There is hardly a piece that is not more or less funny, hardly a piece that is not satirical;--and in most of them, for those who will look a little below the surface, there is something that will touch them.

Thackeray, though he rarely uttered a word, either with his pen or his mouth, in which there was not an intention to reach our sense of humour, never was only funny.

When he was most determined to make us laugh, he had always a further purpose;--some pity was to be extracted from us on behalf of the sorrows of men, or some indignation at the evil done by them.
This is the beginning of that story as to the _Two Hundred Pounds_, for which as a ballad I do not care very much: Special jurymen of England who admire your country's laws, And proclaim a British jury worthy of the nation's applause, Gaily compliment each other at the issue of a cause, Which was tried at Guildford 'sizes, this day week as ever was.
Here he is indignant, not only in regard to some miscarriage of justice on that special occasion, but at the general unfitness of jurymen for the work confided to them.

"Gaily compliment yourselves," he says, "on your beautiful constitution, from which come such beautiful results as those I am going to tell you!" When he reminded us that Ivanhoe had produced Magna Charta, there was a purpose of irony even there in regard to our vaunted freedom.

With all your Magna Charta and your juries, what are you but snobs! There is nothing so often misguided as general indignation, and I think that in his judgment of outside things, in the measure which he usually took of them, Thackeray was very frequently misguided.