ore our eyes, on the field of battle, and we feel that Nemesis has
with justice taken hold of him. Poor old Dobbin does marry the widow,
after fifteen years of further service, when we know him to be a
middle-aged man and her a middle-aged woman. That glorious Paradise of
which I have spoken requires a freshness which can hardly be attributed
to the second marriage of a widow who has been fifteen years mourning
for her first husband. Clive Newcome, "the first young man," if we may
so call him, of the novel which I shall mention just now, is carried so
far beyond his matrimonial elysium that we are allowed to see too
plainly how far from true may be those promises of hymeneal happiness
forever after. The cares of married life have settled down heavily upon
his young head before we leave him. He not only marries, but loses his
wife, and is left a melancholy widower with his son. Esmond and Beatrix
certainly reach no such elysium as that of which we are speaking. But
Pen, who surely deserved a Nemesis, though perhaps not one so black as
that demanded by George Osborne's delinquencies, is treated as though he
had been passed through the fire, and had come out,--if not pure gold,
still gold good enough for goldsmiths. "And what sort of a husband will
this Pendennis be?" This is the question asked by the author himself at
the end of the novel; feeling, no doubt, some hesitation as to the
justice of what he had just done. "And what sort of a husband will this
Pendennis be?" many a reader will ask, doubting the happiness of such a
marriage and the future of Laura. The querists are referred to that lady
herself, who, seeing his faults and wayward moods--seeing and owning
that there are better men than he--loves him always with the most
constant affection. The assertion could be made with perfect confidence,
but is not to the purpose. That Laura's affection should be constant, no
one would doubt; but more than that is wanted for happiness. How about
Pendennis and his constancy?

_The Newcomes_, which I bracket in this chapter with _Pendennis_, was
not written till after _Esmond_, and appeared between that novel and
_The Virginians_, which was a sequel to _Esmond_. It is supposed to be
edited by Pen, whose own adventures we have just completed, and is
commenced by that celebrated night passed by Colonel Newcome and his boy
Clive at the Cave of Harmony, during which the colonel is at first so
pleasantly received and so genially ente