develop, and to what lengths in heartlessness his satire carried him. Meredith’s Countess is possible; but Becky Sharpe is impossible. The same may be said of his male villains. Indeed, he has none. There is something eminently human in the egoism of the wise youth Adrian Harley. We greet him ever with a cheerful smile, and for one of his witty remarks would have no, or only a very slight, objection to part with our last five-pound note. Contrast him with Barnes Newcome, and you have all the difference between black and gray. All Thackeray’s bad people are irredeemably bad, and all his good people hardly want wings to fit them for the angelic sphere. It is true, his female angels do not inspire us with a very ardent yearning for the joys of Paradise, if they are to be shared in such extremely insipid and melancholy society. Eternity with Amelia and Laura Pendennis and Lady Castlewood could not be described as a captivating perspective. But Mr. Meredith must not be acquitted of any pronounced sins against reality. English taste is such, and its restrictions and exuberances are so little in accordance with life as it is lived by even those who paint it falsely, that it is impossible for the English novelist to escape sins of the sort. In general, Meredith is sufficiently just to humanity in its faults and in its virtues; it is only when its oddities catch hold of his fancy that he runs riot, and surpasses nature; only then is he apt to overdraw his account upon the bank of credulity.