AVERAGE OF LIFE. 133 not much less scientific in eyes, and ought by this time to have a regular classification of them. The effect of all this is that you trace something genuine in Mr. Thackeray's figures more easily than you do in Mr. Dickens's. You have not such a series of peculiarities to separate before you can regard the nature by itself. Fokers, Pendennises, Helens, and Lauras abound everywhere. You can't go out without meeting them, nor do they, the first especially, deny the portraiture; if there is any desire to deny it, that arises, not from Mr. Thackeray's allowing them too little goodness, but from his not allowing them enough wits. The ladies, however, ought to be propitiated by something of additional beauty and force assigned to them in Pendennis. Compare the tone of the two books, and one will be found, as a whole, light-hearted and hopeful, the other dolorous and depressing. Both books are comic in much of their expression, for both writers are humourists, but the humour of one is more gloomy than that of the other, as if from a shadow fallen upon a life. While in David Copperfield the tragedy is consummated in a single chapter, in Pendennis it is spread over the whole surface of the story. In the former case a man is slain; in the latter case human aspirations and complacencies are demolished. Rising from the perusal of Mr. Dickens's work, you forget that there is evil in the world, and remember only the good. The distinction drawn between the bad and good is a broad one. Rising from Mr. Thackeray's, you are doubtful of yourself and of humanity at large, for nobody is very bad or very good, and everybody seems pretty well contented. The morale might almost be summed up into the American's creed, "There's nothing new, there's nothing true, and it don't signify." One might almost fancy that Mr. Thackeray had reduced his own theory of life to that average which he strikes from the practice of all around him. We are brought into a mess and left there, woman's love and purity being the only light upon our path. Mr. Dickens touches a higher key; his villains, Heep and Littimer, stand out as villains; his women--and we may take My Aunt and Agnes as equally faithful pictures,-hold an eminence which women may and do reach in this world, and which mere purity and love do not suffice to attain. We do not wish, however, to be hard on Mr. Thackeray's selection of his scene. As forms of sensual existence, varied only by circumstance and taste, his characters are as true as the velvet of Mr. Hunt's Mariana, so lately a topic of discussion, or the topers of Teniers-only do not let the picture be taken as expressing the whole truth of the matter; there is a large suppression. We must grant, by way of counterpoise, that Mr. Dickens frequently sins in excess. He contemplates human nature in its strength, and on its unsophisticated side;-Mr. Thackeray in its weakness and on its most artificial basis. The consequence is, that the former verges on the sentimental, the latter on the cynical, one being the reaction of the other; only while the first is no unmanly weapon in Mr. Dickens's hand, the last is a sufficiently temperate one in the hand of Mr. Thackeray. As to actual influence, we should, for the reasons aforesaid, assign the higher place to Mr. Dickens, partly because the expressed morality comes forth as something definite, the fruit of THE PREFERENCE TO COPPERFIELD. 135 personal experience, yet conveyed through a personage of the tale, partly because the highest lessons inculcated, such as those of faith in Mr. Peggotty and resignation in Ham, are some of the highest that can be inculcated, and partly, also, because the world which Mr. Thackeray experiments on, is a world of salamanders, fireproof, inclined to disbelieve that the lesson they can criticise may possibly increase their condemnation. Each rejoices to be what he is. Foker and Major Pendennis rejoice in their portraits, save that the latter don't think he is so "doosedly" made up, after all. You may as well write at them as preach at them; and did not the Major go to church? Perfect as Pendennis is, then, in execution, we are bound, when weighing it with Copperfield, to adjudge the chief merit where the most. universal interest is conciliated and the most exalted teaching hidden beneath the tale. The epic is greater than the satire. GROTE'S HISTORY OF GREECE. MR. GROTE's history has yet arrived only at the close of the fourth century, B.C., and the fall of the Thirty Tyrants. Two of the six compartments in which he proposes, to use his own quaint phrase, "to exhaust the free life of collective Hellas," still remain to be accomplished. But the history of Greece is written. Stirring events and great names are still to come; the romantic enterprise of Cyrus, and the retreat of the Ten Thousand, the elective trust of Thebes, and the chivalrous glories of her one great man. Demosthenes has yet to prove how vain is the divinest eloquence when poured to degenerate hearts. Agis and Cleomenes have yet to exhibit the spectacle, ever fraught with melancholy interest, of noble natures out of harmony with the present, and spending their energies in the vain attempt to turn back the stream of time, and call again into existence the feelings and the institutions of an irrevocable past. The monarchy of Philip is yet due to fate. Macedon is still to Greece what Russia, before Peter the Great, was to Europe-a half-unknown and barbarous land, full of latent energy and power, and waiting for the rise of a master mind to discern its embryo greatness, and turn its peasants into the unconquerable phalanx. Alexander must arise to carry forth with his victorious arms the seeds of Greek civilization GREATNESS OF THE WORK. 137 over the eastern world. Aristotle must arise to gather up to one boundless mind the vast results of Greek philosophy, and found an empire vaster and more enduring than that of his great pupil in the subjugated intellect of man. But the history of Greece is finished. Athens and Sparta, the two great antagonistic types of Greek society, politics, and education, have attained their full development, passed their allotted hour of trial, and touched upon their doom. The shades of night are gathering on the bright day of Hellas. The momentous work of that wonderful people is accomplished; the interest of the great intellectual and moral contest has centred in one man; the last scene of the Phado has been enacted, and Socrates has died. The history of Greece is written, and the character of the historian is decided. Mr. Grote has achieved a noble work—a work which, unless the glory of classical literature is a dream, will well repay, in usefulness and in renown, the devotion of a scholar's life. His book will be called great while Grecian story retains its interest. Even making allowance for the wonderful labours of the Germans, and the extraordinary addition which their learned toils have made to our knowledge of the subject, we should say that the work before us had almost disentombed many portions of Greek life. We cannot sufficiently extol the wonderful knowledge of all the feelings, habits, associations, and institutions of an extinct people, which every page exhibits, and the familiar mastery with which a mind steeped in Grecian lore analyses, combines, criticises, and unfolds the mass of heterogeneous and often conjectural materials on |