The more freely they are allowed, the more necessary is it that he who supplies shall take care that they are worthy of the trust that is given to them.
Now let the reader ask himself what are the lessons which Thackeray has taught.

Let him send his memory running back over all those characters of whom we have just been speaking, and ask himself whether any girl has been taught to be immodest, or any man unmanly, by what Thackeray has written.

A novelist has two modes of teaching,--by good example or bad.
It is not to be supposed that because the person treated of be evil, therefore the precept will be evil.

If so, some personages with whom we have been made well acquainted from our youth upwards, would have been omitted in our early lessons.

It may be a question whether the teaching is not more efficacious which comes from the evil example.