of love to the All

Merciful, to save her "darling from the lions" ?

To return to our protegées. How many young men think scorn of a merchant's office ?--it is a bugbear to them. "A banker's clerk, forsooth !" some worshipper of Mars exclaims"I wouldn't be a quill-driver for worlds!" To ourselves, the remembrance of having refused with scorn a fortunate chance in a mercantile house is a memory of regret. "A bagman's life!" we said "it is insufferable !" O! veritable bugbear, why didst thou throw dust in our eyes? O! sheep with the golden fleece, why did we array thee in foul garments ?" "A bagman's life"-is there anything equal to it? Better than attaché to an embassy,fraught with affluence and ease, and champagne illimitable-it is almost as good as the life of a gipsy. In this change that looms under the name of amalgamation, who would not be a bagman? "Amalgamation!"—we have started another bugbear, as some would tell us. However, it is not our intention to follow up the hunt; for a member of the House of Commons has informed us, through the medium of the newspapers, that he knows from personal experience that all officers of the Indian army below the rank of "Major" are in favour of this measure; whilst those of and above that rank divide an equal number of opinions on the subject: consequently, it would be impolitic in us to pursue this quarry in the pages of an Indian publication. We can only congratulate the honorable member on the valuable acquisition he has made to his stock of knowledge. And having begun to quote from a speech in the Commons, we may as well go a step higher, into the Lords, and try, as a final effort, to unearth another bugbear. Eureka!--and perhaps we haven't been driving at this identical one all the time we have been meandering! It is a magnificent creature,-clothed royally, stately, aweinspiring. And yet His Royal Highness the Commander-in-Chief designates it as the "unfortunate bugbear of the Horse Guards"! Higher authority it would be impossible to adduce-and we forbear comment. That this". unfortunate” institution is a bugbear, no

observant man will deny. But there will always be a number of foolish scorners, who, recurring to the phraseology of their school-days, will greet the announcement of this great fact with a chorus of "O yes!"-" rather !" -"just about ! &c.; while one or two stentorian voices will proclaim their incredulity in a mocking "I believe yer, ma bo-0-0-y " But that motto, which has hitherto preserved the Horse Guards from contact with the ignoble throng of men, will continue to defend them from the shaft of the infidel" ODI PROFANUM VULGUS, ET ARCEO"-without the might of which banner-cry who could say hopefully "Floreat Horse Guards"?

It would be hypocritical to close these remarks without confessing our want of penetration, and the circumstance that the information conveyed by the Duke of Cambridge with reference to the establishment at the head of military affairs was (to make a clean breast of it) news to us. Had any one else affirmed the Horse Guards to be a bugbear, we should have likened him to a lawyer who should attempt to cajole us into the Court of Chancery by the sugar-plum that was simply a bugbear. In which case, at the risk of being vulgar, we should have given vent to our feelings in the emphatic dissyllable--" Walker"!

MEANDER.

DICKENS AND THACKERAY.

WHO would be popular, especially in England! It is the nature of the amiable people of that country to raise the favourite of the time to the rank of a demi-god, and, having placed him on an elevated pinnacle, to bow down and beslobber him with praise and adulation. After a time, finding out that their favourite is but man, they incontinently depose him, and, not content with that, generally proceed to throw him under foot, and bespatter him with abuse. Such has been the case with Mr. Dickens. A few years ago, no one was praised so much as he ; and now, almost every one who wields a pen essays the sharpness of its point by a thrust at him. The general mode of procedure

is to praise Mr. Thackeray for possessing every quality a writer should possess, and then to lament Mr. Dickens's deficiency in every one of these qualities. To parody Pope's famous epitaph, they say of Mr. Thackeray,— He is but words are wanting to say what : Think what a writer should be—he is that. while poor Mr. Dickens gets the same couplet quoted of him with the addition of a negative particle after the “should” in the second line.

The charges most generally brought against the author of "Pickwick," and repeated by one writer after another, usque ad nauseam, are three in number. He is accused of (1) a want of art; (2) of caricaturing instead of drawing characters; and (3) of showing hostility to the upper classes.

The first charge we admit in part, for it is no doubt true that the plots and scenes in Mr. Dickens's novels are not elaborated with much art; but we object to the second in toto. There are two ways of drawing characters most commonly used: one to fix on some individual who interests you, and to transfer his character bodily to paper-keeping him in view the while, as a painter does the person whose portrait he is taking; the other, and perhaps the most artistic way, is to pourtray an ideal type. In the latter case, a person of the exact character drawn is never met with, and, consequently, people who do not reflect very much are apt to say that the character is overdrawn and unnatural. The type is too broad for their comprehension. Yet, such persons would be the first to insist on giving a particular character, or collection of characteristics, to every nation, though perhaps no single individual is to be met with who answers to the character of the nation to which he belongs. The public and private acts of a people, its manners and customs, all stamp an impression on our mind, which is called its character. By a natural mental process, we expect every member of that people to display this peculiar character, and are, of course, disappointed, as Emerson remarked in one of his recent works. This is, we maintain, exactly the case with the personages of Mr. Dickens's hovels. They are taken from so broad a type,

The third charge, namely that of hostility to the upper classes, seems to us most unreasonable. We are most of us acquainted more or less with the history of Mr. Dickens's early life and struggles. At the period when his education (using the word in its strict, and not its conventional meaning) was going on, his lot was cast among those scenes and characters he afterwards so happily described; and when he commenced his career as an author, he confined his pen most judiciously to those subjects with which he was best acquainted.

