eart
that will _not_ be crushed, and neither sinks nor yields, but from
earth's roughest trials works out her own redemption even here. Of Edith
from the first Jeffrey judged more rightly; and, when the story was
nearly half done, expressed his opinion about her, and about the book
itself, in language that pleased Dickens for the special reason that at
the time this part of the book had seemed to many to have fallen greatly
short of the splendour of its opening. Jeffrey said however quite truly,
claiming to be heard with authority as his "Critic-laureate," that of
all his writings it was perhaps the most finished in diction, and that
it equalled the best in the delicacy and fineness of its touches, "while
it rises to higher and deeper passions, not resting, like most of the
former, in sweet thoughtfulness, and thrilling and attractive
tenderness, but boldly wielding all the lofty and terrible elements of
tragedy, and bringing before us the appalling struggles of a proud,
scornful, and repentant spirit." Not that she was exactly this. Edith's
worst qualities are but the perversion of what should have been her
best. A false education in her, and a tyrant passion in her husband,
make them other than Nature meant; and both show how life may run its
evil course against the higher dispensations.

As the catastrophe came in view, a nice point in the management of her
character and destiny arose. I quote from a letter of the 19th of
November, when he was busy with his fourteenth part. "Of course she
hates Carker in the most deadly degree. I have not elaborated that, now,
because (as I was explaining to Browne the other day) I have relied on
it very much for the effect of her death. But I have no question that
what you suggest will be an improvement. The strongest place to put it
in, would be the close of the chapter immediately before this last one.
I want to make the two first chapters as light as I can, but I will try
to do it, solemnly, in that place." Then came the effect of this
fourteenth number on Jeffrey; raising the question of whether the end
might not come by other means than her death, and bringing with it a
more bitter humiliation for her destroyer. While engaged on the
fifteenth (21st December) Dickens thus wrote to me: "I am thoroughly
delighted that you like what I sent. I enclose designs. Shadow-plate,
poor. But I think Mr. Dombey admirable. One of the prettiest things in
the book ought to be at the end of the