to last in conception and execution is an altogether lovely book; and
if it go by heroes--Esmond and Butler--then again there is no
comparison, for the grandson of Cromwell's trooper was a very
wearisome, pedantic, grey-coloured Puritan in whom one cannot affect
the slightest interest. How poorly he compares with Henry Esmond,
who was slow and diffident, but a very brave, chivalrous, single-
hearted, modest gentleman, such as Thackeray loved to describe. Were
it not heresy to our Lady Castlewood, whom all must love and serve,
it also comes to one that Henry and Beatrix would have made a
complete pair if she had put some assurance in him and he had
installed some principle into her, and Henry Esmond might have
married his young kinswoman had he been more masterful and self-
confident. Thackeray takes us to a larger and gayer scene than
Scott's Edinburgh of narrow streets and gloomy jails and working
people and old-world theology, but yet it may be after all Scott is
stronger. No bit of history, for instance, in Esmond takes such a
grip of the imagination as the story of the Porteous mob. After a
single reading one carries that night scene etched for ever in his
memory. The sullen, ruthless crowd of dour Scots, the grey rugged
houses lit up by the glare of the torches, the irresistible storming
of the Tolbooth, the abject helplessness of Porteous in the hands of
his enemies, the austere and judicial self-restraint of the people,
who did their work as those who were serving justice, their care to
provide a minister for the criminal's last devotions, and their quiet
dispersal after the execution--all this remains unto to-day the most
powerful description of lynch law in fiction. The very strength of
old Edinburgh and of the Scots-folk is in the Heart of Midlothian.
The rivalry, however, between these two books must be decided by the
heroine, and it seems dangerous to the lover of Scott to let
Thackeray's fine lady stand side by side with our plain peasant girl,