So there was splendour and wealth, but no great happiness perchance, behind the tall caned portals of Gaunt House with its smoky coronets and ciphers… - William Makepeace Thackeray

The vessel is in port. He has got the prize he has been trying for all his life. The bird has come in at last. There it is with its head on his shoulder, billing and cooing close up to his heart, with soft outstretched fluttering wings. This is what he has asked for every day and hour for eighteen years. This is what he pined after. Here it is — the summit, the end — the last page of the third volume. Good-bye, colonel — God bless you, honest William! — Farewell, dear Amelia — Grow green again, tender little parasite, round the rugged old oak to which you cling!

One tires of a page of which every sentence sparkles with points, of a sentimentalist who is always pumping the tears from his eyes or your own. One suspects the genuineness of the tear, the naturalness of the humour.

She had not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slip-shod and in curl-papers, all day.