In _The Virginians_, which might have had for its second title _Forty Years Later_, the chronicle of the Esmond family is continued; with North America during the French war for the battlefields, Braddock, Wolfe, and Washington for the military figures, and Esmond's grandsons as the personages round whom the story's interest centres. It is a novel of very great merit, skilfully constructed, full of vivacious writing and delineation of character; and the novelist avails himself with his usual adroitness of the celebrated incidents of this period and the salient features of English society in the middle of the last century. Yet we must reluctantly admit that Thackeray has passed his climacteric, and that as a work of the historical school this book cannot claim parity with Esmond. George Warrington was on Braddock's staff at the fatal rout and massacre on the Ohio; his brother Harry was with Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham; they witnessed a battle lost and a battle won, and each saw his commander fall. But George's recital of his hairbreadth escape lacks the stern simplicity with which his grandfather told the story of Marlborough's wars; and the device of his being saved from the Indians by a French officer, who was his intimate friend, is so ingenious as to be a trifle commonplace. The author does not sketch in any details or personal adventures from the great fight under the walls of Quebec; he has fallen back, at this part of the story, into personal narrative, and _The Warrington Memoirs_ only describe how the news of Wolfe's victory and death were acclaimed in London. In the War of Independence, George Warrington, who takes the British side, records the feelings and situation of an American Loyalist--a class to whom only Mr. Lecky, among historians, has done fair justice. There is much acute and well-informed reflection upon the state of the colonies at this time, the strong currents of party politics, and the exasperation which brought about the rebellion; but, on the whole, this part of the narrative has too much resemblance to real history. It has not enough of the imaginative and picturesque element to lift it above the comparatively prosaic level of an interesting memoir, though some good scenes and situations are obtained by making the two Warrington brothers take opposite sides. When we learn that, in 1759, the English Lord Castlewood repaired his shattered fortunes by marrying an American heiress, we are inclined to suspect that our author has taken a hint from the fashion of a century later.