uttered-followed him. They moved so gently that their footsteps made no noise; but there were sobs from among the group, and sounds of grief and mourning.

"For she was dead. There, upon her little bed, she lay at rest. The solemn stillness was no marvel now.

"She was dead. No sleep so beautiful and calm, so free from trace of pain, so fair to look upon. She seemed a creature fresh from the hand of God, and waiting for the breath of life; not one who had lived and suffered death.

"Her couch was dressed with here and there some winter berries and green leaves, gathered in a spot she had been used to favour. When I die, put near me something that has loved the light, and had the sky above it always.' Those were her words.

"She was dead. Dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell was dead. Her little bird-a poor, slight thing, the pressure of a finger would have crushed-was stirring nimbly in its cage; and the strong heart of its child-mistress was mute and motionless for ever.

"Where were the traces of her early cares, her sufferings and fatigues? All gone. Sorrow was dead indeed in her, but peace and perfect happiness were born-imaged in her tranquil beauty and profound repose.

"And still her former self lay there, unaltered in this change. Yes. The old fireside had smiled upon that same sweet face; it had passed, like a dream, through haunts of misery and care; at the door of the poor schoolmaster on the summer evening, before the furnacefire upon the cold, wet night, at the still bed-side of the dying boy, there had been the same mild lovely look. So shall we know the angels in their majesty after death.

"The old man held one languid arm in his, and had the small hand tight folded to his breast, for warmth. It was the hand she had stretched out to him with her last smile —the hand that had led him on, through all their wanderings. Ever and anon he pressed it to his lips; then hugged it to his breast again, murmuring that it was warmer now; and, as he said it, he looked, in agony, to those who stood around, as if imploring them to help her.

"She was dead, and past all help. or need of it. The ancient rooms she had seemed to fill with life, even while her own was waning fast-the garden she had tended-the eyes she had gladdened-the noiseless haunts of many a thoughtful hour-the paths she had trodden as it were but yesterday-could know her never more.

"It is not,' said the schoolmaster, as he bent down to kiss her on the cheek, and gave his tears free vent, ‘it is not on earth that Heaven's justice ends. Think what earth is, compared with the world to which her young spirit has winged its early flight; and say, if one deliberate wish expressed in solemn terms above this bed could call her back to life, which of us would utter it!

999

The other passage has been transposed by a poet* into irregular verse, and, without any alteration except in the division of lines stands thus:

"Oh! it is hard to take to heart

The lesson that such deaths will teach

But let no man reject it,

For it is one that all must learn,

And is a mighty universal truth.

*R. H. Horne.

When death strikes down the innocent and young,
For every fragile form from which he lets

The panting spirit free,

A hundred virtues rise,

In shapes of mercy, charity and love,

To walk the world and bless it.

Of every tear

That sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves
Some good is born, some gentler nature comes."

Much might be said of Dickens' tragic power, his delineation of the darker passions of hatred, jealousy. avarice, revenge, despair, and remorse, with all their attendant crimes and follies. Who has so depicted the dismayed and conscience-stricken murderer, his soul hunted and lashed by the avenging furies, the eternal wakefulness of his fevered brain, the torment of unceasing restlessness, the thousand dreadful eyes which peer at him, and the thousand voices which hoot at him from morn till night, from night till morn, through streets and highways, in solitude and in the crowd? His longing to die, yet fear of death, the animal instinct of self-preservation which struggles in vain to escape the swift retribution at his heels. It is marvellous how Dickens has, in the case of the murderer Jonas, for instance, torn open the heart of the poor blood-stained wretch, nestled into his brain, searched his inmost soul, and by laying bare the agony and remorse of his avenging conscience has chilled our life-blood through and through, and taught the woe, unutterable woe, of him "who spills life's sacred stream." According to the ancients, the grand idea of tragedy is the imitation of serious action, employing pity and terror for the purpose of chastening such passions. Dickens never lost sight of

this truth in his teaching, for he infused a moral purpose into his vilest conceptions of human character, and he ever strove to make vice hideous and abominable.

If we look at what Dickens by his writings has helped to accomplish, we must place him in the front rank of social reformers; the influence of his early works have re-acted for good upon the national mind. What abuses has he helped to sweep away! How many a nook and corner of the world has he made brighter and happier? What was bad he strove to make good, and what was good he took pains to improve by love, charity, and good humour. Truly he left the world better than he found it, and had the satisfaction to know that he contributed no inconsiderable share in the making it so. The Fleet and Marshalsea Prisons are now swept away, and imprisonment for debt abolished. The Court of Chancery is improved. The reproach and shame of the Yorkshire Schools live only in the memory of "Nicholas Nickleby," and would that we could say the same of our workhouse system, which, according to recent reports, have still quite as easy a way of getting rid of children as they had in Oliver Twist's" time. There are still to be seen, as Dickens depicted the outside of Whitechapel Workhouse, those figures "withered from a likeness of aught human,” those blind, idiotic, diseased, and drunken shapes which are the puzzle and despair of the moralist and philanthropist. Well might Dickens describe them as "those dumb, wet, silent horrors, sphynxes set up against that dark wall, and no one likely to be at the pains of solving them until the general overthrow." What Hercules shall cleanse this foul Augean Stable, and free us from these

monsters bred in the filth and slime of our social corruption? No one saw and felt these horrors more clearly and acutely than Dickens; but they did not inspire him with a sceptical distrust of human nature, nor produce the morbid vitality of a despondent humour, so as to darkly bewilder his mind with the confounding paradoxes of human existence. He was more an artist than a moralist. His aim was to paint men as they are, and not as he would wish them to be; and whatever might have been his feelings, he never sacrificed his art by any antagonistic individuality, or by an impertinent intrusion either of his indignation or approval. Yet strong were the ties which bound him to his fellow men, and his life bears more traces than his writings show how he felt himself linked by identity of nature and destiny, yea, by all that unite us under the common name of man, to those poor, unhealthy, degraded, mutilated beings which he saw around him; and it was his humour, and the wit and brightness which God gave him-that saved him from perpetual despair, and through the pilgrimage of this life helped to "charm his pained steps over the burning marl."

It has been objected that Dickens sometimes carried this quality of humour to excess, and overstepped the modesties of art. Dickens felt this, and he owned that it cost him some effort to check the lighter impulses of his heart, and to control its tendency to exuberant and riotous fun. In one of his letters to Lord Lytton, he said, "I work slowly and with great care, and never give way to my invention recklessly, but constantly restrain it, and that I think it is my infirmity to fancy or perceive relations in things which are not apparent generally. Also, I have