short, and at the same time characteristic, we avail ourselves of the following from "Barnaby Rudge."

Mr. Dickens's Apology for Mirth.-"It is something even to look upon enjoyment, so that it be free and wild, and in the face of nature, though it is but the enjoyment of an idiot. It is something to know that Heaven has left the capacity of gladness in such a creature's breast; it is something to be assured, that however lightly men may crush that faculty in their fellows, the Great Creator of mankind imparts it even to his despised and slighted work. Who would not rather see a poor idiot happy in the sunlight, than a wise man pining in a darkened jail? Ye men of gloom and austerity, who paint the face of Infinite Benevolence with an eternal frown, read in the everlasting book, wide open to your view, the lesson it would teach. Its pictures are not in black and sombre hues, but bright and glowing tints; its music, save when ye drown it, is not in sighs and groans, but songs and cheerful sounds. Listen to the million voices in the summer air, and find one dismal as your own. Remember, if ye can, the sense of hope and pleasure which every glad return of day awakens in the breast of all your kind, who have not changed their nature; and learn some wisdom even from the witless, when their hearts are lifted up, they know not why, by all the mirth and happiness it brings."

This doctrine, we repeat, is diffused through all Mr. Dickens's writings, and is affirmed again and again in express and very eloquent passages. Now, certainly, there is a fine and loveable spirit in the doctrine; and a man may be borne up by it in his airy imaginings, as Mr. Dickens is, (we might add the name of Mr. Leigh Hunt,) so cheerily and beautifully, that it were a barbarity to demur to it at the moment without serious provocation. Who can fail to see that only a benevolent heart, overflowing with faith in this doctrine, could have written the "Christmas Chimes," or conceived those exquisite reminiscences of childhood which delight us in the early pages of "Copperfield?" But when Mr. Dickens becomes aggressive in behalf of his doctrine, as he does in the foregoing, and in fifty other passages; when, as Mr. Cobden is pugnacious for peace, and as some men are said to be bigots for toleration, so Mr. Dickens is harsh in behalf of kindliness-then a word of remonstrance seems really necessary. Is the foregoing doctrine, then, so axiomatic and absolute that no one may, without moral ugliness of soul, impugn or limit it? For our part, we do not think so. We know men, and very noble men, too, who would not rather see a poor idiot happy in the sunlight than a wise man pining in a darkened jail; we know men, and very cheerful men, too, who do not find the pictures of the book of nature to be all in bright and glowing tints, nor the sounds of nature to be all pleasant songs. In short, in his anti

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pathy to Puritanism, Mr. Dickens seems to have adopted a principle closely resembling that which pervades the ethical part of Unitarianism, the essence of which is, that it places a facile disposition at the centre of the universe. Now, without here offering any speculative or spiritual discussion, which might be deemed inappropriate, we may venture to say, that any man or artist who shall enter upon his sphere of activity, without in some way or other realizing and holding fast those truths which Puritanism sets such store by, and which it has embodied, according to its own grand phraseology, in the words sin, wrath, and justice, must necessarily take but half the facts of the world along with him, and go through his task too lightly and nimbly. To express our meaning in one word, such a man will miss out that great and noble element in all that is human-the element of difficulty. And though Mr. Dickens's happy poetic genius suggests to him much that his main ethical doctrine, if it were practically supreme in his mind, would certainly leave out, yet we think we can trace in the peculiar character of his romantic and most merry phantasies something of the want of this element.

Mr. Thackeray being, as we have already hinted, less dogmatic in his habits of writing than Mr. Dickens, less given to state and argue maxims in a propositional form, it is not so easy to obtain passages from his writings explaining his general views in the first person. On the whole, however, judging from little indications, from the general tone of his writings, and from literary analogy, we should say that he differs from Mr. Dickens in this, that, instead of clinging to any positive doctrine, from the neighbourhood of which he might survey nature and life, he holds his mind in a general state of negation and scepticism. There is in "Pendennis" a very interesting chapter, entitled "The Way of the World," written after that severe illness which interrupted the author in the progress of his work, and threatened to do more, and in which Mr. Thackeray falls into a more serious strain than usual. A long, and almost religious, dialogue takes place between Pen, then in a low moral state, and professing himself a sceptic and pococurante, and his elder friend Warrington, who retorts his arguments, denounces his conclusions, and tries to rekindle in him faith and enthusiasm. The dialogue is thus wound up :

