To enhance our sympathy personages were introduced who were very vile indeed,--as Bucklaw, in the guise of a lover, to heighten our feelings for Ravenswood and Lucy; as Wild, as a thief-taker, to make us more anxious for the saving of Jack; as Ralph Nickleby, to pile up the pity for his niece Kate.

But each of these novelists might have appropriately begun with an _Arma virumque cano_.

The song was to be of something godlike,--even with a Peter Simple.

With Thackeray it had been altogether different.

Alas, alas! the meanness of human wishes; the poorness of human results! That had been his tone.