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CHARLES DICKENS.

XXIX.

HARLES DICKENS stands high among the World's best

ever commits to the pen of genius. He has imparted a new sacredness to man in the estimation of millions. More precious tears of sympathy for the neglected and the suffering have wet his pages, than have fallen over the writings of any other living man.

It is sometimes pleasant to an author, in turning over his musty old manuscripts, to fall on some pen-and-ink sketches of men who were then just rising into public notice, but who in later years mounted the gilded heights of enduring fame. It is pleasanter still for him to find that his sketches, drawn long years before, still bear all the chief lineaments of truth, and may, without detriment to any of the parties concerned, be brought into the light.

In my recent rummages among the debris of a quarter of a century of literary life, I found a letter on Dickens, which I addressed to Washington Irving in the summer of 1840, when I met Mr. Dickens-with an introduction from Campbellfor the first time.

With a warm-hearted and generous letter of introduction from Thomas Campbell, I called on the author of the Pickwick Papers. With multitudes of others, I had read his writings with strange delight. There was no gloom which his humor and cheerfulness could not drive away; no hilarity which I would not gladly exchange for his paintings of suffering, sadness and triumph in the history of the generous, but hard-tried Oliver; the proud-spirited, kind-hearted Nicholas; the confiding Madaline; the beautiful Kate, and, above all, sweet little Nellie, that child of Heaven. I promised myself a rich satisfaction in Mr. Dickens' acquaintance, and I need not tell you how fully all my anticipations have been realized. I found him sitting in a large arm-chair by his writing table in the library, with a sheet of what he afterwards casually alluded to, of Master Humphrey's Clock, before him. Nothing could be more kind or genia' than the reception he gave me, and I thought at the time, and perhaps do still, that Dickens is incomparably the finest looking man I ever saw.

DESCRIPTION OF DICKENS.

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The portraits of him do him little justice; nor are the artists particularly to blame, for it is not very easy to paint or engrave the expression of his face while he is engaged in an interesting conversation. There is something about his eyes at all times that, in women, we call bewitching; in men we have scarcely any name for it. He is, perhaps, a little above the standard height, but his bearing is free and noble, and he appears taller than he really is. His figure is very graceful, neither too slight, nor too stout; and it is to be hoped he may never get the shape of a burly “Hinglishman." His complexion is exquisitely delicate—rather pale generally; but when his feelings are awakened a very rich glow spreads all over his face. I should not blame him if he were somewhat vain of his hair. It reminded me of words in Sidney's Arcadia: "His fair auburn hair, which he wore in great length, gave him at that time a most delightful show." His head is large, and its phrenological developments indicate a clear and beautiful intellect, in which the organs of perception, mirthfulness, comparison and ideality predominate. I should think the nose had at one time almost determined to be Roman, but hesitated just long enough on the way to make a happy compromise with the classic Greek outline. But the charm of his person is in his full, soft, beaming eyes, which catch, like pure water, an expression from every passing object. You can always see fun, as you do in humorous children, sleeping in ambush around those blue eyes, unless they are melted to tenderness, or flashing with indignant fires. . . . . . Mr. Dickens spoke with the utmost freedom about every body and every thing, with the fullest glow of appreciation of all our well known writers, characterizing in few dashes their most striking traits, and hitting off the strong peculiarities of American character with astonishing familiarity and bonhommie.

.....

The windows of his library look out upon a beautiful garden, where I saw several rosy-cheeked children-English all over—playing by a fountain, and as the little creatures cast occasional glances up to us, watching their sport from the window, I saw in their large, lustrous, blue eyes, golden hair, and bewitching smiles, the image of Charles Dickens. They were all in fact of young Bozzes.

Y

XXX.

́ANKEE inquisitiveness. I felt very desirous to gratify in asking him a great many questions about his books and his inner intellectual life; so throwing myself upon Campbell's very strong letter, I thought it would not be absolutely outrageous if I should, and so I did. “To use one of your own expressive phrases," he replied, "go ahead. Aside

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DICKENS' CONVERSATIONS.

from other reasons, Mr. Campbell's letter gave you a push into my friendship as far at least as we could both of us have carried it by an acquaintance of years." Not being an author myself, and wishing to get the "hang" of an author's experience, I asked him how far he had in any, or most, instances in portraying his characters, had his eye upon particular persons he had known; for having with all his dramatis personæ never painted two characters much alike, I could not well conceive how they could have been to any considerable extent creatures of imagination.

"Allow me to ask, sir," I said, "if the one-eyed Squeers, coarse but good John Browdie, the charming Sally Brass, clever Dick Swiveller, the demoniac and intriguing Quilp, the good Cheeribly Brothers, the avaricious Fagin, and dear little Nelly, are mere fancies?"

"No, sir, they are not," he replied; "they are copies. You will not understand me to say, of course, that they are true histories in all respects, but they are real likenesses; nor have I in any of my works attempted any thing more than to arrange my story as well as I could, and give a true picture of scenes I have witnessed. My past history and pursuits have led me to a familiar acquaintance with numerous instances of extreme wretchedness and of deep-laid villany. In the haunts of squalid poverty I have found many a broken heart too good for this world. Many such persons, now in the most abject condition, have seen better days. Once they moved in circles of friendship and affluence, from which they have been hurled by misfortune to the lowest depths of want and sorrow. This class of persons is very large.

