rd, where the excellence lay that
gave it this superiority. It had brought his highest faculty into play:
over and above other qualities it had given scope to his imagination;
and it first expressed the distinction in this respect between his
earlier and his later books. Apart wholly from this, too, his letters
will have confirmed a remark already made upon the degree to which his
mental power had been altogether deepened and enlarged by the effect of
his visit to America.

In construction and conduct of story _Martin Chuzzlewit_ is defective,
character and description constituting the chief part of its strength.
But what it lost as a story by the American episode it gained in the
other direction; young Martin, by happy use of a bitter experience,
casting off his slough of selfishness in the poisonous swamp of Eden.
Dickens often confessed, however, the difficulty it had been to him to
have to deal with this gap in the main course of his narrative; and I
will give an instance from a letter he wrote to me when engaged upon the
number in which Jonas brings his wife to her miserable home. "I write in
haste" (28th of July 1843), "for I have been at work all day; and, it
being against the grain with me to go back to America when my interest
is strong in the other parts of the tale, have got on but slowly. I have
a great notion to work out with Sydney's favourite,[70] and long to be
at him again." But obstructions of this kind with Dickens measured only
and always the degree of readiness and resource with which he rose to
meet them, and never had his handling of character been so masterly as
in _Chuzzlewit_. The persons delineated in former books had been more
agreeable, but never so interpenetrated with meanings brought out with a
grasp so large, easy, and firm. As well in this as in the passionate
vividness of its descriptions, the imaginative power makes itself felt.
The windy autumn night, with the mad desperation of the hunted leaves
and the roaring mirth of the blazing village forge; the market-day at
Salisbury; the winter walk, and the coach journey to London by night;
the ship voyage over the Atlantic; the stormy midnight travel before the
murder, the stealthy enterprise and cowardly return of the murderer;
these are all instances of first-rate description, original in the
design, imaginative in all the detail, and very complete in the
execution. But the higher power to which I direct attention is even
better discerne