Thackeray did not, like Dickens, use his
pen against particular glaring abuses of the time, nor insist on the
special virtues that bloom amid the poor and lowly; but he attacked
valiantly the crying sins of society in all time--the mammon-worship
and the mercilessness, the false pretences and the fraud--and never
failed to uphold for admiration and imitation "whatsoever things are
true, whatsoever things are honourable, whatsoever things are just,
whatsoever thing are pure, whatsoever things are lovely." And though
both writers were sometimes hard on the professors of religion,
neither failed in reverence of tone when religion itself was
concerned.
[Illustration: Charlotte Bronte.]
The sudden death of both these men, in the very prime of life and in
the fulness of power, was keenly felt at the time: each had a
world-wide fame, and each awakened a blank, distressful sense of
personal loss in his many admirers as he was suddenly called away
from incomplete work and faithful friendship. Contemporary literature
has not benefited by the removal of these two men and the gradual
diminishing of the influence they so strongly exerted while yet they
"stood up and spoke.
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