humor. It is a British or English gift; and Washington Irving has shown that it flourishes in transplantation to America. With the spirit of sympathetic fun and genial caprice is allied the special power of imagination that enters into the motives of eccentric characters, and of whimsical or absurd actions and behavior. This belongs to poetry, and chiefly to dramatic poetry, quite as much as those other special faculties of imagination which go to the conception and representation of exalted passions, or to the ideal combination of sublime and beautiful forms. Shakspeare's clowns, and his foolish varlets or blundering louts, are, equally with his heroes, the creation of a great poet. Shall we not say the same of Pickwick, of Sam Weller, of Pecksniff, of Mrs. Gamp, and of many other queer characters which only a mighty creative imagination could have formed?

"His genius was the gift of Nature; but, for his art as a writer, he seems to have early studied two of the best examples in our language,— Henry Fielding and Washington Irving. The mock-heroic strain of his preambles to many chapters of 'Pickwick,' 'Nicholas Nickleby,' and 'Martin Chuzzlewit,' was tuned in the key of similar diversions attending the history of Tom Jones; and the shrewd, sly commentary, enlivened by a variety of playful fancies and whimsical conceits, with which Dickens peeps into the minutest details of scenery and costume, reminds us of The Sketch Book,' and of

'Bracebridge Hall.' His propensity to indulge in the use of irony, almost too persistently, and sometimes to dwell upon a single witty caprice, turned all manner of ways, through several paragraphs or pages, is one of those splendid faults of excess from which even Shakspeare is not wholly free. We know what was said of him who had never blotted out a line of his writing, 'Oh that he had blotted out a thousand!' Dickens, if we remember rightly, made an express acknowledgment, when he first visited America, of his obligations to Washington Irving as a literary model; and he could scarcely have chosen a better, for style, tone, and manner, amongst the prose-writers of the age. The inclination, encouraged by Thackeray, to go farther back namely, to Swift and Addison-for patterns of good English thinking and writing, has nearly worn itself out; and we again recognize in the best of our nineteenth-century authors a style of greater energy and capacity than that of the eighteenth, with equal clearness and easy grace. Dickens possessed as full command of all the resources of our language as Ruskin; and he could, when it suited his purpose, write with as much force and precision as Macaulay. A volume of 'elegant extracts' might be gathered from his works to exemplify the rules of idiomatic English prose-composition."

From "Martin Chuzzlewit," a few extracts are here given. The following presents a vivid picture of an autumnal sunset and the autumn breeze:

"It was pretty late in the autumn of the year, when the declining sun, struggling through the mist which had obscured it all day, looked brightly down upon a little Wiltshire village, within an easy journey of the fair old town of Salisbury.

“Like a sudden flash of memory or spirit kindling up the mind of an old man, it shed a glory upon the scene, in which its departed youth and freshness seemed to live again. The wet grass sparkled in the light; the scanty patches of verdure in the hedges-where a few green twigs yet stood together bravely, resisting to the last the tyranny of nipping winds and early frosts - took heart, and brightened up; the stream, which had been dull and sullen all day long, broke out into a cheerful smile; the birds began to chirp and twitter on the naked boughs, as though the hopeful creatures half believed that winter had gone by, and spring had come already ; the vane upon the tapering spire of the old church glistened from its lofty station in sympathy with the general gladness; and from the ivy-shaded windows such gleams of light shone back upon the glowing sky, that it seemed as if the quiet buildings were the hoarding-place of twenty summers, and all their ruddiness. and warmth were stored within.

"Even those tokens of the season which emphatically whispered of the coming winter graced the landscape, and, for the moment, tinged its livelier features with no oppressive air of sadness. The fallen leaves, with which

the ground was strewn, gave forth a pleasant fragrance, and, subduing all harsh sounds of distant feet and wheels, created a repose in gentle unison with the light scattering of seed hither and thither by the distant husbandman, and with the noiseless passage of the plough as it turned up the rich brown earth, and wrought a graceful pattern in the stubbled fields. On the motionless branches of some trees, autumn berries hung like clusters of coral beads, as in those fabled orchards where the fruits were jewels; others, stripped of all their garniture, stood, each the centre of its little heap of bright red leaves, watching their slow decay; others again, still wearing theirs, had them all crunched and crackled up, as though they had been burnt; about the stems of some were piled in ruddy mounds the apples they had borne that year; while others (hardy evergreens this class) showed somewhat stern and gloomy in their vigor, as charged by Nature with the admonition, that it is not to her more sensitive and joyous favorites she grants the longest term of life. Still, athwart their darker boughs, the sunbeams struck out paths of deeper gold; and the red light, mantling in among their swarthy branches, used them as foils to set its brightness off, and aid the lustre of the dying day.

The sun

"A moment, and its glory was no more. went down beneath the long dark lines of hill and cloud which piled up in the west an airy city, wall heaped on wall, and battlement on battlement; the light was all

withdrawn; the shining church turned cold and dark; the stream forgot to smile; the birds were silent; and the gloom of winter dwelt on every thing.

"An evening wind uprose too; and the slighter branches cracked and rattled as they moved, in skeleton dances, to its moaning music. The withering leaves, no longer quiet, hurried to and fro in search of shelter from its chill pursuit; the laborer unyoked his horses, and, with head bent down, trudged briskly home beside them; and from the cottage-windows lights began to glance and wink upon the darkening fields.

"Then the village forge came out in all its bright importance. The lusty bellows roared, ' Ha, ha!' to the clear fire, which roared in turn, and bade the shining sparks dance gayly to the merry clinking of the hammers on the anvil. The gleaming iron, in its emulation, sparkled too, and shed its red-hot gems around profusely. The strong smith and his men dealt such strokes upon their work as made even the melancholy night rejoice, and brought a glow into its dark face as it hovered about the door and windows, peeping curiously in above the shoulders of a dozen loungers. As to this idle company, there they stood, spell-bound by the place, and, casting now and then a glance upon the darkness in their rear, settled their lazy elbows more at ease upon the sill, and leaned a little further in, no more disposed to tear themselves away than if they had been born to cluster round the blazing hearth like so many crickets.