l
profound," revealed in the concluding part of _Vanity Fair_ which the
discernment of one generation will not suffice to fathom. A hundred
years hence, if he only lives to do justice to himself, he will be
better known than he is now. A hundred years hence, some thoughtful
critic, standing and looking down on the deep waters, will see
shining through them the pearl without price of a purely original
mind--such a mind as the Bulwers, etc., his contemporaries have
_not_,--not acquirements gained from study, but the thing that came
into the world with him--his inherent genius: the thing that made
him, I doubt not, different as a child from other children, that
caused him, perhaps, peculiar griefs and struggles in life, and that
now makes him as a writer unlike other writers. Excuse me for
recurring to this theme, I do not wish to bore you.

'You say Mr. Huntingdon reminds you of Mr. Rochester. Does he? Yet
there is no likeness between the two; the foundation of each
character is entirely different. Huntingdon is a specimen of the
naturally selfish, sensual, superficial man, whose one merit of a
joyous temperament only avails him while he is young and healthy,
whose best days are his earliest, who never profits by experience,
who is sure to grow worse the older he grows. Mr. Rochester has a
thoughtful nature and a very feeling heart; he is neither selfish nor
self-indulgent; he is ill-educated, misguided; errs, when he does
err, through rashness and inexperience: he lives for a time as too
many other men live, but being radically better than most men, he
does not like that degraded life, and is never happy in it. He is
taught the severe lessons of experience and has sense to learn wisdom
from them. Years improve him; the effervescence of youth foamed
away, what is really good in him still remains. His nature is like
wine of a good vintage: time cannot sour, but only mellows him. Such
at least was the character I meant to pourtray.

'Heathcliffe, again, of _Wuthering Heights_ is quite another
creation. He exemplifies the effects which a life of continued
injustice and hard usage may produce on a naturally perverse,
vindictive, and inexorable disposition. Carefully trained and kindly
treated, the black gipsy-cub might possibly have been reared into a
human being, but ty