Pen and Warrington philosophizing.—"We are not pledging ourselves for the correctness of his (Pen's) opinions, which readers will please to consider are delivered dramatically, the writer being no more answerable for them, than for the sentiments uttered by any other character of the story. Our endeavour is merely to follow out in its progress the development of the mind of a worldly and selfish, but not ungenerous or unkind, or truth-avoiding man. And it will be seen that the

lamentable stage to which his logic has at present brought him, is one of general scepticism, and sneering acquiescence in the world as it is; or, if you like so to call it, a belief, qualified with scorn, in all things extant. The tastes and habits of such a man prevent him from being a boisterous demagogue, and his love of truth, and dislike of cant, keep him from advancing crude propositions, such as many loud reformers are constantly ready with, much more from uttering downright falsehoods, in arguing questions or abusing opponents, which he would die or starve rather than use. It was not in our friend's nature to be able to utter certain lies; nor was he strong enough to protest against others, except with a polite sneer; his maxim being, that he owed obedience to all Acts of Parliament, as long as they were not repealed.

"And to what does this easy and sceptical life lead a man? Friend Arthur was a Sadducee, and the Baptist might be in the wilderness, shouting to the poor, who were listening with all their might and faith to the preacher's awful accents and denunciations of wrath or woe or salvation; and our friend, the Sadducee, would turn his sleek mule with a shrug and a smile from the crowd, and go home to the shade of his terrace, and muse over preacher and audience, and turn to his roll of Plato, or his pleasant Greek song-book, babbling of honey and Hybla, and nymphs and fountains, and love. To what, we say, does this scepticism lead? It leads a man to a shameful loneliness and selfishness, so to speak-the more shameful because it is so goodhumoured and conscienceless and serene. Conscience! What is conscience? Why accept remorse? What is public or private faith? Mythuses alike enveloped in enormous tradition. If, seeing and acknowledging the lies of the world, Arthur, as see them you can, with only too fatal a clearness, you submit to them without any protest further than a laugh; if, plunged yourself in easy sensuality, you allow the whole wretched world to pass groaning by you unmoved; if the fight for the truth is taking place, and all men of honour are on the ground, armed on the one side or the other, and you alone are to lie on your balcony and smoke your pipe, out of the noise and the danger-you had better have died, or never have been at all, than such a sensual coward.

"The truth, friend!' Arthur said, imperturbably; 'where is the truth? Show it me. That is the question between us. 1 see it on both sides. I see it on the conservative side of the house, and amongst the radicals, and even on the ministerial benches. I see it in this man, who worships by Act of Parliament, and is rewarded with a silk apron and five thousand a-year; in that man, who, driven fatally by the remorseless logic of his creed, gives up everything, friends, fame, dearest ties, closest vanities, the respect of an army of churchmen, the recognised position of a leader, and passes over, truth-impelled, to the enemy, in whose ranks he will serve henceforth as a nameless private soldier. Yes, I am a Sadducee, and I take things as I find them, and the world, and the Acts of Parliament of the world, as they are; and, as I intend to take a wife, if I find one, not to be madly in love, and prostrate at her feet, like a

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fool, not to worship her as an angel, or to expect to find her as such, but to be good-natured to her, and courteous, expecting good-nature and pleasant society from her in turn. And so, George, if ever you hear of my marrying, depend on it, it won't be a romantic attachment on my side; and if you hear of any good place under Government, I have no particular scruples, that I know of, which would prevent me from accepting your offer.'

"O Pen, you scoundrel! I know what you mean,' here Warrington broke out. This is the meaning of your scepticism, of your quietism, of your atheism, my poor fellow. You're going to sell yourself, and Heaven help you! You are going to make a bargain which will degrade you, and make you miserable for life, and there's no use talking of it. If you are once bent on it, the devil won't prevent you."-Pendennis, vol. ii. pp. 236-238.

