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, the wit of the common scenes, the terrible power of
the tragic scenes, the perfection of the _mise-en-scène_--the rattle,
the fun, the glitter of the Fair, are sustained from end to end, from
the first words of the ineffable Miss Pinkerton to the _Vanitas
Vanitatum_ when the showman shuts up his puppets in their box. There