From these extracts it may be seen, that, as a writer in "The Edinburgh Review" says, “There is no misanthropy in his satire, and no coarseness in his descriptions, -a merit enhanced by the nature of his subjects. His works are chiefly pictures of humble life, frequently of the humblest. The reader is led through scenes of poverty and crime, and all the characters are made to discourse in the appropriate language of their respective classes; and yet we recollect no passage which ought to cause pain to the most sensitive delicacy, if read aloud in female society. We have said that his satire was not misanthropic. This is eminently true. One of the qualities we the most admire in him is his comprehensive spirit of humanity. The tendency of his writings is to make us practically benevolent; to excite our sympathy in behalf of the aggrieved and suffering in all classes, and especially in those who are most removed from observation. He especially directs our attention to the helpless victims of untoward circumstances or a vicious system, to the imprisoned debtor, the orphan pauper, the parish apprentice, the juvenile criminal, and to the tyranny, which, under the combination of parental neglect with the mercenary brutality of a pedagogue, may be exercised with impunity in schools. His humanity is plain, practical, and manly. It is quite untainted with sentimentality. There is no monkish wailing for ideal dis tresses; no morbid exaggeration of the evils incident to our lot; no disposition to excite unavailing discontent, or to turn our attention from remedial grievances to those which do not admit a remedy Though he ap peals much to our feelings, we can detect no instance in which he has employed the verbiage of a spurious philanthropy. He is equally exempt from the meretricious cant of a spurious philosophy."* * * Edinburgh Review, lxviii. 77, October, 1838 CHAPTER VI. OTHER NOVELS. Master Humphrey's Clock. - London Years Ago.- Country Picture. -- Barnaby Rudge.-Old Curiosity Shop. - Death of Little Nell. - Mr. Dickens's Speech. -Funeral of Little Nell.-Landor's Testimony. - Child Pictures from Dickens. — Memoirs of Grimaldi. "A blessing on the printer's art! Books are the Mentors of the heart." MRS. HALE. "Of making many books there is no end."-ECCLES. xii. 12. HE busy pen moved on. After "Nicholas Nickleby" came a series of tales, or novels, published in weekly numbers, under the general title of "Master Humphrey's Clock." In this series," Barnaby Rudge and "The Old Curiosity Shop" appeared. It was in April, 1840, that the first number of this serial was. written. The thirty years which have since passed have only added to the author's reputation, which was even then so far established, that, of the three-penny numbers containing his "Master Humphrey's Clock," there were no less than forty thousand copies when first issher; and to this were soon added twenty thousand 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. 66 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 |