one, they only refuse, naturally enough, to sanction in a book what half
their lives is passed in tolerating if not in worshipping. Dickens,
illustrating his never-failing experience of being obliged to subdue in
his books what he knew to be real for fear it should be deemed
impossible, had already made the remark in his preface to _Nickleby_,
that the world, which is so very credulous in what professes to be true,
is most incredulous in what professes to be imaginary. They agree to be
deceived in a reality, and reward themselves by refusing to be deceived
in a fiction. That a great many people who might have sat for Pecksniff,
should condemn him for a grotesque impossibility, as Dickens averred to
be the case, was no more than might be expected. A greater danger he has
exposed more usefully in showing the greater numbers, who, desiring
secretly to be thought better than they are, support eagerly pretensions
that keep their own in countenance, and, without being Pecksniffs,
render Pecksniffs possible. All impostures would have something too
suspicious or forbidding in their look if we were not prepared to meet
them half way.

There is one thing favourable to us however, even in this view, which a
French critic has lately suggested. Informing us that there are no
Pecksniffs to be found in France, Mr. Taine explains this by the fact
that his countrymen have ceased to affect virtue, and pretend only to
vice; that a charlatan setting up morality would have no sort of
following; that religion and the domestic virtues have gone so utterly
to rags as not to be worth putting on for a deceitful garment; and that,
no principles being left to parade, the only chance for the French
modern Tartuffe is to confess and exaggerate weaknesses. We seem to have
something of an advantage here. We require at least that the respectable
homage of vice to virtue should not be omitted. "Charity, my dear," says
our English Tartuffe, upon being bluntly called what he really is, "when
I take my chamber-candlestick to-night, remind me to be more than
usually particular in praying for Mr. Anthony Chuzzlewit, who has done
me an injustice." No amount of self-indulgence weakens or lowers his
pious and reflective tone. "Those are her daughters," he remarks, making
maudlin overtures to Mrs. Todgers in memory of his deceased wife. "Mercy
and Charity, Charity and Mercy, not unholy names I hope. She was
beautiful. She had a small property." When his conditi