From the old giants of English fun--burly persons delighting in
broad caricature, in decided colours, in cockney jokes, in swashing
blows at the more prominent and obvious human follies--from these
you derived the splendid high spirits and unhesitating mirth of your
earlier works. Mr. Squeers, and Sam Weller, and Mrs. Gamp, and all
the Pickwickians, and Mr. Dowler, and John Browdie--these and their
immortal companions were reared, so to speak, on the beef and beer
of that naughty, fox-hunting, badger-baiting old England, which we
have improved out of existence. And these characters, assuredly,
are your best; by them, though stupid people cannot read about them,
you will live while there is a laugh left among us. Perhaps that
does not assure you a very prolonged existence, but only the future
can show.

The dismal seriousness of the time cannot, let us hope, last for
ever and a day. Honest old Laughter, the true LUTIN of your
inspiration, must have life left in him yet, and cannot die; though
it is true that the taste for your pathos, and your melodrama, and
plots constructed after your favourite fashion ("Great Expectations"
and the "Tale of Two Cities" are exceptions) may go by and never be
regretted. Were people simpler, or only less clear-sighted, as far
as your pathos is concerned, a generation ago? Jeffrey, the hard-
headed shallow critic, who declared that Wordsworth "would never
do," cried, "wept like anything," over your Little Nell. One still
laughs as heartily as ever with Dick Swiveller; but who can cry over
Little Nell?

Ah, Sir, how could you--who knew so intimately, who remembered so
strangely well the fancies, the dreams, the sufferings of childhood-
-how could you "wallow naked in the pathetic," and massacre