robust manliness, and so forth, which would have irritated you very much, and
there survive some press men who seem to have read you a little (especially
your later works), and never to have read anything else. Now familiarity with
the pages of 'Our Mutual Friend'and 'Dombey and Son' does not precisely
constitute a liberal education, and the assumption that it does is apt (quite
unreasonably) to prejudice people against the greatest comic genius of modern
times.

On the other hand, Time is at last beginning to sift the true admirers of
Dickens from the false. Yours, Sir, in the best sense of the word, is a
popular success, a popular reputation. For example, I know that, in a remote
and even Pictish part of this kingdom, a rural household, humble and under the
shadow of a sorrow inevitably approaching, has found in 'David Copperfield'
oblivion of winter, of sorrow, and of sickness. On the other hand, people are
now picking up heart to say that 'they cannot read Dickens,' and that they
particularly detest 'Pickwick.' I believe it was young ladies who first had
the courage of their convictions in this respect. 'Tout sied aux belles,' and
the fair, in the confidence of youth, often venture on remarkable confessions.
In your 'Natural History of Young Ladies' I do not remember that you describe
the Humorous Young Lady (1). She is a very rare bird indeed, and humour
generally is at a deplorably low level in England.

(1) I am informed that the _Natural History of Young Ladies_ is attributed,
by some writers, to another philosopher, the author of _The Art of Pluck_.

Hence come all sorts of mischief, arisen since you left us; and, it may be
said, that inordinate philanthropy, genteel sympathy with Irish murder and
arson, Societies for Badgering the Poor, Esoteric Buddhism, and a score of
other plagues, including what was once called Aestheticism, are all,
primarily, due to want of humour. People discuss, with the gravest faces,