The Sun.
London, England, 1855-08-09 00:00:00

love for "Arthur Pendennis," we are fain to regard
as Mr. Thackeray's undoubted masterpiece—is the
circumstances that among its dramatis personas
there are so many creations so entirely loveable.
There is queer, honest old Fred Bayham,
for example—faithful friend to the very last,
through all his preposterous eccentricities. Even
vulgar, hospitable Mr. Sherrick, wine mer-
chant and bill-discounter, has a dash of hu-
man cordiality in his coarse hebrew-cockney
nature, that admits him to no small share in
the ample disbursements of our friendship. Then
again howsufficientlycanvre speak, in terms of affec-
tionate regard of our cherished favourites of old—
Arthur Pendennis, and his Fidus Achates of the
Temple, glorious George Warrington ; and asso-
ciated with them our delightful, and inimitable, and
altogether incomparable M. Paul de Florae, Due
d'lvry and Prince de Montcontour. Nor have we
lost our remembrance of the manly, gentle heart of
the young Earl of Kew, or of the noble qualities,
blended with all the blunderings and peccadillos of
poor, erring Jack Belsize. But with them, and
above them all, how can we speak in terms of ade-
quate tenderness of our gallant and noble Clive,
and of that paragon of the whole book—
the epitome of the every excellence of a
gentleman—Colonel Thomas Newcome ? Colonel
Newcome we regard henceforth in English Litera-
ture as one among the foremost in that list of
worthies among whom must ever be enumerated
the Sir Roger do Coverley of Steele and Addison,
the Parson Adams of Fielding, the Uncle Toby of
gterne, the Doctor Primrose of Goldsmith, the
Austin Caxton of Lytton, the Tom Pinch of
Dickens—names beloved and honoured whenever
thought of, and thought of often with a kind of
romantic tenderness, memories henceforth to be
associated in our regard with the loving recollec-
tion of the Colonel Newcomo of Thackeray.
As we have in other words already intimated,
the double number now before us, terminating the
story of the Newcomes, is the very crown and
flower of the whole serial. There are scenes
described, and incidents related in it, that, to our
thinking, are in their way veritably wonderful.
As, for example, the scene descriptive of the sud-
den appearance of Ethel in the family group of the
Clive Newcomes, or as in the homely incidents of
that memorable morrow of Christmas, upon which
Clive's wrath descends at last upon that fiend of a
woman the Campaigner. The death-bed scene in
the poor Cistercian brother's room, where the
Colonel beats time on the counterpane to the clink-
ing of the chapel bell, and then, as it ceases, cries
" Adsum !" breathing his last as he utters the old
schoolboy response—" and 10, he, whose heart was
as that of a little child, had answered to his name,
and stood in the presence of the Master." All
this is entirely exquisite. So exquisite, so true,
so natural, so eloquent, that we close the volume,
not without a pang at parting from it—looking
forward to the time when we may resume, under
the shadow of these yellow leaves, our privileged
commune with the author of " Vanity Fair," and
" Pendennis," and " The Newcomes," a writer
whose genius has embalmed his name in our hearts
in the conserving aromatics of our gratitude and
our admiration.