Melchers is doing battle in Cologne, and Count Miecislaus is suffering confinement in Ostrowo, may succeed sooner or later. False premises false reasonings-false conclusions! It is true that moral forces often baffle and survive material pressure, but a man has read little history who has still to learn that the best of causes may be broken by a long, a steady, and an overwhelming use of physical power. What are the facts in Germany, as they appear to men of German race? A law is passed by the Imperial Parliament. The Pope dislikes this law, and, acting on the rights reserved to him by Dr. Manning, he desires his clergy to resist. A Polish count, a courtier from his youth, being now advanced to the high dignity of Archbishop of Gnesen and Posen, elects to follow the behest of Rome. At first, the world is much amused; the count being chiefly known by his attempts to curry favour at the Schloss-to which in truth he owes his elevation in the Church. Count Miecislaus is fined; the fine is levied on his chattels. He continues to offend, and he is fined again. At length, his rooms being empty, he is taken in person and conveyed to gaol. But mark the difference: he is lodged in a common gaol, and in his own diocese! Martin von Dunin was judged by the State, and condemned to imprisonment in a fortress. He, a State prisoner, was regarded as a patriot and a martyr. Miecislaus de Ledochowski is judged by a local court, seized by an ordinary policeman, and condemned to lie in a common gaol. Dunin was sent to Pomerania, by which it seemed as though the Government were afraid the very stones of Catholic Posen would rise up to liberate the Polish saint. Ledochowski is lodged in the common gaol of Ostrowo, a small town in his own province, lying on the road from Lissa to Kalisch, every man in which is a Poiander. The count cries out against this outrage; like his predecessor of unhappy memory, he desires to have a fortress for himself. But Bismarck will not interfere. He is a misdemeanant, not a martyr, and his prayer for an exceptional treatment is refused.

Archbishop Calabiana, the Duke of Norfolk, Monsignore Speranza, Lord Bessborough, Monsieur Louis Vieullot, the Dowager Marchioness of Londonderry, and other persons of like mind, may send their messages to Ostrowo; but the age of miracles is past, the race of martyrs is no more, and the Count-Archbishop lies within the prison gates. Bismarck is strong; not only in his million of men, in his parliamentary following, in his army of Protestant supporters, in the great traditions of his country, but in the sympathies of liberal men in every State of Europe and America in which the light of scientific truth and love of human liberty exist.

CHARLES DICKENS.

BY GEORGE BARNETT SMITH.

EW biographies, if indeed any, have been so eagerly looked forward to, or received with so genuine a welcome, as that of Charles Dickens. Most authors fail to beget in us a strong personal interest, and the author of "Pickwick" stood quite alone in modern times for the wide range of his sympathisers. To account for the extraordinary fervour with which his name was everywhere greeted, and his immense, his world-wide popularity, we are compelled to fall back upon the conclusion that this man must have stamped more of his own individual human character upon his work than is the case with most writers. When we read his novels we are irresistibly led to think of the man who has lived and moved so much among his species as to reproduce with a fidelity completely unparalleled the habits, manners, and appearance of his myriad characters. We are introduced to real men and womenofttimes, it must be admitted, of an exaggerated type—and treated to real experience, by one who has evidently made the acquaintance of the persons and scenes he professes to depict. The distinguished American, Emerson, in one of his essays, says of the popular novelist, when complaining of his merely municipal limits as a writer"Dickens, with preternatural apprehension of the language of manners, and the varieties of street life, with pathos and laughter, with patriotic and still enlarging generosity, writes London tracts. a painter of English details, like Hogarth; local and temporary in his tints and style, and local in his aims." There is a great deal of truth in this indeed, as far as it goes all the description might be accepted. But it does not go far enough; it does not give an exhaustive estimate of Dickens; there is more in him than this critic is apparently willing to admit. And again, the inference to be derived from this description is somewhat unfair. We apprehend that all character-painting is in one sense local. Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff is as purely local a conception as Mrs. Gamp. In both cases the artist has been true to the human model from which he worked. With Shakespeare there has been a larger method, that is all; the varied relations by which Falstaff is surrounded have been grasped by a wider eye, whilst Dickens has been perhaps a little too

preoccupied with the individual character to notice its surroundings. The result at which Emerson has arrived is not one, we think, which would be arrived at by most of the students of Dickens. His genius may not be absolutely of the highest rank, but amongst the work he has accomplished there is surely something which will lift him above the definition of an artist with only local aims.

