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Although any man, who had proved his unfitness for any other occupation in life, was free, without examination or qualification, to open a school anywhere; although preparation for the functions he undertook was required in the surgeon who assisted to bring a boy into the world, or might one day assist, perhaps, to send him out of it; in the chemist, the attorney, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker, the whole round of crafts and trades, the schoolmaster excepted; and although schoolmasters, as a race, were the blockheads and impostors who might naturally be expected to spring from such a state of things, and to flourish in it, — these Yorkshire schoolmasters were the lowest and most rotten round in the whole ladder. Traders in the avarice, indifference, imbecility, of parents, and the helplessness of children; ignorant, sordid, brutal men, to whom few considerate persons would have intrusted the board and lodging of a horse or a dog, - they formed the worthy corner-stone of a structure, which, for absurdity and a magnificent, high-minded, laissez-aller neglect, has rarely been exceeded in the world."

And solemnly in the preface, Mr. Dickens affirmed that his picture of the Squeers school was a truthful one, saying,

"The author's object in calling public attention to the system would be very imperfectly fulfilled, if he did

not state now, in his own person, emphatically and earnestly, that Mr. Squeers and his school are faint and feeble pictures of an existing reality, purposely subdued and kept down lest they should be deemed impossible. That there are, upon record, trials at law in which damages have been sought as a poor recompense for lasting agonies and disfigurements inflicted upon children by the treatment of the master in these places, involving such offensive and foul details of neglect, cruelty, and disease, as no writer of fiction would have the boldness to imagine. And that, since he has been engaged upon these Adventures, he has received, from private quarters far beyond the reach of suspicion or distrust, accounts of atrocities, in the perpetration of which upon neglected or repudiated children these schools have been the main instruments, very far exceeding any that appear in these pages.

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Charles Dickens loved children. He wrote for their good. He may be called the children's friend. The brilliant Thackeray, in one of his lectures on " English Humorists of the Nineteenth Century," paid an eloquent and touching tribute to the pure genius of Dickens, and in it referred thus to him and to "Nicholas Nickleby."

"As for this man's love of children, that amiable organ at the back of his honest head must be perfectly monstrous. All children ought to love him. I know

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two that do, and read his books ten times for once that they peruse the dismal preachments of their father. I know one who, when she is happy, reads 'Nicholas Nickleby;' when she is unhappy, reads 'Nicholas Nickleby ;' when she is tired, reads 'Nicholas Nickleby;' when she is in bed, reads 'Nicholas Nickleby;' when she has nothing to do, reads 'Nicholas Nickleby;' and, when she has finished the book, reads 'Nicholas Nickleby' over again. This candid young critic, at ten years of age, said, 'I like Mr. Dickens's books much better than I do your books, papa;' and frequently expressed her desire that the latter author should write a book like one of Mr. Dickens's books. Who can? Every man must say his own thoughts in his own voice, in his own way: lucky is he who has such a charming gift of nature as this, which brings all the children in the world trooping to him and being fond of him.

"I remember, when the famous 'Nicholas Nickleby' came out, seeing a letter from a pedagogue in the north of England, which, dismal as it was, was immensely comical. Mr. Dickens's ill-advised publication,' wrote the poor schoolmaster, has passed like a whirlwind over the schools of the north.' He was the proprietor of a cheap school. Dotheboys Hall was a cheap school. There were many such establishments in the northern counties. Parents were ashamed that never were ashamed before until the kind satirist laughed at them; relatives were frightened; scores of little scholars were taken

away; poor schoolmasters had to shut their shops up; every pedagogue was voted a Squeers, and many suffered, no doubt, unjustly; but afterwards school-boys' backs were not so much caned, school-boys' meat was less tough and more plentiful, and school-boys' milk was not so sky-blue. What a kind light of benevolence it is that plays round Crummles and the Phenomenon, and all those poor theatre people in that charming book! What a humor! And what a good humor! I coincide with the youthful critic whose opinion has just been mentioned, and own to a family admiration for Nicholas Nickleby."

This side the water, the great Brooklyn preacher, whom all Christians love, bore this testimony concerning Mr. Dickens and his book:

"Many ameliorations of bad laws and cruel customs can be traced to the influence of his pen. I remember his saying to me in the room adjoining, in a modest way, that since his account of Mr. Squeers's school, in which Nicholas Nickleby was not educated, such schools had passed away from England. His writings led the way to many reforms, and made many abuses ashamed."

No one who has read "Nicholas Nickleby" can fail to remember the description of Mr. Squeers, or to despise the Yorkshire schoolmaster thus described:

“Mr. Squeers's appearance was not prepossessing. He had but one eye; and the popular prejudice runs in favor of two. The eye he had was unquestionably useful, but decidedly not ornamental; being of a greenish gray, and in shape resembling the fan-light of a street-door. The blank side of his face was much wrinkled and puckered up, which gave him a very sinister appearance, especially when he smiled; at which times his expression bordered closely on the villanous. His hair was very flat and shiny, save at the ends, where it was brushed stiffly up from a low, protruding forehead, which assorted well with his harsh voice and coarse manner. He was about two or three and fifty, and a trifle below the middle size. He wore a white neckerchief with long ends, and a suit of scholastic black; but his coat-sleeves being a great deal too long, and his trousers a great deal too short, he appeared ill at ease in his clothes, and as if he were in a perpetual state of astonishment at finding himself so respectable.

"Mr. Squeers was standing in a box by one of the coffee-room fireplaces, fitted with one such table as is usually seen in coffee-rooms, and two of extraordinary shapes and dimensions, made to suit the angles of the partition. In a corner of the seat was a very small deal trunk, tied round with a scanty piece of cord; and on the trunk was perched his lace-up half-boots and corduroy trousers dangling in the air — a diminutive boy, with shoulders drawn up to his ears, and his hands

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