eign circumstances, immediately fell to bawling 'Beau-court!' which
he continued to shout at the utmost pitch of his voice and with great
gravity, until rescued.--_New Boulogne Jest Book_, page 578."

[180] To show the pains he took in such matters I will give other titles
also thought of for this tale. 1. Fact; 2. Hard-headed Gradgrind; 3.
Hard Heads and Soft Hearts; 4. Heads and Tales; 5. Black and White.

[181] It is well to remember, too, what he wrote about the story to
Charles Knight. It had no design, he said, to damage the really useful
truths of Political Economy, but was wholly directed against "those who
see figures and averages, and nothing else; who would take the average
of cold in the Crimea during twelve months as a reason for clothing a
soldier in nankeen on a night when he would be frozen to death in fur;
and who would comfort the labourer in travelling twelve miles a day to
and from his work, by telling him that the average distance of one
inhabited place from another, on the whole area of England, is not more
than four miles."

[182] It is curious that with as strong a view in the opposite
direction, and with an equally mistaken exaltation, above the writer's
ordinary level, of a book which on the whole was undoubtedly below it,
Mr. Taine speaks of _Hard Times_ as that one of Dickens's romances which
is a summary of all the rest: exalting instinct above reason, and the
intuitions of the heart above practical knowledge; attacking all
education based on statistic figures and facts; heaping sorrow and
ridicule on the practical mercantile people; fighting against the pride,
hardness, and selfishness of the merchant and noble; cursing the
manufacturing towns for imprisoning bodies in smoke and mud, and souls
in falsehood and factitiousness;--while it contrasts, with that satire
of social oppression, lofty eulogy of the oppressed; and searches out
poor workmen, jugglers, foundlings, and circus people, for types of good
sense, sweetness of disposition, generosity, delicacy, and courage, to
perpetual confusion of the pretended knowledge, pretended happiness,
pretended virtue, of the rich and powerful who trample upon them! This
is a fair specimen of the exaggerations with which exaggeration is
rebuked, in Mr. Taine's and much similar criticism.

[183] Here is a note at the close. "Tavistock House. Look at that!
Boulogne, of course. Friday, 14th of July, 1854. I am three parts mad,
and the fourth delirious