more. Yet the work, as first designed, was not a decided success. It failed to meet the demand of the public, which desired the long stories, and not fragments. Therefore Mr. Dickens wrote "The Old Curiosity Shop," and "Barnaby Rudge ;" which are novels purely, and not, like his previous stories, righteous assaults on abuses and social wrongs. The latter, as one biographer says, "is one of his two historical novels, and shows a respectable degree of power in that department of fiction. But Mr. Dickens's peculiar gift, and his best gift, was not the accumulation and delineation of such items as paint a past period, -costume, antiquarian lexicography, archæology generally. These are transitory, and are already dead. There have been great masters in the art of grouping and painting them, no doubt. But the art of this master was in painting the qualities of humanity, not of its costume; the feelings, sentiments, and passions, that are everlasting as man. It might, therefore, have been expected that this part of the work would usurp upon the other in the composition of historical fiction; and so it was accordingly. The ignoblenesses of Miggs and Tappertit; the brutalities of Dennis and Hugh; the gross, stolid obstinacy of old. Willetts; the steadfast goodness of Varden; the bright, loving sweetness of Dolly; the misery of the Widow Rudge; the fantastic, innocent vagaries of her crack-brained darling; and we may, perhaps, add to this catalogue of human qualities those which Grip, the

raven, had acquired from human teaching, these are the staple of the story."

From "Barnaby Rudge" a few extracts may properly here be given. The first gives a graphic picture of London in days gone by, wherein Dickens says,

"A series of pictures representing the streets of London in the night, even at the comparatively recent date: of this tale, would present to the eye something so very different in character from the reality which is witnessed in these times, that it would be difficult for the beholder to recognize his most familiar walks in the altered aspect of little more than half a century ago.

"They were, one and all, from the broadest and best to the narrowest and least frequented, very dark. The oil and cotton lamps, though regularly trimmed twice or thrice in the long winter nights, burnt feebly at the best; and at a late hour, when they were unassisted by the lamps and candles in the shops, cast but a narrow track of doubtful light upon the footway, leaving the projecting doors and house-fronts in the deepest gloom. Many of the courts and lanes were left in total darkness; those of the meaner sort, where one glimmering light twinkled for a score of houses, being favored in no slight degree. Even in these places, the inhabitants had often good reason for extinguishing their lamp as soon as it was lighted; and, the watch being utterly ineffi

cient and powerless to prevent them, they did so at their pleasure. Thus, in the lightest thoroughfares, there was, at every turn, some obscure and dangerous spot whither a thief might fly for shelter, and few would care to follow; and the city, being belted round by fields, green lanes, waste grounds, and lonely roads, dividing it at that time from the suburbs that have joined it since, escape, even where the pursuit was hot, was rendered easy.

"It is no wonder, that, with these favoring circumstances in full and constant operation, street robberies, often accompanied by cruel wounds, and not unfrequently by loss of life, should have been of nightly occurrence in the very heart of London, or that quiet folks should have had great dread of traversing its streets after the shops were closed. It was not unusual for those who wended home alone at midnight, to keep the middle of the road, the better to guard against surprise from lurking footpads. Few would venture to repair at a late hour to Kentish Town or Hampstead, or even to Kensington or Chelsea, unarmed and unattended; while he who had been loudest and most valiant at the supper-table or the tavern, and had but a mile or so to go, was glad to fee a link-boy to escort him home..

"There were many other characteristics

so disagreeable

not quite

about the thoroughfares of London then, with which they had been long familiar. Some of the shops, especially those to the eastward of Temple

Bar, still adhered to the old practice of hanging out a sign; and the creaking and swinging of these boards in their iron frames, on windy nights, formed a strange and mournful concert for the ears of those who lay awake in bed, or hurried through the streets. Long stands of hackney-chairs, and groups of chairmen, — compared with whom the coachmen of our day are gentle and polite, obstructed the way, and filled the air with clamor; night-cellars, indicated by a little stream of light crossing the pavement, and stretching out halfway into the road, and by the stifled roar of voices from below, yawned for the reception and entertainment of the most abandoned of both sexes; under every shed and bulk small groups of link-boys gamed away the earnings of the day; or one, more weary than the rest, gave way to sleep, and let the fragment of his torch fall hissing on the puddled ground.

"Then there was the watch, with staff and lantern, crying the hour, and the kind of weather; and those who woke up at his voice, and turned them round in bed, were glad to hear it rained, or snowed, or blew, or froze, for very comfort's sake. The solitary passenger was startled by the chairmen's cry of By your leave, there!' as two came trotting past him with their empty vehicle, carried backwards to show its being disengaged, -and hurried to the nearest stand. Many a private chair, too, enclosing some fine lady, monstrously hooped and furbelowed, and preceded by running foot

men bearing flambeaux,- for which extinguishers are yet suspended before the doors of a few houses of the better sort, made the way gay and light as it danced along, and darker and more dismal when it had passed. It was not unusual for these running gentry, who carried it with a very high hand, to quarrel in the servants' hall while waiting for their masters and mistresses; and, falling to blows either there or in the street without, to strew the place of skirmish with hair-powder, fragments of bag-wigs, and scattered nosegays. Gaming, the vice which ran so high among all classes (the fashion being of course set by the upper), was generally the cause of these disputes; for cards and dice were as openly used, and worked as much mischief, and yielded as much excitement, below stairs as above. While incidents like these, arising out of drums and masquerades and parties at quadrille, were passing at the west end of the town, heavy stage-coaches, and scarce heavier wagons, were lumbering slowly towards the city, the coachmen, guard, and passengers armed to the teeth; and the coach a day or so, perhaps, behind its time, but that was nothing - despoiled by highwaymen, who made no scruple to attack, alone and single-handed, a whole caravan of goods and men, and sometimes shot a passenger or two, and were sometimes shot themselves, just as the case might be. On the morrow, rumors of this new act of daring on the road yielded matter for a few hours' conversation through the town; and a Public