r without the reliefs and self-assertions of humanity even in
scenes and among characters so debased. It is indeed the primary purpose
of the tale to show its little hero, jostled as he is in the miserable
crowd, preserved everywhere from the vice of its pollution by an
exquisite delicacy of natural sentiment which clings to him under every
disadvantage. There is not a more masterly touch in fiction, and it is
by such that this delightful fancy is consistently worked out to the
last, than Oliver's agony of childish grief on being brought away from
the branch-workhouse, the wretched home associated only with suffering
and starvation, and with no kind word or look, but containing still his
little companions in misery.

Of the figures the book has made familiar to every one it is not my
purpose to speak. To name one or two will be enough. Bumble and his
wife; Charley Bates and the Artful Dodger; the cowardly charity-boy,
Noah Claypole, whose _Such agony, please, sir_, puts the whole of a
school-life into one phrase; the so-called merry old Jew, supple and
black-hearted Fagin; and Bill Sikes, the bolder-faced bulky-legged
ruffian, with his white hat and white shaggy dog,--who does not know
them all, even to the least points of dress, look, and walk, and all the
small peculiarities that express great points of character? I have
omitted poor wretched Nancy; yet it is to be said of her, with such
honest truthfulness her strength and weakness are shown, in the virtue
that lies neighbored in her nature so closely by vice, that the people
meant to be entirely virtuous show poorly beside her. But, though Rose
and her lover are trivial enough beside Bill and his mistress, being
indeed the weak part of the story, it is the book's pre-eminent merit
that vice is nowhere made attractive in it. Crime is not more intensely
odious, all through, than it is also most wretched and most unhappy. Not
merely when its exposure comes, when the latent recesses of guilt are
laid bare, and all the agonies of remorse are witnessed; not in the
great scenes only, but in those lighter passages where no such aim might
seem to have guided the apparently careless hand, this is emphatically
so. Whether it be the comedy or the tragedy of crime, terror and
retribution dog closely at its heels. They are as plainly visible when
Fagin is first shown in his den, boiling the coffee in the saucepan and
stopping every now and then to listen when there is the least no