OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 95 



the substance of the best literature, you are made somehow to 

 understand that there is that which is mightier than fate, and 



man is master of it. 



So it is pleasanter to turn to our second test. What is the 

 range of Thackeray's work? Certainly it is very great and de- 

 serves the highest praise. I think very few of the novelists, un- 

 less it be Dickens and Hugo have equalled or surpassed him. 



Thackeray knew his world well. It was a city world and a 

 masculine world, an upper and middle class world, these are its 

 limitations. We may take these limitations first. He knew the 

 country mostly as it is seen from within English country houses. 

 There is a marked absence of landscape in his writing. His peo- 

 ple never make remarks about the landscape, nor does he. They 

 seem chiefly anxious to get back to the city, or at least within 

 doors. 



Perhaps this passage from Chapter XXIII of Vanit}^ Fair will 

 illustrate this point. Major Dobbin, you are to remember, has 

 just landed from his last long service in India. He has heard 

 nothing from Amelia but idle gossip. He comes on shore at 

 Southampton. The description you will find capitally done but 

 how brief it is, and in what general terms. Like his hero, he 

 hurries to London. 



"The chaise came up presently, and the Major would wait no 

 longer. If he had been an English nobleman on a pleasure tour, 

 or a newspaper courier bearing despatches (government nres- 

 sages are generall}^ carried much more quietly) , he could not 

 have travelled more quickly. The post-boys wondered at the 

 fees he flung among them. How happy and gretn the country 

 looked as the chaise whirled rapidlj' from milestone to milestone 

 through neat country towns where landlords came out to welcome 

 him with smiles and bows ; by pretty roadside inns, where the 

 signs hung on the elms, and horses and wagoners were drinking 

 under the checkered shadows of the trees; by old halls and parks 

 rustic hamlets clustered round ancient gray churches — and 

 through the charming English landscape. Is there any in the 

 world like it? To a traveller returning home it looks so kind — 

 it seems to shake hands with you as you pass through it. 

 Well, Major Dobbin passed through all this from Southampton 

 to London, and without noting much beyond the milestones a- 

 long the road. You see he was so eager to see his parents at 

 Camberwell." 



