It is almost the only instance in all Thackeray's works in which this state of bliss is reached.

George Osborne, who is the beautiful lover in _Vanity Fair_, is killed almost before our eyes, on the field of battle, and we feel that Nemesis has with justice taken hold of him.

Poor old Dobbin does marry the widow, after fifteen years of further service, when we know him to be a middle-aged man and her a middle-aged woman.

That glorious Paradise of which I have spoken requires a freshness which can hardly be attributed to the second marriage of a widow who has been fifteen years mourning for her first husband.

Clive Newcome, "the first young man," if we may so call him, of the novel which I shall mention just now, is carried so far beyond his matrimonial elysium that we are allowed to see too plainly how far from true may be those promises of hymeneal happiness forever after.