rosy than elsewhere. As you look up through the open roof [of the Parthenon] you are almost oppressed by the serene depth of the blue overhead. Look even at the fragments of the marble, how soft and pure it is, glittering and white like fresh snow! "I was all beautiful,” it seems to say, “even the hidden parts of me were spotless, precious, and fair," and so, musing over this wonderful scene, perhaps I got some feeble glimpse or idea of that ancient Greek spirit which peopled it with sublime races of heroes and gods.

Now, Mr. Whibley has either not read this exquisite passage (unrivalled by Mr. Cobden) or, having read it, he dares to say that Thackeray is "unmindful of the associations" of Athens, is "blind to Athens and its splendid memories." I ask, is Mr. Whibley's account of Thackeray at Athens true or fair? He omits the spleen caused by the bill and the bugs, He suppresses the noble panegyric on the Parthenon, and on the men, half divine, who reared it and worshipped within it the goddess of the city of the violet crown of hills.

Thackeray, or Titmarsh, as any mortal but Mr. Whibley can see, is writing "humoristic" travels, he discharges his spleen, caused by the bill and the bugs, at the shabby modern town and the palace of the Basileus. And then he returns to old Athens, to her associations, to her beauty lying in ruinthat very ruin displaying her like "the King's daughter all glorious within""even the hidden parts of me were spotless, precious, and fair." He writes of that matchless Attic race to whom, and of whose gods, St. Paul himself (he remarks) spoke tenderly and gracefully. You could never guess at these things from what Mr. Whibley says about Thackeray's "contemptuous summary," which "not even Cobden himself surpassed." No more than history can biography be written by this method of suppression. One must ex

plain it (as I do) by want of care, rather than by want of candor, and by the unconscious bias of Mr. Whibley's acute sense of superiority. We all, we critics, have an honest joy in our superiority. There are things in Shakespeare, in Tennyson, in Scott, in Milton, in Wordsworth, to which we can feel superior. The greatest genius may, for a moment, make a slip which worthy souls like ourselves could easily a void. But then Thackeray did not make the slip for which Mr. Whibley condemns him, he was not blind to the glories of ancient Athens.

Nowhere do we find Mr. Whibley a more superior person than in his criticisms of "Barry Lyndon" and "Vanity Fair." One complaint is that the irony of "Barry Lyndon" is not perfectly sustained. The rogue's character, unlike that of Becky, is not "uniform and sustained." But what human character is "uniform"? Sir James Crichton-Browne has been blaming Mr. Froude for painting Carlyle as an incongruous grotesque monster. We are all incongruous. The cruelties of the kind, the lapses into sentiment of the ruffianly are commonplaces of human nature. I think that Barry's "babbling of flowers," and weeping when he meets his uncle, and even pitying his old mother, are natural things for such a man to do. It "gies a bit dirl now and then," the conscience of the most hardened, as Ratcliffe observes in "The Heart of Midlothian." "We can only regard Barry's backslidings into sensibility as a serious blemish," says Mr. Whibley. It is an arguable point. I fancy that Barry, alone and reminiscent, was "very capable of having these things happen to him." In other respects the criticism of Barry, with the notes on contemporary adventurers, is excellent, whether Mr. Whibley is right as to Barry's lapses into sensibility or not.

Excellent, too, are the remarks on Thackeray's obsession by the idea of snobs and

snobbishness. He liked

"The Book of Snobs" least of all his works, which is a comfort. But take the military snobs: be fair to the sketch! Thackeray finds "vacuous, good-natured, gentlemanlike, rickety little lieutenants," and he attacks the purchase system. Was he wrong? He knows that the little men had courage.

"Let those civilians who sneer at the acquirements of the army read Sir Harry Smith's account of the battle of Aliwal." "We must cheerfully give Grig and his like the character for courage which they display whenever occasion calls for it." The picture is not unfair, and Grig, buying himself over the head of the competent veteran Grizzle, has ceased to be. But, fanatic as I am, I agree with Mr. Whibley that Thackeray became obsessed by his idea. "He worries his point, until he himself becomes the mouthpiece of mean thoughts."

As to "Vanity Fair," "Thackeray remained old-fashioned to the end." He let the story "drag its author after it," as Scott confesses that he himself did. Thackeray moralizes. He was "oldfashioned," we plead guilty. He was of the eighteenth century. Fielding writes in "Tom Jones" (Book III. chapter vii.): "I ask pardon for this short appearance by way of Chorus on the stage. . . . As I could not prevail on any of my actors to speak, I was obliged to declare myself." In Thackeray who acts Chorus Mr. Whibley regrets "this constant intrusion."

Well, Mr. Whibley may edit a "'Van. ity Fair' as it should be," with a pair of scissors and a blue pencil. He can cut out all the last 150 pages, which are "a wanton and tedious" gathering up of the threads. He can delete all the moralizings. He knows that "recollections of boyhood and innocence,"

"pangs of dim remorse and doubt and shame," could not possibly have visited Rawdon Crawley. He can draw his blue pencil through such deplorable errors. He believes in characters with "a spirit of oneness." He differs from Thackeray, St. Paul, and many other moralists. I observe that Mr. Whibley admires Becky in these "wanton and tedious" last 150 pages which ought not to have been written, which come after "the logical end of the book." Is that end, then, so logical? Did not the logical study of the psychology of Becky demand the scenes at Pumpernickel?

