OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 9^ 



dreadful slogan of his Marion's name, more fiercely grasped his 

 sword, and murmured to himself, "From this hour may Scotland 

 date her liberty, or Wallace return no more. * * * Before the 

 moon sets, the tyrant of I^anark must fall in blood." 



"Death and I^ady Marion!" was the pealing answer that ech- 

 oed from the hills. 



Wallace again sprang on the cliff. His brave peasants fol- 

 lowed him ; and taking their rapid march by a near cut through 

 a hitherto unexplored defile of the Cartlane craigs leaping chasms 

 and climbing perpendicular rocks, they suffered no object to im- 

 pede their steps while rushing onward like lions on their prey." 



A reaction from this stilted and unnatural apotheosis of hu- 

 man perfection could but follow. The long bow of exaggera- 

 tion was strained to breaking. Such writing began to seem 

 hollow and false. Dickens, with all his grotesqueness, was 

 among the first to return to common folks, and Charlotte Bronte 

 and Mrs. Gaskell wrote out of real experiences and trials and 

 told of real people. But Thackeray was to deal the hardest 

 blow upon this habit of affectation and pretence in fiction, and 

 we shall fail to do him justice or to understand his writing with- 

 out bearing that in mind first of all. He set out to puncture 

 shams, to reveal the essential wrong and wickedness of pretence 

 in all its myriad personal and social forms. He was at heart a 

 truth-lover, a hater of meanness and folly, and withal the gen- 

 tlest, kindliest knight that ever laid lance in rest to win a joust 

 against falseness and hypocrisy. That was the work given him 

 to do, and he accomplished it with such exquisite delicacy, his 

 tools were kept so sharp and bright, his skill was so perfect in 

 its way that one is irresistably reminded of that mediaeval leg- 

 end about the executioner, so marvellously deft at his trade, 

 that, having operated with noiseless and invisible swiftness, his 

 poor victims knew not they were beheaded until, gracefully offer- 

 ing his snuff-box, the force of the pleasant and inevitable sneeze 

 sent their heads rolling upon the pavement. But Thackeray 

 never touched the springs of deepest passion or revealed the in- 

 ner suffering and inner delight of souls. As a writer he held 

 himself curiously aloof from his own creations. Sometimes it 

 is even provoking. "Why doesn't the man show a little fire, 

 a little enthusiasm ?" we ask. ' ' Why doesn't he hurrah a little 



