l person to Sydney than Newman Noggs; and all the world that
Dickens attracted to his books could draw from them the same advantage
as the man of wit and genius. It has been lately objected that humanity
is not seen in them in its highest or noblest types, and the assertion
may hereafter be worth considering; but what is very certain is, that
they have inculcated humanity in familiar and engaging forms to
thousands and tens of thousands of their readers, who can hardly have
failed each to make his little world around him somewhat the better for
their teaching. From first to last they were never for a moment alien
to either the sympathies or the understandings of any class; and there
were crowds of people at this time that could not have told you what
imagination meant, who were adding month by month to their limited
stores the boundless gains of imagination.

One other kindliest product of humor in _Nickleby_, not to be passed
over in even thus briefly recalling a few first impressions of it, was
the good little miniature-painter Miss La Creevy, living by herself,
overflowing with affections she has nobody to bestow on, but always
cheerful by dint of industry and good-heartedness. When she is
disappointed in the character of a woman she has been to see, she eases
her mind by saying a very cutting thing at her expense _in a soliloquy_:
and thereby illustrates one of the advantages of having lived alone so
long, that she made always a confidante of herself; was as sarcastic as
she could be, by herself, on people who offended her; pleased herself,
and did no harm. Here was one of those touches, made afterwards familiar
to the readers of Dickens by innumerable similar fancies, which added
affection to their admiration for the writer, and enabled them to
anticipate the feeling with which posterity would regard him as indeed
the worthy companion of the Goldsmiths and Fieldings. There was a piece
of writing, too, within not many pages of it, of which Leigh Hunt
exclaimed on reading it that it surpassed the best things of the kind in
Smollett that he was able to call to mind. This was the letter of Miss
Squeers to Ralph Nickleby, giving him her version of the chastisement
inflicted by Nicholas on the schoolmaster: "My pa requests me to write
to you, the doctors considering it doubtful whether he will ever
recuvver the use of his legs which prevents his holding a pen. We are in
a state of mind beyond everything, and my pa is one