In _The Virginians_, as a work of art, is discovered, more strongly than had shown itself yet in any of his works, that propensity to wandering which came to Thackeray because of his idleness. It is, I think, to be found in every book he ever wrote,--except _Esmond_; but is here more conspicuous than it had been in his earlier years. Though he can settle himself down to his pen and ink,--not always even to that without a struggle, but to that with sufficient burst of energy to produce a large average amount of work,--he cannot settle himself down to the task of contriving a story. There have been those,--and they have not been bad judges of literature,--who have told me that they have best liked these vague narratives. The mind of the man has been clearly exhibited in them. In them he has spoken out his thoughts, and given the world to know his convictions, as well as could have been done in the carrying out any well-conducted plot. And though the narratives be vague, the characters are alive. In _The Virginians_, the two young men and their mother, and the other ladies with whom they have to deal, and especially their aunt, the Baroness Bernstein, are all alive. For desultory reading, for that picking up of a volume now and again which requires permission to forget the plot of a novel, this novel is admirably adapted. There is not a page of it vacant or dull. But he who takes it up to read as a whole, will find that it is the work of a desultory writer, to whom it is not infrequently difficult to remember the incidents of his own narrative. "How good it is, even as it is!--but if he would have done his best for us, what might he not have done!" This, I think, is what we feel when we read _The Virginians_. The author's mind has in one way been active enough,--and powerful, as it always is; but he has been unable to fix it to an intended purpose, and has gone on from day to day furthering the difficulty he has intended to master, till the book, under the stress of circumstances,--demands for copy and the like,--has been completed before the difficulty has even in truth been encountered. CHAPTER VI. THACKERAY'S BURLESQUES. As so much of Thackeray's writing partakes of the nature of burlesque, it would have been unnecessary to devote a separate chapter to the subject, were it not that there are among his tales two or three so exceedingly good of their kind, coming so entirely up to our idea of what a prose burlesque should be, that were I to omit to mention them I should pass over a distinctive portion of our author's work.