He has a terrible insight into the hearts of frivolous and intriguing women. He is almost enthusiastic in his descriptions of their base and ignoble passions. He not only describes their meanness, their spitefulness, their jealousy, and their selfishness, with painful minuteness, but actually rips them to pieces. It is believed that he could not portray a good woman at all. He attempted it in Ethel Newcome and in Amelia Sedley, two of his most prominent characters, and utterly failed. He made one a flirt and the other a fool. He has not escaped censure for such sermons as the following in VANITY FAIR and the "Newcomes" :

"I know few things more affecting than that timorous debasement and self-humiliation of a woman. How she owns it is she and not the man who is guilty! How she takes all the faults on her side! How she courts in a manner punishment for the wrongs which she has not committed, and persists in shielding the real culprit. It is those who injure women who get the most kindness from them. They are born timid and tyrants, and maltreat those who are humblest before them."

"To coax, to flatter and befool some one is every woman's business; she is none if she declines this office. But men are not provided with such powers of humbug or endurance. They perish and pine away miserably when bored, or they shrink off to the club or public-house for comfort."

The closing scenes in VANITY FAIR, in which Becky Sharp's vagabond career is described; are beyond all question the finest in the book. THACKERAY was evidently a man of the world an observer rather than a philosopher. He studied men and things more than he did books, or else he could not have pictured so vividly Joseph Sedley, creaking and puffing up the stairs which led above the rooms

occupied by gamblers, small tradesmen, peddlers, and Bohemian vaulters and tumblers, "to where Becky had found a little nest, as dirty a little refuge as ever beauty. lay hid in." The scene where the Dutch student, with the whitey-brown ringlets and large finger-ring, is bawling at the key-hole, while the gentleman from Bengal is approaching, is inimitable. Becky opens the door to see who is coming, and in an instant puts a rouge-pot, a brandy-bottle, and a plate of broken meat into the bed, gives a smooth to her hair, and lets in her visitor. Poor Joseph deserved to be wheedled by a woman who could sit upon a brandy-bottle, and play the coquette with rouge up to her eye-lids and a handkerchief of torn and faded lace. "She never was Lady Crawley, though she continued so to call herself."

But we close the book. If the author has not portrayed life as it ought to be, he has painted it as it really is. The lesson inculcated by exhibiting the awful and fearful consequences of placing the moral in subordination to the intellectual being, cannot easily be forgotten.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL,

THIS play was originally called "Love's Labor Won." It is not known why or by whom the title was changed. Meares, a contemporary of SHAKSPEARE, speaks of "Love's Labor Won " as being among the best of SHAKSPEARE'S comedies. He doubtless alludes to this play, for there is no other of the author's dramas to which the title is applicable. Moreover, there are several passages in the text in which allusions are made to its original name. In the fifth

And again we have

"The King's a beggar, now the play is done;
All is well ended if this suit be won."

Coleridge describes this drama as the counterpart of "Love's Labor Lost," and expresses the opinion that it was written at two different and distant periods of the poet's life, and points out two distinct styles, not only of thought, but of expression. Evidently its chief purpose is to depict the labor of love, or the triumphs of love, over the most untoward circumstances. The following speech of Helena beautifully illustrates the unwavering and self-confident power of this absorbing passion:

"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,

Which we ascribe to Heaven; the fated sky
Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull

Our slow designs, when we ourselves are dull.
What power is it which mounts my love so high,
That makes me see, and cannot feed mine eye?
The mightiest space in fortune, nature brings
To join like likes and kiss like native things.
Impossible be strange attempts to those
That weigh their pains in sense, and do suppose
What hath been cannot be. Whoever strove

To show her merit that did miss her love?"

The plot, like that of "Cymbeline," is taken from Boccaccio. With the single exception of the story of Zeneura, it is unquestionably the best in the Decameron.

The heroine, Giletta de Narbonne, is the daughter of a distinguished physician at the court of Roussilon, in France. When but a child she falls in love with a handsome youth, Count Beltram de Roussilon, with whom she was brought up. His father's death obliged him to go to Paris. Giletta was almost inconsolable during his absence, and anxiously awaited some pretext to go thither to see him. Her hand, the author tells us, was sought in marriage by many on whom her guardian would willingly have bestowed her, but she rejects them all without assigning any reason. She receives intelligence that the King is suffering from a painful and dangerous disease, which had baffled the skill of the ablest physicians of the land. She suddenly conceives the idea of going to Paris with the hope of curing him with one of her father's prescriptions. Her plans are soon put in execution. The King receives her with the utmost kindness, and promises her, if she succeeds in conquering his disease, to bestow her in marriage on a person of noble birth. Through her skill he is completely restored to health, and she claims the hand of her playmate and early love, Count Beltram de Roussilon. The Count at first rejects her offer of marriage with scorn and contempt, but finally consents to the union in obedience to the

wishes of his sovereign. He deserts her upon the day of the wedding, and engages in the war of the Florentines against the Senesi.

Giletta does everything in her power to win his love and esteem, and to induce him to return to his home. Her conduct is indeed exemplary. Her subjects almost worship her for her queenly dignity, modesty, beauty, prudence, virtue, and wisdom. These excellences make no impression whatever upon her husband, who refuses to return to her only on the seemingly impossible conditions that she shall bear him a son, and obtain possession of a ring which he always wears upon his finger. Love is too deeply enthroned in her bosom to allow her to despair. She disguises herself as a pilgrim, and goes to Florence, where she learns that the Count is making improper overtures to a lady of that city. She becomes acquainted with her, and, through her, obtains possession of the ring. She also induces her to make an assignation with him, in which she supplies her place. Giletta gives birth to two sons, and the Count, on learning her stratagem, is confounded with love and admiration, and lives with her ever afterward with great joy and happiness.

The principal incidents in the story are followed with wonderful minuteness and fidelity in the drama. The poet changed the name of Giletta to Helena, and Beltram to Bertram.

Hazlitt, whose love for SHAKSPEARE is almost idolatrous, and who indeed openly confesses his idolatry, says that the poet dramatised Boccaccio's novel "with great skill and comic effects, and preserved all the beauty of the character and sentiment without improving upon it - which was impossible."

This praise is perhaps too extravagant, though it is difficult to imagine anything finer in the way of a story than