What is meant is done: though perhaps it might have been meant higher.
The comparison, backwards and forwards, of this great company of novels is of endless interest; perhaps one of many aspects of that interest may be touched on specially, because it connects itself with much else that has been said.

If we read, together or in near sequence, three such books as, say, _Emilia Wyndbam, Pendennis_, and _Yeast_, all of which appeared close together, between 1846 and 1849, the differences, in quality and volume of individual genius, will of course strike every one forcibly.

But some will also be struck by something else--the difference between the first and the other two in _style_ or (as that word is almost hopelessly ambiguous) let us perhaps say _diction_.

Both Thackeray and Kingsley are almost perfectly modern in this.

We may not speak so well to-day, and we may have added more slang and jargon to our speech, but there is no real difference, except in these respects, between a speech of Pen's (when not talking book) or one of Colonel Bracebridge's, and the speech of any gentleman who is a barrister or a guardsman at this hour.