n Prometheus, groaning as the vultures tear
him'; and with a few such strokes he gives etchings of other
celebrities in letters and politics. One may observe with astonishment
that the youthful Thackeray, who delighted in suburban chronicles, in
mean lives and paltry incidents, has risen by middle age to the rank
of an illustrious painter on the broad canvas of history. The annals
of literature contain few, if any, other examples of so remarkable a
transformation.

It is evident that Thackeray, like Scott, was an industrious collector
of material for his novels from all sources; we may refer, for an
instance, to a scene which will have left a passing impression upon
many readers, where, as the French and English armies are facing each
other on two sides of a little stream in the Low Countries, Prince
Charles Edward rides down to the French bank and exchanges a salute
with Esmond. It falls quite naturally and easily into the narrative,
and reads like a very happy original conception; yet the incident,
which is quite authentic, may be found in the papers obtained in the
last century from the Scottish convent at Paris by Macpherson.

In _The Virginians_, which might have had for its second title _Forty
Years Later_, the chronicle of the Esmond family is continued; with
North America during the French war for the battlefields, Braddock,
Wolfe, and Washington for the military figures, and Esmond's grandsons
as the personages round whom the story's interest centres. It is a
novel of very great merit, skilfully constructed, full of vivacious
writing and delineation of character; and the novelist avails himself
with his usual adroitness of the celebrated incidents of this period
and the salient features of English society in the middle of the last
century. Yet we must reluctantly admit that Thackeray has passed his
climacteric, and that as a work of the historical school this book
cannot claim parity with Esmond. George Warrington was on Braddock's
staff at the fatal rout and massacre on the Ohio; his brother Harry
was with Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham; they witnessed a battle lost
and a battle won, and each saw his commander fall. But George's
recital of his hairbreadth escape lacks the stern simplicity with
which his grandfather told the story of Marlborough's wars; and the
device of his being saved from the Indians by a French officer, who
was his intimate friend, is so ingenious as to be a trifle
commonplace. The author