After Mr. Thackeray's protest that he is not to be held responsible for Pen's opinions, as delivered in the foregoing extract, and in the dialogue which precedes it, we may not, of course, seek his philosophy in these opinions alone. Indeed, we are too thankful to Mr. Thackeray for having had the boldness to introduce so serious a passage at all into a work of popular fiction, to wish to take any unfair advantage of it. But, it will be observed, Mr. Thackeray does not only report Pen's opinions, he also comments on these opinions very gravely in his own name, and he combats them through the medium of Warrington. When, however, a writer is at the pains to represent dramatically both the pro and the con of any question, we may be pretty sure that he has distributed nearly the entire bulk of his own sentiments on it between the two speakers to whom he assigns the task of conducting the argument. Accordingly, it seems to us, that in this antinomy between Pen and Warrington, we may, without any injustice, discern the main features of the author's own philosophy of life. In other words, it seems to us that there are many parts of Mr. Thackeray's writings in which the spirit of the Pendennis theory may be assumed to predominate; but that, ever and anon, traces of the Warrington spirit are also to be found in them.

Pen, in the passage before us, appears as a pococurante and a sceptic. Still honest and kindly, and above any positive meanness, he has sunk, for the time, into a general lowness of the spiritual faculty, the visible form of which is "a sneering acquiescence with the world as it is," or rather "a belief, qualified with scorn, in all things extant." But precisely here lies the point. To a man in this state of mind, all the things that do exist are not extant. As his eye sweeps through the universe, it rests by an internal necessity only on the meaner, minuter, and more terrestrial phenomena, which strike by their intense nearness; while the facts of the higher physics fade away into an invisi

bility, which, like that of the stars by day, passes for non-existence. Beings like Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael, may, as the poet sublimely teaches, sing of God's mightier works of the sun hymning in chorus with his kindred stars, of the fair earth wheeling on her axis, of the storms that rage between land and sea. They may speak of these things, for these things are extant to their vision. But let Mephistopheles enter, and how the note is changed! He cannot talk fine; he cannot gabble of suns and worlds, and all that sort of thing! What he sees and can report upon, is a far more matter-of-fact concern-how men are daily growing more foolish and miserable; how the little god of earth is still as odd in his ways as ever, and is continually getting into some new mess or other! Precisely such, though with less profundity and more principle, is the spirit of Pen. He is, like Mephistopheles, a pococurante. The higher things of the world not being extant for him, he qualifies his belief in all he does see with a sneer. Suppose, now, this spirit transferred into literature; how will it show itself there? In a general tone of scoffing; in a disbelief in enthusiasm, or any species of mental exaltation; in a tendency to avoid in one's self, and to turn into ridicule in others, all words or phrases that recognise the diviner truths of existence or the higher developments of mind; in a fondness for scandal and vile social investigations, and in a distaste for the magnificent and the beautiful. What, for example, is Mephistopheles's speech in the presence of the angels, but another version of that of which our modern literature is fulla perpetual tirade against such entities and expressions as (to enumerate a few in different departments,) spiritual-mindedness, fervid affection, a Christian life, the transcendental metaphysics, noble aspiration, high art? It would be unjust to say that, even in the least earnest portion of Mr. Thackeray's writings, he exhibits the spirit of scorn to anything like this extent. An admirer of Tennyson-the poet who, most of all men living, represents, and would woo back among us, the rare, the religious, and the exquisite-could hardly do this. Still, Mr. Thackeray is not altogether blameless in this respect; and, probably, whatever amount of truth there is in the general complaint against him, as a writer who delights in the contemplation of human weaknesses and absurdities, may be resolved into the cause under notice.

But there are moments in Mr. Thackeray's writings when Warrington breaks in. Believing many things that Pen believes; sympathizing with him in many of his feelings, and probably without any much more definite creed of his own, that he could state in words-Warrington is yet a nobler being than Pen. Higher things are extant to him; and though his hatred of