real as to be
treated as existences, their creator himself cannot help them having
their own wills and ways. Fern the farm-labourer is not here, nor yet
his niece the little Lilian (at first called Jessie) who is to give to
the tale its most tragical scene; and there are intimations of poetic
fancy at the close of my sketch which the published story fell short of.
Altogether the comparison is worth observing.

"The general notion is this. That what happens to poor Trotty in the
first part, and what will happen to him in the second (when he takes the
letter to a punctual and a great man of business, who is balancing his
books and making up his accounts, and complacently expatiating on the
necessity of clearing off every liability and obligation, and turning
over a new leaf and starting fresh with the new year), so dispirits him,
who can't do this, that he comes to the conclusion that his class and
order have no business with a new year, and really are 'intruding.' And
though he will pluck up for an hour or so, at the christening (I think)
of a neighbour's child, that evening: still, when he goes home, Mr.
Filer's precepts will come into his mind, and he will say to himself,
'we are a long way past the proper average of children, and it has no
business to be born:' and will be wretched again. And going home, and
sitting there alone, he will take that newspaper out of his pocket, and
reading of the crimes and offences of the poor, especially of those whom
Alderman Cute is going to put down, will be quite confirmed in his
misgiving that they are bad; irredeemably bad. In this state of mind, he
will fancy that the Chimes are calling, to him; and saying to himself
'God help me. Let me go up to 'em. I feel as if I were going to die in
despair--of a broken heart; let me die among the bells that have been a
comfort to me!'--will grope his way up into the tower; and fall down in
a kind of swoon among them. Then the third quarter, or in other words
the beginning of the second half of the book, will open with the Goblin
part of the thing: the bells ringing, and innumerable spirits (the sound
or vibration of them) flitting and tearing in and out of the
church-steeple, and bearing all sorts of missions and commissions and
reminders and reproaches, and comfortable recollections and what not, to
all sorts of people and places. Some bearing scourges; and others
flowers, and birds, and music; and others pleasant faces in mirrors, and
ot