While claiming this for him, however, let us also admit that there has been in past times a kind of glamour, almost akin to worship, thrown about this man, which is equally incomprehensible with the detraction practised towards him in a few quarters by those who acted either from jealousy or an incapacity to perceive the genius which was patent to the vast majority of mankind. The adulation which was poured upon Dickens seems to us to have overshot its mark. He was a great man; great in the sense of being a true reproducer of the human nature which he beheld; but he was not of the very greatest type. Yet the terms in which he has frequently been described would not be too enthusiastic if they were employed in indicating our feeling for Shakespeare or Fielding. way of English readers, however. They set up an idol, time at least they will see merit in no other person. Their judg ment is often incorrect; for a great number of those who have worshipped Dickens have been ready, with another turn of the tide, to be quite as keen in their praises of Martin F. Tupper! They are so unreasoning that to descend from the pedestal of the sublime to that of bathos causes them no concern or misgiving whatever.

This is the and for some

We have thought it a not unfitting opportunity on the conclusion of Mr. John Forster's excellent work* (for so we must regard it on the whole) to offer some observations not only upon the Life itself, but also upon the genius and character of Dickens. The novelist is put before us in every conceivable light, and there is no lack of material upon which we may form a judgment of the man. If we can point out what will be satisfactorily regarded as the salient characteristics of both his character and his works, and at the same time induce any to study him fairly and without bias, we shall be satisfied. But it must furthermore be owned that it is somewhat difficult, on the ground of the personal interest which he excites in us, to regard his writings as calmly as we do those of many other authors. His extraordinary, his unprecedented popularity somewhat dazzles us. And as a proof that that popularity has in no degree waned we have only to remember the numerous titles which have

"The Life of Charles Dickens." By John Forster. In three volumes. (London: Chapman and Hall.)

been given to the various editions of his works. There have been the "Illustrated Edition," the "Library Edition," the "People's Edition," the "Charles Dickens' Edition," and what others we really remember not. Nor is there any likelihood of this remarkable nomenclature coming to an end. How can it, when from the four corners of the world are echoed demands for his novels? With the exception of the Bible and the "Pilgrim's Progress" the foreign sale of his works has been larger than that of any other book. His readers, too, have been of the most cosmopolitan character. character. The highest and the lowest in the social scale of all ages and of all countries have been charmed by his stories, and moved by his laughter and his pathos. No man ever succeeded in doing this admirably who was not renowned for his appreciation of human nature in its manifold guises, and with its numberless failings and virtues.

One quality which peculiarly distinguished Dickens displayed itself at a very early period, viz., his observation. Turning to Mr. Forster's first volume we discover in the very introductory chapter some references on this head. The novelist, speaking of himself in the character of David Copperfield, said, "If it should appear from anything I may set down in this narrative that I was a child of close observation, or that as a man I have a strong memory of my childhood, I undoubtedly lay claim to both of these characteristics." So close was his observation, in fact, that at the age of twenty-five years he perfectly well remembered all the plan of a military parade he had witnessed when a mere infant. If we are to accept his biographer's statements it would seem that this strong observation was at times something more, and almost approached to intuition. For he asserts that his experience of his friend led him to put implicit faith in the avowal he unvaryingly and repeatedly made that he had never seen any cause to correct or change what in his boyhood was his own secret impression of anybody whom he had had as a grown man the opportunity of testing in his maturer years. And now see how his mind silently fed upon all that he beheld. Those realistic pictures he has given us of London life were not mere off-hand pieces of description, in which his imagination played the principal part, but the result of a close acquaintanceship with the scenes and persons themselves. Many stories are told of the manner in which he went about London, and though probably some of them are wholly untrue, and others greatly exaggerated, the undoubted fact remains that more, perhaps, than has been the case with any other novelist are his works the result of personal