A writer in a review of very high note, whose dictum on all literary matters used to be law, censured Mr. Dickens some time ago very severely for confining his dramatis persona almost entirely to the middle and lower classes, and hinted pretty broadly, that his writings in consequence are calculated to excite emnity against the higher orders. It certainly seems rather hard, even laying all other considerations aside, that none but the nobility should be depicted as having good qualities. One would have thought that by this time they were rather tired of being represented as so uniformly virtuous; for scarcely a novel was published in the first quarter of this century, and even later, that had not for its hero some divine duke or heavenly-minded marquis. No person was admitted below the rank of baron, though sometimes an amiable and accomplished baronet was smuggled in sub rosâ, and looked thoroughly ill at ease among so much fine company. Really, it was quite time for the porcelain earth to retire from the scene, or to appear with a less conspicuous rôle (sometimes even taking the part of the villain), so as to allow the delft-ware their turn. Seriously speaking, the charge seems most unfounded. Crabbe might as well be accused of being a radical because most of his scenes and characters were laid among the poorer classes.

It is true that Mr. Dickens evidently

Cursed be the social wants that sin against the strength of youth;

Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth;

Cursed be the sickly forms that err from honest nature's rule;

Cursed be the gold that gilds the straitened forehead of the fool!

No man of any sensibility or warmth of heart, and intimately acquainted with the more remote recesses of the great world of London, could help feeling that the world's wealth was unequally distributed, when he compared the splendour and comfort of one part, with the squalor, crime, and misery of another. Such a man would eagerly try to enforce Jeremy Bentham's maxim, that we ought to look to the "greatest possible good of the greatest, possible number”; and, seeing how little good has been done, in spite of the efforts of benevolent individuals and societies, would naturally come to the conclusion that those who possess wealth and influence have not used sufficient exertions in behalf of those less favoured. Difficult would it be to think otherwise on seeing whole quarters of the largest city in the world inhabited entirely by men degraded almost below the semblance of humanity, women who never knew a single womanly feeling, and children ignorant of childhood-all struggling to support existence by the one means known to them-crime. Can we blame a man accustomed to see constantly such sights, and yet possessing an eye keen enough to see in the breasts of these animalsscarcely, apparently, deserving of the name of man-the feeble lingering spark of higher feelings? Can we blame such a man, we say, if he indignantly exclaims, with burning words, to those who, he imagines, and not without reason, have neglected their duty,"Look on this picture, and on this. You are raised in your own conceit above the level of ordinary humanity; but neither are you so immaculate, nor those you despise so utterly and irretrievably degraded, as you suppose. You turn away with a shudder of disgust from your squalid and guilty brother; yet it is, in a great measure, your fault that he is squalid and guilty.

You plume yourself on your goodness, like the self-righteous Pharisee, yet some among you there are who are but whited sepulchres"? At first this cry had some effect. The earnest were led to reflect, and others had, perhaps, a new sensation. But, with the lapse of time, self-esteem and self-complacency returned, and we are told-"Oh! this is a very dangerous man; he excites hos'tility against the upper classes, and, therefore, should not be read, or, if read, sneered at" ! It tells well for Mr. Dickens, however, that the two most earnest and manly thinkers of the age, Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Kingsley, have on this subject expressed their thoughts in the same spirit.

Through all Mr. Dickens's works (with the exception of some of the last published, to which we shall refer more particularly afterwards), there runs a tender genial humour, which sometimes has a playfulness that reminds us of Goldsmith, and often thrills us with unequalled pathos. Our author has been charged, by some fault-finding critics, with morbid sentimentality. We must confess ourselves wholly unable to discover such a spirit in his writings: what is there that is morbid-nay, what is there that is not exquisitely tender and touching-in little Paul Dombey, in the child-wife of "David Copperfield," in Little Nell, or even in Little Dorrit, into whom the soul of Little Nell seems to have passed? Are the uncouth, yet generous, Ham and Pegotty unnatural and forced characters? What is there strained or artificial in the "Christmas Carol," the "Cricket on the Hearth," the "Perils of Certain English Prisoners," or the "Wreck of the Golden Mary"? The man who can read the works we have referred to without often feeling his eyes fill, and a curious sensation like a lump in his throat, must be hardhearted indeed. Books, the tone of which are morbidly sentimental, would not excite such feelings, except in a morbidly sentimental mind; and the eagerness and emotion with which Mr. Dickens's works are perused by thousands prove either that a very large portion of our countrymen come under this category, or that the charges are unfounded.

