yndon_. We quote here from Mrs.
Ritchie's introduction:

'My father once said to me when I was a girl, "You needn't read
_Barry Lyndon_; you won't like it." Indeed it is scarcely a book to
_like_, but one to admire and to wonder at for its consummate power
and mastery.... Barry Lyndon tells his own story, so as to enlist
every sympathy against himself, and yet all flows so plausibly, so
glibly, that one can hardly explain how the effect was produced.
From the very first sentence, almost, one receives the impression
of a lawless adventurer, brutal, heartless, with low instincts and
rapid perceptions. Together with his own autobiography, he gives a
picture of the world in which he lives and brags, a picture so
vivid ... that as one reads one almost seems to hear the tread of
remorseless fate sounding through all the din and merriment. Take
those descriptions of the Prussian army during the Seven Years'
War, and of that hand of man which weighs so heavily upon man--what
a haunting page in history!'

These remarks are very justly appreciative, for the book stamps
Thackeray as a fine impressionist, as an artist who skilfully mixes
the colours of reality and imagination into a composition of striking
scenes and the effective portrayal of character. With extraordinary
ability and consistency to the type he works out the gradual evolution
of a wild Irish boy, hot-headed in love and fighting, full of daring
impetuosity and ignorant vanity, into the ruffianly soldier, the
intrepid professional gambler, and finally into the selfish
profligate, who marries a great heiress and sets up as a county
magnate. Instead of the mere unadulterated villainy and meanness which
were impersonated in his previous stories, we have here the complex
strength and weakness of real human nature; we have the whole action
lifted above the platform of city swindlers, insignificant scoundrels,
and needy cardsharpers, up to a stage exhibiting historic personages
and scenes, courts and battlefields; and we breathe freely in the
wider air of immorality on a grand scale. As a sample of spirited
freehand drawing, the sketches of Continental society, 'before that
vulgar Corsican upset the gentry of the world,' are admirable for
their force and originality; and what can be better as a touch of
character than the following defence of his profession by a prince of
gamblers?

'I spea