Perhaps the critic is not more consistent, critically, than Rawdon and Barry are, morally. Perhaps "oneness of character" is a new-fashioned foible. Is it not plain that if Rawdon "believed in Becky's affection with a childlike faith," as Mr. Whibley truly says, and adored his son in her defect, his "oneness of character" may have been disintegrated through love? He goes to his old home with Becky; old memories of childish innocence are stirred: he dimly feels shame and doubt and remorse. But Mr. Whibley finds this impossible, a result of the author's "sentimentality." This is on page 95. On page 101, he explains (as if it needed explanation!) that Rawdon's character was modified by love of wife and child, and he remarks: "Rawdon Crawley, in brief, is not merely sympathetic, he is also true to life." He was quite untrue on page 95! If Mr. Whibley thus inconsistently blesses, on page 101, what he banned on page 95, may not even Rawdon's character have altered in the course of years? If Mr. Whibley discovers "a certain attraction" in the pages which he declares to be "wanton and tedious"; if he finds enjoyment in the deeds of Becky at Pumpernickel, does he himself shine in "oneness of spirit" as a critic? Thackeray "went back for inspiration

to the true English novel of Fielding," and then (I do not say altogether unjustly) he is blamed for acting Chorus as Fielding does in "the true English novel"!

It appears that Mr. Whibley began his remarks on "Vanity Fair" with an intention of being very superior, and then unconsciously, in places, declined from his pinnacle. On one point he certainly is not Middle Victorian. He denies that "Vanity Fair" is "heartless and cynical," as Ruskin and Mr. Stevenson deemed it to be. He adds that Amelia "is drawn with a cold contempt." One can only marvel! We know the persons from whom Thackeray says that he drew Amelia, as far as a character is drawn from actual models. That Lady Jane and Mrs. Major O'Dowd "breathe" in different "atmospheres" is given as a proof that the book "is composed in varying planes of caricature." How could Lady Jane and the good Irish camp follower possibly breathe in the same social atmosphere? One might as well insist that Miranda does not breathe the same atmosphere as Trinculo or the Boatswain.

While Thackeray does not construct his tale like "Balzac and the moderns," yet Thackeray's method is "vastly more artistic" (in the Waterloo portions) than that of the modern novelist, who would vulgarize Wellington's and Napoleon's speeches "by the accent of his own suburb," or "would present them as the dummies of a pedantic archæologist."

This is consoling. Thackeray is oldfashioned in construction. "The book has not a plan or motive in the sense that Balzac and the moderns have understood it." But, in the episode of Waterloo, Thackeray's method is vastly more artistic. Il se rattrape.

The old-fashioned sentimentalist who writes these lines has given his reasons for failing to admire absolutely Mr.

Whibley's critique of "Vanity Fair." It ends in an interesting discussion of Rigby, Mr. Wenham, and J. W. Croker. But as regards "Pendennis" I can only "say ditto" to Mr. Whibley-and to Thackeray's "I lit upon a very stupid part, I am sorry to say, and yet how well written it is!"

To criticize Mr. Whibley's censure of "The English Humorists" one would need a dozen pages, and room for a world of historical references. One point I may touch. Thackeray writes: "I wish Addison could have loved Pope better. The best satire that ever has been penned would never have been written then, and one of the best characters the world ever knew would have been without a flaw." The meaning seems as if it could not be mistaken. "The best satire" is Pope's character of Atticus (Addison); "one of the best characters" is meant for Addison himself. Thackeray seems to have held, rightly or wrongly, that Addison "without sneering taught the rest to sneer" at Pope, and perhaps at his "Iliad." Had Addison not done this, his character "would have been without a flaw," Thackeray says, and Pope, not irritated, would not have written "the best satire"-the character of Atticus. But Mr. Whibley thinks that Thackeray means Pope by the man who "would have been without a flaw," and by "the best satire" means "The Dunciad"! He writes: "It is hard to say which is the stranger perversity -to see Pope's character without a flaw, or to wish "The Dunciad' unwritten." A wilder perversity would have been to reckon "The Dunciad" "the best satire ever written." Mr. Whibley adds: "and thus it is that the didactic spirit always fails to interpret the past." It is he who has failed, in a style almost inconceivable, to interpret a sentence which, though allusive, is pellucid. Mr. Whibley's modern superiority to didacticism has blind

ed him to the perfectly obvious sense of Thackeray's observation.

In my poor opinion, Mr. Whibley's triumphant sense of modernité, and his failure to make "time allowances" for a man who wrote ""Tis sixty years since," and his inconsistencies, which surprise us in an amateur of "oneness of spirit,” are among the drawbacks to the merits of his book. I cannot here defend Thackeray's, or rather Esmond's, Marlborough, in “Esmond”— not for lack of materials-but I would like to attempt the task in "The English Historical Review." Where does Esmond speak of Marlborough's "cowardice"? The Rev. Jonathan Swift, I think, actually brought that absurd charge against the great commander who betrayed Tollemache (or Talmash) to France. It is James III., not Marlborough, I fancy, whom Thackeray draws with a happy ignorance, for that prince-"the best of kings and of men," says his old servant-was never in the least degree lively and amusing.

