sweet, pale face--the purple
eyelids were fringed and closed, and one round arm, smooth and white,
lay outside of the coverlet. Good God! how pure she was; how gentle,
how tender, and how friendless! and he, how selfish, brutal, and black
with crime! Heart-stained and shame-stricken, he stood at the bed's
foot, and looked at the sleeping girl. How dared he--who was he, to
pray for one so spotless! God bless her! God bless her! He came to
the bed-side, and looked at the hand, the little soft hand, lying
asleep; and he bent over the pillow noiselessly towards the gentle pale
face.

The whole tragedy of their lives is given in miniature in this touching
scene; and yet how natural and commonplace are all the effects of which
it is composed, how few and simple the words which describe such love
and such remorse. It is hard to judge in _Vanity Fair_ which are the
more perfect in style, the pathetic and tragic scenes or those which
are charged with humour and epigram.

And the scene after George's marriage, when old Osborne burns his will
and erases his son's name from the family Bible--and the scene when
Osborne receives his son's last letter--"Osborne trembled long before
the letter from his dead son"--"His father could not see the kiss
George had placed on the superscription of his letter. Mr. Osborne
dropped it with the bitterest, deadliest pang of balked affection and
revenge. His son was still beloved and unforgiven." And the scene of
"the widow and mother," when young Georgy is born, and the wonderful
scene when Sir Pitt proposes marriage to the little green-eyed
governess and she is scared into confessing her great secret, and the
most famous scene of all, when Rawdon Crawley is released from the
sponging-house and finds Lord Steyne with Rebecca alone. It is but a
single page. The words spoken are short, brief, plain--not five
sentences pass--"I am innocent," said she--"Make way, let me pass,"
cried My Lord--"You lie, you coward and villain!" said Rawdon. There
is in all fiction no single scene more vivid, more true, more burnt
into the memory, more tragic. And with what noble simplicity, with
what incisive reticence, with what subtle anatomy of the human heart,
is it recorded.

_Vanity Fair_ was written, it is true, under the strain of serial
publication, haste, and anxiety, but it is perhaps, even in style, the
most truly complete. The wonderful variety, elasticity, and freshness
of the dialogue,