rtained, but from which he is at
last banished, indignant at the iniquities of our drunken old friend
Captain Costigan, with whom we had become intimate in Pen's own memoirs.
The boy Clive is described as being probably about sixteen. At the end
of the story he has run through the adventures of his early life, and is
left a melancholy man, a widower, one who has suffered the extremity of
misery from a stepmother, and who is wrapped up in the only son that is
left to him,--as had been the case with his father at the beginning of
the novel. _The Newcomes_, therefore, like Thackeray's other tales, is
rather a slice from the biographical memoirs of a family, than a romance
or novel in itself.

It is full of satire from the first to the last page. Every word of it
seems to have been written to show how vile and poor a place this world
is; how prone men are to deceive, how prone to be deceived. There is a
scene in which "his Excellency Rummun Loll, otherwise his Highness
Rummun Loll," is introduced to Colonel Newcome,--or rather
presented,--for the two men had known each other before. All London was
talking of Rummun Loll, taking him for an Indian prince, but the
colonel, who had served in India, knew better. Rummun Loll was no more
than a merchant, who had made a precarious fortune by doubtful means.
All the girls, nevertheless, are running after his Excellency. "He's
known to have two wives already in India," says Barnes Newcome; "but, by
gad, for a settlement, I believe some of the girls here would marry
him." We have a delightful illustration of the London girls, with their
bare necks and shoulders, sitting round Rummun Loll and worshipping him
as he reposes on his low settee. There are a dozen of them so enchanted
that the men who wish to get a sight of the Rummun are quite kept at a
distance. This is satire on the women. A few pages on we come upon a
clergyman who is no more real than Rummun Loll. The clergyman, Charles
Honeyman, had married the colonel's sister and had lost his wife, and
now the brothers-in-law meet. "'Poor, poor Emma!' exclaimed the
ecclesiastic, casting his eyes towards the chandelier and passing a
white cambric pocket-handkerchief gracefully before them. No man in
London understood the ring business or the pocket-handkerchief business
better, or smothered his emotion more beautifully. 'In the gayest
moments, in the giddiest throng of fashion, the thoughts of the past
will rise; the departed will be