Mr. Dickens almost invariably ap

peals to our higher and more noble emotions. We are taught by him to pity the poor starved charity-boy, cast by the force of circumstances into a sink of iniquity; and, with him as instructor, we cannot turn with loathing from the poor wretch, degraded indeed and outcast, but who has not yet forgotten that she is a woman. It would doubtless be more proper and Christian (according to the ideas of some) to turn up our noses, and pass by on the other side; but such is not the lesson taught by the author of "Oliver Twist." To take another type of character: who does not feel a strong affection for joyous, rollicking Dick Swiveller, though he is a dissipated roué? "Of all Dickens's minor characters," says the thoughtful author of " Friends in Council," "that is my favourite. The character is so pleasantly marked out, without any needless repetition, or labels put on the backs of the characters to show who is on the scene. A more exquisite bit of humour I do not know, in any modern work, than Dick Swiveller's proceedings when he goes down into the kitchen to take a hand of cribbage with the Marchioness."

But we have devoted more than a fair share of space to the consideration of Mr. Dickens's writings. We trust we have shown, that the charges brought against him are, if not unfounded, at least exaggerated. Those who, liking his writings, feel themselves repelled from them by hostile criticism, may support their own judgment by the favourable opinions expressed by Jeffrey and Sydney Smith-no mean authorities; and by the fact (which of itself shows not only popularity, but also truth of delineation of character) that no author's works are more frequently referred to, and quoted, even by those most hostile. It is true that Mr. Dickens seems to have worked the mine so long that the rich vein of ore is almost exhausted; it is true that his wit and pathos have degenerated into mannerism; but to judge him by his last works is as unfair as it would be to form an opinion of Sir Walter Scott from "Castle Dangerous," or "The Surgeon's Daughter."

Turning from Mr. Dickens's works to those of Mr. Thackeray seems like

"Pol me occidistis amici, Non servastis....Cui sic extorta voluptas Et demtus per vim mentis gratissimus error.' We have read somewhere a story of a dispute between a Brahmin and a Missionary, in which the former asserted that he had never eaten or drunken anything in which animal life exists. The Missionary, to convince him of his error, exhibited under a microscope a drop of water, which, to his astonishment, he saw teeming with animalculæ. The Brahmin begged for the microscope, and, on receiving it, dashed it to pieces, declaring that he had been made perfectly miserable by the instrument, and would, as far as in him lay, prevent others from sharing the same misery.

We must own that sometimes we feel towards Mr. Thackeray as the Brahmin did towards the Missionary, when we find our most cherished delusions (if they are delusions) regarding human nature overthrown by microscopic analysis.

Mr. Thackeray takes the greatest pleasure in lowering our opinion of ourselves and others. In one of his books, he gaily informs us that we all, from one of the highest personages in the realm down, are 66 snobs." The more usual mode of procedure, however, is to draw a character such as one sees every day; to colour it, as it were incidentally, with shades of meanness, deceit, and every defect conceivable: and then to turn confidentially to his reader, and say, "Good sir," (or "Madam," as the case may be,) " you are disgusted doubtless, but γνωθι σεαυτον, let me assure you that you, and every

one else, are just as mean and deceitful"! Having laid this flattering unction to our souls, our author goes on to exhibit various diseases in what we had fondly supposed was a comparatively healthy subject. As a physician, in his scientific enthusiasm, will talk of a beautiful gangrenous ulcer, so we can imagine Mr. Thackeray in his study, with a sharp-nibbed pen in his hand, chuckling over some mental deformity that has just presented itself to his mind, and exclaiming, with a dash of his pen on the paper-" "Evρnka! Lovely!" Not being scientific ourselves, we do not care much to look on interesting forms of disease, nor to have constantly worked up and laid before us elaborate specimens of the baser parts of human nature.

In "Vanity Fair," Mr. Thackeray's greatest, as it is his most characteristic work, he has given us at full length the peculiar view he chooses to take of mankind. Every character in it is, to our mind, more or less repulsive, though we do not the less appreciate the wonderful talent with which every shade is delineated. Becky Sharpe is perfectly diabolical in her selfishness, and in the means she adopts to gain her end. Though pourtrayed with preRaphaelite minuteness, hers is a character that can never have existed. No human being is so degraded as never to display some trace of the remains, at least, of a better feeling, but we cannot call to mind a single instance when Becky acts otherwise than as a perfect Mephistopheles.

So with the more amiable, or rather the less odious, characters. Amelia is very little short of a moral nonentity; George is a selfish brute; and Major Dobbin is very few degrees removed from a rather amiable and harmless idiot. We do not want a perfect character. Nothing is more unnatural, or more wearisome, than a hero or heroine possessed of every virtue, combined with extraordinary beauty. Such characters, though common in fourth-rate novels, and nowhere else (except when some partisan historian takes a fancy to and deifies some pet historical ruffian), simply disgust; but we have a right to demand that a writer of fiction, who professes to reproduce nature, should