kens's wit and insight, because he chooses to speak in a
circle of stage fire. He is entirely right in his main drift and purpose
in every book he has written; and all of them, but especially _Hard
Times_, should be studied with close and earnest care by persons
interested in social questions. They will find much that is partial,
and, because partial, apparently unjust; but if they examine all the
evidence on the other side, which Dickens seems to overlook, it will
appear, after all their trouble, that his view was the finally right
one, grossly and sharply told."[182] The best points in it, out of the
circle of stage fire (an expression of wider application to this part
of Dickens's life than its inventor supposed it to be), were the
sketches of the riding-circus people and the Bounderby household; but it
is a wise hint of Mr. Ruskin's that there may be, in the drift of a
story, truths of sufficient importance to set against defects of
workmanship; and here they challenged wide attention. You cannot train
any one properly, unless you cultivate the fancy, and allow fair scope
to the affections. You cannot govern men on a principle of averages; and
to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market is not the _summum
bonum_ of life. You cannot treat the working man fairly unless, in
dealing with his wrongs and his delusions, you take equally into account
the simplicity and tenacity of his nature, arising partly from limited
knowledge, but more from honesty and singleness of intention. Fiction
cannot prove a case, but it can express forcibly a righteous sentiment;
and this is here done unsparingly upon matters of universal concern.
The book was finished at Boulogne in the middle of July,[183] and is
inscribed to Carlyle.

An American admirer accounted for the vivacity of the circus-scenes by
declaring that Dickens had "arranged with the master of Astley's Circus
to spend many hours behind the scenes with the riders and among the
horses;" a thing just as likely as that he went into training as a
stroller to qualify for Mr. Crummles in _Nickleby_. Such successes
belonged to the experiences of his youth; he had nothing to add to what
his marvellous observation had made familiar from almost childish days;
and the glimpses we get of them in the _Sketches by Boz_ are in these
points as perfect as anything his later experience could supply. There
was one thing nevertheless which the choice of his subject made him
anxious to v