For the rest "half "The Newcomes' is irrelevant." Let Mr. Whibley take his scissors, edit "The Newcomes," and The Cornhill Magazine.

give us that half which, Hesiod says, is "more than the whole." For one, I shall cleave to the authorized version, and do my own "skipping." If Thackeray anywhere says that, "as a lazy idle boy," he "lived in fancy with Dumas' Musketeers," why, "if Pott said that, Pott lied," and so did Thackeray! The Musketeers came on the world when Thackeray was over thirty.

Everyone must see that what I fail to admire in Mr. Whibley's book is not merely the singular incongruities which I have noted, not merely the lack of historical perspective, but the absence of a quality which, perhaps, ought not to be present, enthusiasm; and the presence of another quality-an inordinate sense of modern superiority which ought to be absent.

Being an enthusiast, I see that Thackeray, as a matter of fact, was not "blind to the associations of Athens," but was frankly enthusiastic on that theme. But there are few enthusiasts, and few readers of Mr. Whibley will compare what Thackeray really wrote with what he did not write—according to his biographer. Andrew Lang.

I.

Travelling from Adana north-eastwards into Armenia and Kurdistan, we were always accompanied by an escort, sometimes of zaptiehs (mounted police), sometimes of regulars. They varied from fifteen to two or three, according to the condition of the country and of the Treasury. Our difficulty was to keep the number down. The local colonel is generally wise enough to try and get bread and butter for his impov

erished forces when he can; and the hungry soldier is not loth to profit by the opportunity.

The Turkish soldier has been much abused, and often rightly; but there are sides to the case which are too often forgotten. Most of those I knew had not been paid for many months; and it is useless to abuse a man who is starying for taking chickens and eggs of the villagers when he can. The villager gives him of his best, and there is no question of payment My experience

tells me that the Turkish soldier in nine cases out of ten is not the rapacious ruffian we are apt to think him. The peasant no more expects money for the entertainment of the devlet (as all Government servants are called), than the soldier expects to give it. Doubtless the collecting of the hated taxes by zaptiehs has awe with which they but, except among the north, where I once saw the zaptiehs refused hospitality, and a fight ensue, there were almost invariably friendliness on the villagers' part, and good manners on the soldiers'. The mas

increased the are regarded; Kurds in the

ter of the house where we and our guard were quartered always took coffee with the zaptiehs; and for the evening meal of rice and goat's flesh they generally all fared together-zaptiehs, servants, and villagers. The principal Sheikh always took the highest place on the divan or Kurdish carpet, and his children were the spoilt darlings of the soldiers. These things, matter of course as they seem to us in a country where the people governs, mean much where the only raison d'être of government is held to be the extracting of money. Doubtless the Government has no business to allow its soldiers to live on the people; but, granted the present state of things-an unpaid army, an ignorant peasantry who know the army is unpaid, and the prevailing ideas of government-my experience was, that the soldier was less grasping than the peasant was hospitable. I once saw three children dissolve into tears when I approached with an officer at my side. The soldier, a Kurd regular, assured me, while he patted the three little shaking backs, that it was all his fault and not mine: "The Government is so terrible, you know. It is my coat they fear"; but, for my part, I think my riding habit was quite as terrifying as his ragged uniform. Our escort generally included one offi

cer of the rank of lieutenant or captain, with a differing number of privates under him. No doubt they were picked men; but their conduct was certainly exemplary, as far as we were concerned. Many of the officers had passed through the military college at Stamboul, and seen something more of life than the boundaries of their own vilayet. They were always intensely religious men, and neither gales nor robbers were allowed to interfere with the five daily prayers. They were our principal companions through the monotonous day's march, and in the long winter's evenings in tent, khân, or peasant's hut. The captain's past experiences, his fluency in all the languages of the "Franga"-witness his "Bonjours, Madame," sole relic of a glorious past-the mysteries of his harem, the success of his sons, the duties of his religion, the monotony of his life; all would be produced for my edification. The discomforts of travelling in winter, the chance of getting shelter to-night, and of the lame mule holding out till the next stage such common interests helped to while away many an hour, and make us forget the bitterness of the wind. It was only at a later stage, when our friendship was established, that the real burdens of Achmet Yuzbashi's soul would out: his hard lot, the six months' arrears of pay due to him, the state of his country, terrorized by the dreaded Hamidiyeh, once even the wickedness of the Padishah himself-but this was only once, and from an officer who had fraternized with German soldiers.

The scourge of Mesopotamia is the Hamidiyeh, the famous Kurd cavalry. The Sultan had tried in vain to reduce the wild rebels of Kurdistan to submission; at length he bethought himself of the ingenious plan which has stood him in good stead in more than one of his provinces. The Kurds were in a majority in Armenia. They had al