spoke thus he started up in agony, and | appeared to be slowly moving. At first I This voice rang loud and hollow. I trembled paid no particular attention to it, thinking lest when the paroxysm passed I should it must be a dog or cow. But now it see him fall and die before my face. I approached, and I saw it was uprightexerted all my art to soothe and divert could it be a man? Alas! God help me! im. We would speak of it to-morrow, I it was no human creature, but a sheeted said, but that in the meantime he must be figure, which I knew by its gliding to be a quiet. I appealed to his pride-to his bodiless visitant from the world of shadChristian's faith. At last he softened, and ows! The blood froze in my veins as I llowed himself to let me assist him to his marked its steady advance. I tried to ouch. shout, but could only groan, as in a dream. It was all enwrapped in white, so that I could see no face, and it came directly below and before my eyes to the very door of the house, and I saw it enter! As I descended from his apartment I et his mother in the hall. She was oming, she said, to conduct me to my hamber. As I took the candle from her ithered and bony fingers, I glanced at er face. She saw that I had heard the uth and more than suspected her falseod. But she would not relent; it seemed e expected to overawe me by the same ern authority she exercised upon her son. My God!" I could not help exclaiming then a horrible suspicion crossed my ind. She grew deadly pale and pointed the door of the room I was to occupy. went in mechanically and locked the or with violence. I knew not why, but I remember that I en examined the apartment all over with light. I felt as though there were some eadful influence in the very air of the use an indefinite apprehension opssed me. Thoughts that I dared not ertain floated into my mind. DI ir a noise? I looked so long in one ection that I shuddered to turn to look another. The candle burnt low-I ld not bear to be in darkness-sleep 3 out of my power. While the wick I raised the heavy sash, and looked h into the night. here was a full moonlight, whose radie fell softly on the valley, and the air calm and filled with the fragrance of imn. As I gazed, my nerves grew quil; the peace of the scene passed my soul, and I smiled at my late perations. It could not be, methought; world is not so bad; I misjudge my ies. And then I grew abstracted watching the effects of the moonlight he masses of foliage and the broad lows beneath. was looking thus towards the orchard, n I perceived up the vista made by rows of trees, something white, which Presently-all the wealth of the universe would not tempt me to undergo it again— the house rang with shrieks-loud, agonized. I sprang to my feet and seized a chair, not knowing what I did. But immediately I heard the voice of the old servant, who occupied the chamber adjoining mine, crying "Fire!" and this recalled me to my senses. I opened the door and went to her room, the shrieks still continuing, though more faintly, and seeming to proceed from below. But I need not narrate circumstantially all that followed. By the time we had obtained a light, and proceeded to the old woman's apartment, the shrieks (which were found to come from thence) had fallen to low groans, and when we stood around her bedside she was past recognizing even her son, whose presence appeared but to increase her agonies. She died raving, and the ghastly look of her stiffening features was awful. My unhappy friend did not long survive. the shock of his mother's sudden death. He died peacefully. I never told him what I had witnessed. Indeed for a long while I was never sure that it was not an illusion of my senses caused by fatigue and excitement. But upon the death of my friend the estate passed into the hands of a distant connexion, a worthy man, who is still living. He had the house torn down and replaced by a more comfortable dwelling, and made also many improvements on the adjacent grounds. In removing the orchard, which had long ceased to be productive, they found an old well, of whose existence none but the housekeeper had any knowledge; it was cov ered by a thin slab of slate, almost overgrown with grass and briers. Thinking it might be rendered serviceable, the proprietor a few years ago determined to have it cleaned, and in performing that operation the workmen drew up in the first buckets what proved to be the bones of a human skeleton. The circumstance naturally made some noise in that neighborhood; to me it was the solving of a fearful mystery. I went to see the bones, and from a plain gold ring which was found along with them I know they must be those of Ellen. The ring had been made smaller by a clumsy workman. I remembered when my friend had it done. I gave no hat ness. G. W. P. WIT. CANST thou tell me what is wit, VANITY FAIR.* AN Anglo-Saxon can appreciate, alugh he may not altogether admire llie wit; but a Gaul is hopelessly innpetent to understand Saxon humor. is to him what the Teutonic humor is both Saxon and Gaul, who suppose it st be humorous to the Teuton because vastly delights in it, but find it, so far themselves are concerned, dreary in › extreme, and utterly valueless for rposes of amusement. Here is a ok which has a brilliant run in Engid, where its author is acknowlged as one of the first periodical wris; we doubt if any Frenchman could through it without falling asleep in ite of the pictures. In our own coun7, where the original Saxon character s become partially Gallicized, the pubopinion (setting aside that class of aders, unfortunately too large, who e the willing slaves of the publishers, d feel bound to read and talk about a ok because it is advertised by a big use, in big letters, as "Thackeray's asterpiece,") is about equally divided, me much enjoying "Vanity Fair," hers voting it a great bore. French wit and English humor! We > not mean to expatiate on this oftenscussed theme, tempting though it be, fording copious opportunity for antieses more or less false, and distincons without differences, but shall merely nt at what seems the most natural way explain this national diversity of taste id appreciation in respect of the two culties. Wit consists in the expression ore than in the matter-it depends ery considerably on the words employed -and hence the wittiest French sayings re, if not inexpressible, at least inexressive in English. Under the homely axon garb they generally become very tupid or very wicked remarks-not un frequently both. But an Englishman with a respectable knowledge of French can understand and be amused by French wit, though he will probably not enter into it very heartily. Humor, on the other hand, depends on a particular habit of mind; so that, to enjoy English humor, a Frenchman must not only understand English, but become intellectually Anglicized to a degree that is unnatural to him. In proof of this, it may be noticed that French-educated or French-minded Americans find Thackeray tedious, and (to take a stronger case, where no national prejudice but a favorable one can be at work,) yawn over Washington Irving. And yet, if we wished to give an idea of Thackeray's writings to a person who had never read them, we should go to France for our first illustration; but it would be to French art, not French literature. No one who has ever been familiar with the pictured representations of Parisian life which embellish that repository of wicked wit, the Charivari -no one who knows Les Lorettes, Les Enfans Terribles, &c., would think of applying to the designs of Gavarni and his brother artists the term caricatures. He would say, "There is no caricature. about them; they are life itself." And so it is with Thackeray's writings; they present you with humorous sketches of real life-literal comic pictures-never rising to the ideal or diverging into the grotesque. Thus, while his stories are excellent as a collection of separate sketches, they have but moderate merit as stories, nor are his single characters great as single characters. Becky Sharpe is the only one that can be called a firstrate hit; for "Chawls Yellowplush" is characterized chiefly by his ludicrous spelling, and his mantle fits "Jeemes" Vanity Fair: Pen and Pencil Sketches of English Society. By W. M. Thackeray, author of Journey from Cornhill to Cairo," the "Snob Papers," in Punch, &c., &c. London: the Punch office. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1848. just as well. And just as Gavarni differs from and is inferior to Hogarth, should we say Thackeray differs from and is inferior to Dickens, a writer with whom he is sometimes compared, and to whom he undoubtedly has some points of resemblance, though he cannot with any propriety be called "of the Dickens school, or an imitator of Dickens," any more than Gavarni could be called an imitator of Hogarth. Thackeray has his points of contact, also, with another great humorous writer, Washington Irving. Very gracefully and prettily does Mr. Titmarsh write at times; there is many a little bit, here and there, in the "Journey from Cornhill to Cairo," that would not disgrace Geoffrey Crayon in his best mood. But his geniality is not so genuine, or so continuous. Not that there is anything affected about his mirth -he is one of the most natural of modern English writers: Cobbett or Sidney Smith could hardly be more so; but it is dashed with stronger ingredients. Instead of welling up with perennial jollity, like our most good-humored of humorous authors, he is evidently a little blaze, and somewhat disposed to be cynical. To compare Thackeray with Dickens and Irving, most of our readers will think paying him a high compliment, but we are not at all sure that his set would be particularly obliged to us; for it is the fortune-good in some respects, evil in others-of Mr. Titmarsh to be one of a set. But wherever there are literary men there will be sets; and those who have been bored and disgusted by the impertinence and nonsense of stupid cliques will be charitable to the occasional conceits of clever ones. Having had some happy experience of that literary society which is carried to greater perfection in England than in any other country, we can pardon the amiable cockneyism with which Michael Angelo's thoughts revert to his Club even amid the finest scenery of other lands, and the semi-ludicrous earnestness with which he dwells on the circumstance of your name being posted among the "members deceased," as if that were the most awful and striking circumstance attendant on dissolution. And, inasmuch as all his books are really books to read, we can excuse the quiet way in which he assumes that you have read them all, and alludes, as a matter of course, to the Hon. Algernon Deuceace and the Eari of Crabs, and such ideal personages, much after the manner of that precious Balzac who interweaves the same characters throughout the half-hundred or more volumes which compose his panorama of Parisian society-a society in which, as Macauley says of another school, “the women are like very bad men, and the men too bad for anything." This mention of Balzac brings to misi a more serious charge than that of ocea sional conceit or affectation which we have more than once heard urged against or author; namely, that his sketches cont too many disagreeable characters. A queer charge this to come from a read; generation which swallows copious illtrated editions of Les Mysteres and L Juif, and is lenient to the