"Then there are thousands in our parish workhouses and in the lanes of London, born into the world without a friend except God and a dying mother. Many, too, who in circumstances of trial have yielded to impulses of passion, and by one fatal step fallen beyond recovery. London is crowded, and, indeed, so is all England, with the poor, the unfortunate, and the guilty. This description of persons has been generally overlooked by authors. They have had none to care for them, and have fled from the public gaze to some dark habitation of this great city, to curse the cold charities of a selfish world, and die. There are more broken hearts in London than in any other place in the world. The amount of crime, starvation, nakedness, and misery of every sort in the metropolis surpasses all calculation. I thought I could render some service to humanity by bringing these scenes before the minds of those who, from never having witnessed them, suppose they cannot exist. In this effort I have not been wholly unsuccessful; and there is nothing makes me happier than to think that, by some of my representations, I have increased the stock of human cheerfulness, and, by others, the stock of human sympathy. I think it makes the heart better to seek out

SIDNEY SMITH ON DICKENS.

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the suffering and relieve them. I have spent many days and nights in the most wretched districts of the metropolis, studying the history of the human heart. There we must go to find it. In high circles we see every thing but the heart, and learn every thing but the real character. We must go to the hovels of the poor and the unfortunate, where trial brings out the character. I have in these rambles seen many exhibitions of generous affection and heroic endurance, which would do honor to any sphere. Often have I discovered minds that only wanted a little of the sunshine of prosperity to develop the choicest endowments of Heaven. I think I never return to my home after these adventures without being made a sadder and a better man. In describing these characters I aim no higher than to feel in writing as they seemed to feel themselves. I am persuaded that I have succeeded just in proportion as I have cultivated a familiarity with the trials and sorrows of the poor, and told their story as they would have related it themselves."

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XXXI.

LEFT Mr. Dickens after a delightful visit of two hours, most deeply impressed with the essential goodness of his heart, and the rich, overflowing humanity of his soul. I do not think any other author is doing as much for humanity in the British Empire. To show that I am not alone in this opinion, I cannot help enclosing to you the following graphic and masterly sketch, which the friend who put it in my hand, said was attributed to Sidney Smith. It is worth living for ever:

"We do not know any man who has done more for the poetry and the picturesque of the bread tax than Mr. Dickens. For wit, perception of character, graphic delineation of those ephemeral human phenomena which elude the grasp of a less delicate perception, he has hardly any rival. Above all, the sort of photogenic quality of his mind, by which every shade and hue of the most neglected and insignificant portions of the moral landscape are made as instinct with interest, truth, and life as the most important and striking, is a feature of it which we do not remember ever to have seen approached by other writers. 'It is his nature's plague to spy into abuses.' He reminds us of cinder gatherers, who find something by which they can profit in the rubbish that society casts away. He catches up the dross, and makes it shine like pure gold. Nay, he is a sort of moral alchymist, that can convert the worthless into

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HIS MORAL CHARACTERISTICS.

the precious, and show the uses and the significancy of every thing that lives, and moves, and has a being. He'gathers up the fragments' of our nature, that nothing may be lost.' With miraculous touch he can feed, out of the most lenten entertainment, the perishing multitude, and convert water into wine. Like Goldsmith, there is nothing which he does not touch, and nothing he touches which he does not adorn.

"But more than that, than this, than these, than all,' we like him for this, that his big heart is in the right place; that he is a man of large humanities; that his moral sympathies are catholic, and his affections universal. He is, as it were, a watchman for heaven. Not a sparrow falleth to the ground but he registers it in his great history of life. His genius, his wit, his graphic power, and the interest which he gives to all that he sketches, these give him ready access to every circle of society, and make his writings relished equally by the peer and the peasant; the little milliner in her back parlor, and the great duchess in her boudoir. Scenes that the great cannot even imagine, he carries straight into their drawing-room. Phases of human life, which the rich and powerful either never have an opportunity of observing, or carefully avoid all chance of bringing within the sphere of their observation, he presents to them in their most striking aspects, without offending their delicacy by the hideous accessories of their actual condition. While he causes the most abject and loathsome carcasses to come between the wind and their nobility, they are made picturesque and interesting rather than horrible, and stand before the mind rather to teach it a wholesome lesson, and to make pomp take physic, than to disgust without instructing, or wound without amending.

"It is a mighty privilege this of genius to make itself heard equally in the kitchen and the hall; to enter in at the straight gate of supercilious rank, or proud and fastidious fashion, and yet to be a welcome passenger in the broad thoroughfare of the vulgar, common-place, workingday world. It is, as it were, to be the conductor that connects the positive and negative poles of society; to be the ambassador from poverty to pride, or the mediator between the abjectness of hopeless penury and the superbial magnificence of affluent aristocracy. This, we say, is a mighty privilege, and this great writer has used it well and wisely. He bath a noble and a Christian heart. He looks upon a human being, simply as such, as something inexpressibly great, and upon an immortal creature as of infinite value and significancy. He feels that a man is more precious than many sparrows, and that, blurred, and marred, and vitiated though the likeness be, yet there stands the image of his heavenly Father. In his kind and manly breast every fellow-creature finds a willing advocate; the wailing of the desolate catches his ever-listening ear,