major. Then he is
ill, and nearly dies, and his mother comes up to nurse him. And there is
his friend Warrington, of whose family down in Suffolk we shall have
heard something when we have read _The Virginians_,--one I think of the
finest characters, as it is certainly one of the most touching, that
Thackeray ever drew. Warrington, and Pen's mother, and Laura are our
hero's better angels,--angels so good as to make us wonder that a
creature so weak should have had such angels about him; though we are
driven to confess that their affection and loyalty for him are natural.
There is a melancholy beneath the roughness of Warrington, and a
feminine softness combined with the reticent manliness of the man, which
have endeared him to readers beyond perhaps any character in the book.
Major Pendennis has become immortal. Selfish, worldly, false, padded,
caring altogether for things mean and poor in themselves; still the
reader likes him. It is not quite all for himself. To Pen he is
good,--to Pen who is the head of his family, and to come after him as
the Pendennis of the day. To Pen and to Pen's mother he is beneficent
after his lights. In whatever he undertakes it is so contrived that the
reader shall in some degree sympathise with him. And so it is with poor
old Costigan, the drunken Irish captain, Miss Fotheringay's papa. He was
not a pleasant person. "We have witnessed the deshabille of Major
Pendennis," says our author; "will any one wish to be valet-de-chambre
to our other hero, Costigan? It would seem that the captain, before
issuing from his bedroom, scented himself with otto of whisky." Yet
there is a kindliness about him which softens our hearts, though in
truth he is very careful that the kindness shall always be shown to
himself.

Among these people Pen makes his way to the end of the novel, coming
near to shipwreck on various occasions, and always deserving the
shipwreck which he has almost encountered. Then there will arise the
question whether it might not have been better that he should be
altogether shipwrecked, rather than housed comfortably with such a wife
as Laura, and left to that enjoyment of happiness forever after, which
is the normal heaven prepared for heroes and heroines who have done
their work well through three volumes. It is almost the only instance in
all Thackeray's works in which this state of bliss is reached. George
Osborne, who is the beautiful lover in _Vanity Fair_, is killed almost
bef