f's elbow at the beginning of the story, and the help he gives
to set fairly afloat the falsehood he innocently believes, contribute to
an excellent management of this part of the design; and the same
prodigal wealth of invention and circumstance which gives its higher
imaginative stamp to the book, appears as vividly in its lesser as in
its leading figures. There are wonderful touches of this suggestive kind
in the household of Mould the undertaker; and in the vivid picture
presented to us by one of Mrs. Gamp's recollections, we are transported
to the youthful games of his children. "The sweet creeturs! playing at
berryins down in the shop, and follerin' the order-book to its long home
in the iron safe!" The American scenes themselves are not more full of
life and fun and freshness, and do not contribute more to the general
hilarity, than the cockney group at Todgers's; which is itself a little
world of the qualities and humours that make up the interest of human
life, whether it be high or low, vulgar or fine, filled in with a
master's hand. Here, in a mere byestroke as it were, are the very finest
things of the earlier books superadded to the new and higher achievement
that distinguished the later productions. No part indeed of the
execution of this remarkable novel is inferior. Young Bailey and
Sweedlepipes are in the front rank of his humorous creations; and poor
Mrs. Todgers, worn but not depraved by the cares of gravy and
solicitudes of her establishment, with calculation shining out of one
eye but affection and goodheartedness still beaming in the other, is in
her way quite as perfect a picture as even the portentous Mrs. Gamp with
her grim grotesqueness, her filthy habits and foul enjoyments, her thick
and damp but most amazing utterances, her moist clammy functions, her
pattens, her bonnet, her bundle, and her umbrella. But such prodigious
claims must have a special mention.

This world-famous personage has passed into and become one with the
language, which her own parts of speech have certainly not exalted or
refined. To none even of Dickens's characters has there been such a run
of popularity; and she will remain among the everlasting triumphs of
fiction, a superb masterpiece of English humour. What Mr. Mould says of
her in his enthusiasm, that she's the sort of woman one would bury for
nothing, and do it neatly too, every one feels to be an appropriate
tribute; and this, by a most happy inspiration, is exac