THACKERAY'S DOCTOR BIRCH.

THE breadth and clearness in which the Christmas Fancy of Mr. Dickens is deficient are preeminent in Doctor Birch and his Young Friends, by Mr. M. A. Titmarsh ; while there is an individuality stamped upon its general features that prevents any approach to vagueness. In Doctor Birch we have the persons, the incidents, the doings, and the feelings, common to private academies ; yet all these have a peculiar character of their own, which renders them appropriate only where they are. The pompous, prosy, sternly pedagoguish, but at bottom really goodnatured Dr. Birch himself—the clerical and university prig his son, with his imitative taste for medireval art—the head master, Prince, "an Oxford man too, shy, haughty, and learned ; crammed with Greek, and a quantity of useless learning ; uncommonly kind to the small boys ; pitiless with the fools and the braggarts ; respected of all for his honesty, his learning, his bravery; (for he hit out once in a boat-row in a way which astonished the boys and the bargemen,) and for a latent power about him, which all saw and confessed somehow "—each is a type of a class, with personal distinctiveness superadded : and the same observation may be applied to the other characters, if they are less strongly marked. Everything in Doctor Birch, too, is clear. Not Only are there no mere phrases to fill the ear or the page, but every sentence is made to contribute to the effect, like the touches of a great artist or the movement of one cunning in fence. There is no "damnable iteration," and very often a single sentence brings a world of character before the mind ; especially when taken in conjunction with the capital coloured plates.

In qualities of execution, Dr. Birch and his Young Friends equals if it does not excel " Mrs. Perkins's Ball," or "Our Street " ; and it has a distinct though slight story, which neither of those possessed: but the subject is not so large, or so present. We have all been at school ; and the picture of our old sojourning place, with its humours, its troubles, its tricks, and its " characters," has its associations ; but they are those of memory. The Irish adventurer, the peculiarities of the various shades of middle life, and the dubieties that hang upon all grades of society, are more contemporary in their interest. This, however, is as people feel. There is no question that a pleasanter hour's reading than Doctor Birch Cannot be found either for Christmas or any other season.

Though every sentence of Titmarsh is full of meaning, his composition is too quiet and of too close a tissue for presentment in detached pieces. Here, however, is a whole scene, cast in the dramatic form ; one of the varieties of touch by which Titmarsh brings out the life and characters in Doctor Birch's Academy at Rodwell Regis. Oh that we could add the pencil-sketch of tyrant Hewlett fiercely frowning in his cosy bed, and obe- dient Nightingale shivering and singing in his night-gown and bare feet!

THE DORKITORIE8.:

Master Hewlett and Master Nightingale.

(Slather a cold winter night.)

Hewlett (flinging a shoe at Master Nightingale's bed, with which he hits that

young gentleman). Hullo! You! Get up and bring me that shoe.

Nightingale. Yee, Hewlett. (He gets up.) Hewlett. Don't drop it, and be very careful of it, Sir. Nightingale. Yea, Hewlett- Hewlett. Silence in the Dormitory ! Any boy who opens his mouth I'll mur- der him. Now, Sir, are not you the boy what can sing? Nightingale. Yes, Hewlett.

Hewlett. Chant then till I go to sleep; and if I wake when you atop, you'll

have this at our head.

[Master Hewlett lays his Bluchers on the bed, ready to shy at Master Nightingale's head in the case contemplated.

Nightingale (timidly). Please, Hewlett? Hewlett. Well, Sir.

Nightingale. May I Tut on my trousers, please? Hewlett. No, Sir. Go on, or I'll— Nightingale, " Through pleasures and palaces

Though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, There's no place like home.

"Home, home sweet, sweet home There's no place like ho-ome

There's no place like home I" (Da Cape.)