d not availed to extinguish;
to discover what is beautiful and comely under what commonly passes for
the ungainly and the deformed; to draw happiness and hopefulness from
despair itself; and, above all, so to have made known to his own
countrymen the wants and sufferings of the poor, the ignorant, and the
neglected, that they could be left in absolute neglect no more. "A
triumph has been prepared for him," wrote Mr. Ticknor to our dear friend
Kenyon, "in which the whole country will join. He will have a progress
through the States unequaled since Lafayette's." Daniel Webster told the
Americans that Dickens had done more already to ameliorate the condition
of the English poor than all the statesmen Great Britain had sent into
Parliament. His sympathies are such, exclaimed Dr. Channing, as to
recommend him in an especial manner to us. He seeks out that class, in
order to benefit them, with whom American institutions and laws
sympathize most strongly; and it is in the passions, sufferings, and
virtues of the mass that he has found his subjects of most thrilling
interest. "He shows that life in its rudest form may wear a tragic
grandeur; that amidst follies and excesses, provoking laughter or scorn,
the moral feelings do not wholly die; and that the haunts of the
blackest crime are sometimes lighted up by the presence and influence of
the noblest souls. His pictures have a tendency to awaken sympathy with
our race, and to change the unfeeling indifference which has prevailed
towards the depressed multitude, into a sorrowful and indignant
sensibility to their wrongs and woes."

Whatever may be the turn which we are to see the welcome take, by
dissatisfaction that arose on both sides, it is well that we should thus
understand what in its first manifestations was honorable to both.
Dickens had his disappointments, and the Americans had theirs; but what
was really genuine in the first enthusiasm remained without grave alloy
from either; and the letters, as I proceed to give them, will so
naturally explain and illustrate the misunderstanding as to require
little further comment. I am happy to be able here to place on record
fac-similes of the invitations to the public entertainments in New York
which reached him before he quitted Boston. The mere signatures suffice
to show how universal the welcome was from that great city of the
Union.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] The initials used here are in no case those of the real names,
being em