MAGIC AND WONDER
but in Colonel Newcome. With magic Thackeray is convinced, we might say, that the novel should have nothing to do, yet he devotes his art to no religion of wonder. Because he has so gently and persuasively corrected Dickens' picture of life, at the same time endorsing, as it were, his ideals, Thackeray has had much reputation for wisdom and modernness. Yet in the cardinal emotions of wonder and delight he is not modern at all; the logic of character, the unalterable order, whereby Colonel Newcome suffered for his mistakes, however excellent his motives—this saddens Thackeray, even though he is in honor bound to present it. For an ordered universe he has no love, nor any passion for the career of the mind. Perhaps it is only his sentimentality that hides from us the materialism in his picture of life—the implication that the good are victims of
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