loaths" vulgarities of Wuthering Heights r Wildfell Hall. But let us draw a dist tion or "discriminate a difference," as transcendentalist acquaintance of ours us to say. If a story is written for purposes of amusement, there certam ought not to be more disagreeable chazi ters introduced than are absolutely Des sary for relief and contrast. But the mos and end of a story may often compe author to bring before us a great ber of unpleasant people. In a fr volume of this Review the opinion pretty broadly stated that no eminent elist writes merely for amusement with some ulterior aim; most decidedly Th ery does not at any rate. We shal occasion to refer to this more than for it is doing vast injustice to Mr T regard him merely as a provider of t rary fun. He does introduce us to scamps, and profligates, and hypo but it is to show them up and put our guard against them. His bad ye are evidently and unmistakably to hate them, and he hates them, to doesn't try to make us fall in love them, like the philosophers of the "C of Civilization," who dish you up s poisoners and chaste adulteresses that perplexes and confounds all esti ideas of morality. And if he ever bestow attractive traits on his roga to expose the worthlessness and exp " of some things which are to the world attractive to show that the good things of Vanity Fair are not good per se, but may be coincident with much depravity. Thus Becky Sharpe, as portrayed by his graphic pen, is an object of envy and admiration for her cleverness and accomplishments to many a fine lady. There are plenty of the upper ten" who would like to be as "smart" as Rebecca. She speaks French like a French woman, and gets up beautiful dresses out of nothing, and makes all the men admire her, and always has a repartee ready, and insinuates herself every where with an irresistible nonchalance. Then comes in the sage moralist, and shows us that a woman may do all these fine things, and yet be ready to lie right and left to every one, and ruin any amount of confiding tradesmen; to sell one man and poison another; to betray her husband and neglect her child. (That last touch is the most hateful one in our simplicity we hope it is an exaggeration. That a woman should be utterly regardless of her offspring seems an impossibility-in this country, we are proud to say, it is an impossibility.) Or if any of his doubtful personages command our temporary respect and sympathy, it is because they are or the time in the right. Rawdon Crawey is not a very lofty character; he frequently comes before us in a position not ven respectable; but when he is defendng his honor against the old sybarite Lord Steyne, he rises with the occasion: even he guilty wife is forced to admire her husand, as he stands " strong, brave, and ictorious." Nor though he finds it somemes necessary to expose hypocrites, does hackeray delight in the existence of hyocrisy, and love to seek out bad motives or apparently good actions. His charity ther leads him to attribute with a most umane irony pretended wickedness to eakness. Your French writer brings an right gentleman before the footlights, id grudges you the pleasure of admiring m; he is impatient to carry him off bend the scenes, strip off his Christian garnts,and show him to you in private a very nd. But Thackeray, when he has put o a youth's mouth an atrociously piratiI song, is overjoyed to add quietly that "remembers seeing him awfully sick on ard a Greenwich steamer." Thus far our description has been one of negatives. It is time to say something of the positive peculiarities of Mr. T., two of which are strikingly observable,—the one one in his serious, the other in his comic vein. We shall begin by the latter, for though to us he is greater as a moralist than as a humorist, we are well aware that the general opinion is the other way, and that he is most generally valued for his fun. Many of the present English comic writers excel to an almost Aristophanic degree in parody and travestie, but in the latter Thackeray is unrivalled. Now he derides in the most ludicrous jargon, the absurd fopperies of the Court Circulars : "Head dress of knockers and bell-pulls, stomacher a muffin;" now he audaciously burlesques the most classic allusions "about Mademoiselle Arianne of the French Opera, and who had left her, and how she was consoled by Panther Carr." Some men have that felicity in story-telling that they will make you laugh at the veriest Joe Miller as if it had been just invented, and similarly there is nothing so old or so dry, but it becomes a subject for mirth under Titmarsh's ready pen or pencil, (for Michael Angelo is an artist himself, and a right clever one, and needs no Cruikshank or Leech to illustrate him.) Every one has heard the story of the Eastern monarch, who used to impose upon travelling poets by means of his astonishing memory, and how a Dervish finally outwitted him. Thousands had read it without dreaming of its capabilities. In one of the early volumes of Punch you will find it Thackerayized into something very rich. Living poets and poetasters are brought in under Oriental disguises; the mischievous king learns a whole poem of "Buhl-ware Khan" by dint of memory, "without understanding one word of it;" the Dervish is a "Syneretic" poet, "Jam Janbrahim Herandee," (Herand,) who puts the king to sleep by discharging an epic at him. But Thackeray never sets about a story of any length without having a will and a purpose. And this indeed is a noticeable difference generally existing between the wit and the humorist, that while the former sparkles away without any object beyond his own momentary amusement, the latter has a definite aim,some abuse to attack, some moral to hint. Thackeray attacks |