s with gentle-folk, he may be touchy and troublesome, with much
self-assertiveness, but also with much self-respect. He has as many
faults as other people, but among them brutal rudeness is practically
unknown; yet when Rebecca Sharp is driven in Mr. Sedley's carriage to
Sir Pitt Crawley's, having given nothing to the domestics on leaving
the Sedleys, the coachman is ludicrously rude to a poor governess.

'"I shall write to Mr. Sedley, and inform him of your conduct,"
said Miss Sharp to him.

'"Don't," replied that functionary; "I hope you've forgot nothink?
Miss 'Melia's gownds--have you got them--as the lady's maid was to
have 'ad? I hope they'll fit you. Shut the door, Jim, you'll get no
good out of _'er_," continued John, pointing with his thumb towards
Miss Sharp; "a bad lot, I tell you, a bad lot."'

One may conjecture that Thackeray's natural turn for comic burlesque,
which comes out so plainly in his drawings, had become ingrained and
inveterate by early practice, and certainly his immoderate delight in
setting snobs and flunkeys on a pillory became a flaw in the
perfection of his higher composition. It might well produce, among
foreigners at any rate, an unreal impression of the true relations
existing between different classes of English society.

But these are slight blemishes upon the surface of an epoch-making
book, for _Vanity Fair_ inaugurated a new school of novel-writing
in this country, with its combined vigour and subtlety of
character-drawing, and with the marvellous dexterity of its scenes and
dramatic situations. The army and military life in all its phases had
a remarkable attraction for him; in all his larger books one or more
officers are brought prominently upon the foreground of his canvas. He
hits off the strong and weak points of the profession, in war and
peace, with a truth and humour that gave freshness and originality to
the whole subject, and the best of these pictures are in _Vanity
Fair_. There is not one of its leading _militaires_--Dobbin and
Osborne, Crawley and Major O'Dowd--in whom a typical representative of
well-known varieties may not be recognised. His fine picturesque
handiwork, his consistent preference of the real to the romantic, and
his reserve in the use of such tempting materials as the battlefield
affords to the story-teller, are shown in his treatment of the episode
of Waterloo. He is far too good an artist to lay out for us a gr