There is scarcely need for more illustration of my point, but it is tempting to look further. In all these well-remembered books Thackeray, in an expansive mood, opens his mind and talks it out on the subject of some big, loosely-knit company of men and women. He remembers, as we all remember, with a strong sense of the tone and air of an old experience, and a sharp recollection of moments that happened for some reason to be salient, significant, peculiarly keen or curious. Ethel Newcome, when she comes riding into the garden in the early morning, full of the news of her wonderful discovery, the letter shut in the old book; Blanche Amory, when she is caught out in her faithlessness, warbling to the new swain at the piano and whipping her handkerchief over his jewel-case as the old one enters; Madam Esmond, on her balcony, defying the mob with "Britons, strike home"; old Sir Pitt, toasting his rasher in the company of the char-woman: I name them at random, they are all instances of the way in which the glance of memory falls on the particular moment, the aspect that hardens and crystallizes an impression. Thackeray has these flashes in profusion; they break out unforgettably as we think of his books. The most exquisite of all, perhaps, is in Esmond, that sight of the dusky choir of Winchester Cathedral, the shine of the candle-light, the clear faces of Rachel and her son as they appear to the returned wanderer. We no longer listen to a story, no longer see the past in a sympathetic imagination; this is a higher power of intensity, a fragment of the past made present and actual. But with Thackeray it is always a fragment, never to any real purpose a deliberate and continuous enactment.