Thackeray was, next to Shakespeare, the writer most wonderfully combined of instinct and reason that English literature of grace has produced. He has been compared with the Frenchman, Balzac. Since I have no desire to provoke squabbles about favorite authors, let us merely definitely agree that such a comparison is absurd and pass on. Because you must have noticed that Balzac was often feeble in his reason and couldn't make it keep step with his instinct, while in Thackeray they both step together like the Siamese twins. It is a very striking fact, indeed, that during all Becky's intense early experiences with the great world, Thackeray does not make her guilty. All the circumstances of that world were guilty and she is placed amidst the circumstances; but that is all. “The ladies in the drawing room,” said one lady to Thackeray, when “Vanity Fair” in monthly parts publishing had just reached the catastrophe of Rawdon, Rebecca, old Steyne and the bracelet--“The ladies have been discussing Becky Sharpe and they all agree that she was guilty. May I ask if we guessed rightly?” “I am sure I don't know,” replied the “seared cynic,” mischievously. “I am only a man and I haven't been able to make up my mind on that point. But if the ladies agree I fear it may be true--you must understand your sex much better than we men!” That is proof that she was not guilty with Steyne. But straightway then, Thackeray starts out to make her guilty with others. It is so much the more proof of her previous innocence that, incomparable artist as he was in showing human character, he recognized that he could convince the reader of her guilt only by disintegrating her, whipping himself meanwhile into a ceaseless rage of vulgar abuse of her, a thing of which Thackeray was seldom guilty. But it was not really Becky that became guilty--it was the woman that English society and Thackeray remorselessly made of her. I wouldn't be a lawyer for a wagon load of diamonds, but if I had had to be a lawyer I should have preferred to be a solicitor at the London bar in 1817 to write the brief for the respondent in the celebrated divorce case of Crawley vs. Crawley. Against the back-ground of the world she lived in Becky could have been painted as meekly white and beautiful as that lovely old picture of St. Cecilia at the Choir Organ. Perhaps Becky was not strictly a heroine; but she was a honey. * * * * *