the greatest master in letters--not the merest
mountebank. Turn to Dickens, in innumerable
passages of pathos: the death of poor Jo, or that
of the "Cheap John's" little daughter in her father's
arms, on the foot-board of his peddling cart before
the jeering of the vulgar mob; smile moistly, too,
at Mr. Sleary's odd philosophies; or at the trials
of Sissy Jupe; or lift and tower with indignation,
giving ear to Stephen Blackpool and the stainless
nobility of his cloyed utterances.

The crudeness or the homeliness of the dialectic
element does not argue its unfitness in any way.
Some readers seem to think so; but they are wrong,
and very gravely wrong. Our own brief history as
a nation, and our finding and founding and maintaining
of it, left our forefathers little time indeed
for the delicate cultivation of the arts and graces
of refined and scholarly attainments. And there
is little wonder, and utter blamelessness on their
part, if they lapsed in point of high mental
accomplishments, seeing their attention was so absorbed
by propositions looking toward the protection of
their rude farm-homes, their meager harvests, and
their half-stabled cattle from the dread invasion of
the Indian. Then, too, they had their mothers and
their wives and little ones to protect, to clothe, to
feed, and to die for in this awful line of duty, as
hundreds upon hundreds did. These sad facts are
here accented and detailed not so much for the sake