perous and practically successful in Australia;
and that he would certainly be nowhere. Colonising is not talked of
merely as a coarse, economic expedient for going to a new market. It is
really offered as something that will cure the hopeless tragedy of
Peggotty; as something that will cure the still more hopeless comedy of
Micawber.

I will not dwell here on the subsequent adventures of this very
sentimental and extremely English illusion. It would be an exaggeration
to say that Dickens in this matter is something of a forerunner of much
modern imperialism. His political views were such that he would have
regarded modern imperialism with horror and contempt. Nevertheless there
is here something of that hazy sentimentalism which makes some
Imperialists prefer to talk of the fringe of the empire of which they
know nothing, rather than of the heart of the empire which they know is
diseased. It is said that in the twilight and decline of Rome, close to
the dark ages, the people in Gaul believed that Britain was a land of
ghosts (perhaps it was foggy), and that the dead were ferried across to
it from the northern coast of France. If (as is not entirely impossible)
our own century appears to future ages as a time of temporary decay and
twilight, it may be said that there was attached to England a blessed
island called Australia to which the souls of the socially dead were
ferried across to remain in bliss for ever.

This element which is represented by the colonial optimism at the end of
_David Copperfield_ is a moral element. The truth is that there is
something a little mean about this sort of optimism. I do not like the
notion of David Copperfield sitting down comfortably to his tea-table
with Agnes, having got rid of all the inconvenient or distressing
characters of the story by sending them to the other side of the world.
The whole thing has too much about it of the selfishness of a family
which sends a scapegrace to the Colonies to starve with its blessing.
There is too much in the whole thing of that element which was satirised
by an ironic interpretation of the epitaph "Peace, perfect peace, with
loved ones far away." We should have thought more of David Copperfield
(and also of Charles Dickens) if he had endeavoured for the rest of his
life, by conversation and comfort, to bind up the wounds of his old
friends from the seaside. We should have thought more of David
Copperfield (and also of Charles Dickens) if he ha