ection of "the
stage," as pointed strongly to the danger, which, by those who took the
opposite view, was most of all thought incident to the particular time
of the proposal. It might be a wild exaggeration to fear that he was in
danger of being led to adopt the stage as a calling, but he was
certainly about to place himself within reach of not a few of its
drawbacks and disadvantages. To the full extent he perhaps did not
himself know, how much his eager present wish to become a public reader
was but the outcome of the restless domestic discontents of the last
four years; and that to indulge it, and the unsettled habits inseparable
from it, was to abandon every hope of resettling his disordered home.
There is nothing, in its application to so divine a genius as
Shakespeare, more affecting than his expressed dislike to a profession,
which, in the jealous self-watchfulness of his noble nature, he feared
might hurt his mind.[215] The long subsequent line of actors admirable
in private as in public life, and all the gentle and generous
associations of the histrionic art, have not weakened the testimony of
its greatest name against its less favourable influences; against the
laxity of habits it may encourage; and its public manners, bred of
public means, not always compatible with home felicities and duties.
But, freely open as Dickens was to counsel in regard of his books, he
was, for reasons formerly stated,[216] less accessible to it on points
of personal conduct; and when he had neither self-distrust nor
self-denial to hold him back, he would push persistently forward to
whatever object he had in view.

An occurrence of the time hastened the decision in this case. An
enterprise had been set on foot for establishment of a hospital for sick
children;[217] a large old-fashioned mansion in Great Ormond-street,
with spacious garden, had been fitted up with more than thirty beds;
during the four or five years of its existence, outdoor and indoor
relief had been afforded by it to nearly fifty thousand children, of
whom thirty thousand were under five years of age; but, want of funds
having threatened to arrest the merciful work, it was resolved to try a
public dinner by way of charitable appeal, and for president the happy
choice was made of one who had enchanted everybody with the joys and
sorrows of little children. Dickens threw himself into the service heart
and soul. There was a simple pathos in his address from the chair