There remains always the perpetual problem if _Vanity Fair_ be a cynic's view of life, the sardonic grin of a misanthrope gloating over the trickery and meanness of mankind. It is well to remember how many are the scenes of tenderness and pathos in _Vanity Fair_, how powerfully told, how deeply they haunt the memory and sink into the heart. The school life of Dobbin, the ruin of old Sedley and the despair of Amelia, the last parting of Amelia and George, Osborne revoking his will, Sedley broken down, Rawdon in the sponging-house, the birth and boyhood of Georgy Osborne, the end of old Sedley, the end of old Osborne, are as pathetic and humane as anything in our literature. Mature men, who study fiction with a critical spirit and a cool head, admit that the only passages in English romance that they can never read again without faltering, without a dim eye and a quavering voice, are these scenes of pain and sorrow in _Vanity Fair_. The death of old Sedley, nursed by his daughter, is a typical piece--perfect in simplicity, in truth, in pathos. One night when she stole into his room, she found him awake, when the broken old man made his confession. "O, Emmy, I've been thinking we were very unkind and unjust to you," he said, and put out his cold and feeble hand to her. She knelt down and prayed by his bed-side, as he did too, having still hold of her hand. When our turn comes, friend, may we have such company in our prayers. And this is the arch-cynic and misanthrope, grinning at all that is loveable and tender! It is too often forgotten that _Vanity Fair_ is not intended to be simply the world: it is society, it is fashion, the market where mammon-worship, folly, and dissipation display and barter their wares. Thackeray wrote many other books, and has given us many worthy characters. Dobbin, Warrington, Colonel Newcome, Ethel Newcome, Henry Esmond are generous, brave, just, and true. Neither _Esmond_, nor _The Newcomes_, nor _The Virginians_ are in any sense the work of a misanthrope. And where Thackeray speaks in his own person, in the lectures on the _English Humourists_, he is brimful of all that is genial, frank, lenient, and good-hearted. What we know of the man, who loved his friends and was loved by them, and who in all his critical and personal sketches showed himself a kindly, courteous, and considerate gentleman, inclines us to repel this charge of cynicism. We will not brand him as a mere satirist, and a cruel mocker at human virtue and goodness.