It is a strange thing how perverse the divine sex is, in preferring confectionery to solid food; and superficial writers, to those who dive beneath the surface of society and expose its rottenness--like as they esteem Tupper's weak-minded version of Solomon's Proverbs beyond the best poetry that ever was written! I wasn't going to be beaten by the curate, however, prattled he never so wisely with the cunning of the serpent-charmer. "I grant you," said I, "that Dickens appeals oftener to our susceptible sympathies; but he is _unreal_ in comparison with Thackeray. The one was a far more correct student of human nature than the other. Dickens selected exceptionalities and invested them with attributes which we never see possessed by their prototypes whom we may meet in the world. He gives us either caricature, or pictures of men and women seen through a rose- coloured medium: Thackeray, on the other hand, shows you life _as it is_. He takes you behind the scenes and lets you perceive for yourself how the `dummies' and machinery are managed, how rough the distemper painting, all beauty from the front of `the house,' looks on nearer inspection, how the `lifts' work, and the `flats' are pushed on; besides disclosing all the secrets connected with masks and `properties.' He is not content in merely allowing you to witness the piece from before the curtain, in the full glory of that distance from the place of action which lends enchantment to the view, and with all the deceptive concomitants of music and limelights and Bengal fire! To adopt another illustration, I should say that Dickens was the John Leech of fictional literature, Thackeray its Hogarth. Even Jerrold, I think, in his most bitter, cynical moods, was truer to life and nature than Dickens. Did you ever read the former's _Story of a Feather_, by the way?" "No," answered Mawley, testily, "I can't say I ever did; and I don't think it likely I ever will." "Well, I dare say you are quite right, Frank," said the kindly voice of my usual ally little Miss Pimpernell, interposing just at the right time--as she always did, indeed--to throw oil on the troubled waters. "But, still, I like Dickens the best. Do you know, children," she went on, looking round, as we all sat watching her dear old wrinkled face beaming cheerily on us through her spectacles, "do you know, children, I've no doubt you'll laugh at me for telling you, but, when I first read `David Copperfield'--and I was an old woman then--I cried my eyes out over the account of the death of poor Dora's little dog Gyp. Dear little fellow! Don't you recollect how he crawled out of his tiny Chinese pagoda house, and licked his master's hand and died? I think it's the most affecting thing in fiction I ever read in my life."