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"Oliver,' cried the Jew, beckoning to him. Here, here! Let me whisper to you.'

"I am not afraid,' said Oliver in a loud voice, as he relinquished Mr. Brownlow's hand.

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"The papers,' said the Jew, drawing him towards him, are in a canvas bag, in a hole a little way up the chimney, in the top front room. I want to talk to you,

my dear.

I want to talk to you.' "Yes, yes,' returned Oliver.

Let me say a prayer.

Do! Say only one, upon your knees, with me, and we will talk till morning.'

"Outside, outside,' replied the Jew, pushing the boy before him towards the door, and looking vacantly over his head. 6 Say I've gone to sleep: they'll believe you. You can get me out if you take me so. Now, then; now, then!'

"O God, forgive this wretched man!' cried the boy with a burst of tears.

"That's right, that's right,' said the Jew. That'll help us on. This door first. If I shake and tremble, as we pass the gallows, don't you mind, but hurry on. Now, now, now!'

“Have you nothing else to ask him, sir?' inquired the turnkey.

"No other question,' replied Mr. Brownlow. ‘If I hoped we could recall him to a sense of his position' "Nothing will do that, sir,' replied the man, shaking his head. You had better leave him.'

"The door of the cell opened, and the attendants re

turned.

“Press on, press on!' cried the Jew. 'Softly, but not so slow. Faster, faster!"

"The men laid hands upon him, and, disengaging Oliver from his grasp, held him back. He struggled with the power of desperation for an instant, and then sent up cry upon cry that penetrated even those massive walls, and rang in their ears until they reached the open yard.

"It was some time before they left the prison. Oliver nearly swooned after this frightful scene, and was so weak that for an hour or more he had not the strength to walk.

66

Day was dawning when they again emerged. A great multitude had already assembled: the windows were filled with people, smoking, and playing cards, to beguile the time. The crowd were pushing, quarrelling, and joking. Every thing told of life and animation, but one dark cluster of objects, in the very centre of all, the black stage, the cross-beam, and the rope, and all the hideous apparatus of death.”

CHAPTER V.

ONE OF HIS BEST.

Nicholas Nickleby.-Opinion of "The Methodist."-Thackeray's. - The Squeers School.-Henry Ward Beecher's Testimony.

"Have pity on them, for their life

Is full of grief and care.

You do not know one-half the woes

The very poor must bear;

You do not see the silent tears

By many a mother shed,

As childhood offers up the prayer,

'Give us our daily bread.'"

MRS. JANE F. WORTHINGTON.

"Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him."- JAS. ii. 5.

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BOUT the year 1839 was published, in

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shilling numbers, uniform with "Pickwick," another characteristic novel from the pen of Charles Dickens. This was

entitled Nicholas Nickleby. It became

very popular abroad, as well as in England, and was dramatized in France, as were also several other of his works. Thackeray once wrote a laughable account of a performance of" Neekolass Neeklbee" which he attended in Paris. At present, a French edition of Dickens's novels is announced; and the news of his death was unwelcome.

in foreign lands as well as in "merrie " England. Those, in all lands, most familiar with the creations of Mr. Dickens's genius, and most capable of appreciating such creations, render him a verdict of praise and thanks. "The Methodist," with wise discrimination, says,

"His volumes have reformed some of the most profound vices of English life, the Yorkshire schools, the Debtors' Prison, the intolerable grievances of Chancery. What defects of British society has he not attempted to ameliorate? But, aside from his sarcasm, his humorous caricature, the genial method by which he would correct grievous evils, he has infused a moral vitality into all the veins and arteries of English common life by his genial teachings, his boundless illustration of character, the habitual humanity and benevolence of his sentiments, and the general high tone of his morality. His pages are unsullied with any of that grossness which had, down to his day, seemed inseparable from English humor.

he is also

"The greatest of the British humorists, for we do not hesitate to accord him this pre-eminence, the purest of them all. Not to speak of Swift and Sterne and Fielding and Smollett, he is even less blemished than Goldsmith or Addison. He does, indeed, too often draw humor from drinking scenes; but in this he represents the standard sentiment of his countrymen. No other taint can be detected by the acutest moral analysis of his pages.

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"His works can be unreservedly placed in any virtuous household. They cannot be read by the young without neutralizing a taste for lower literature; without imparting freshness, healthfulness, geniality, and moral tone to the susceptibilities of youth."

"Nicholas Nickleby" dealt with the abuses in cheap Yorkshire schools, at which body and mind were both kept on starvation diet, and broke up a system which was disgraceful to a civilized country. It showed, as did "Oliver Twist," that the author was still working for the emancipation of boyhood. He drew from real life his pictures of Dotheboys Hall and the miserable Squeers who domineered therein. It was only a humorous exaggeration, if it was an exaggeration at all, of evils really existing which he desired to expose in order to correct. And he did correct them. After-years showed that he labored not in vain; so that, in his preface to a later edition, he could say of the cheap Yorkshire schools he depicted, "There are very few now." The righteous indignation and Christian disgust he felt in regard to such miserable substitutes for good schools led him to characterize the masters in this forcible language.

"Of the monstrous neglect of education in England, and the disregard of it by the State as the means of forming good or bad citizens and miserable or happy men, private schools long afforded a notable example.

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