ens of old
nursery tales, and he had a secret delight in feeling that he was here
only giving them a higher form. The social and manly virtues he desired
to teach, were to him not less the charm of the ghost, the goblin, and
the fairy fancies of his childhood; however rudely set forth in those
earlier days. What now were to be conquered were the more formidable
dragons and giants which had their places at our own hearths, and the
weapons to be used were of a finer than the "ice-brook's temper." With
brave and strong restraints, what is evil in ourselves was to be
subdued; with warm and gentle sympathies, what is bad or unreclaimed in
others was to be redeemed; the Beauty was to embrace the Beast, as in
the divinest of all those fables; the star was to rise out of the ashes,
as in our much-loved Cinderella; and we were to play the Valentine with
our wilder brothers, and bring them back with brotherly care to
civilization and happiness. Nor is it to be doubted, I think, that, in
that largest sense of benefit, great public and private service was
done; positive, earnest, practical good; by the extraordinary
popularity, and nearly universal acceptance, which attended these little
holiday volumes. They carried to countless firesides, with new enjoyment
of the season, better apprehension of its claims and obligations; they
mingled grave with glad thoughts, much to the advantage of both; what
seemed almost too remote to meddle with they brought within reach of the
charities, and what was near they touched with a dearer tenderness; they
comforted the generous, rebuked the sordid, cured folly by kindly
ridicule and comic humour, and, saying to their readers _Thus you have
done, but it were better Thus_, may for some have realised the
philosopher's famous experience, and by a single fortunate thought
revised the whole manner of a life. Criticism here is a second-rate
thing, and the reader may be spared such discoveries as it might have
made in regard to the _Christmas Carol_.

FOOTNOTES:

[70] Chuffey. Sydney Smith had written to Dickens on the appearance of
his fourth number (early in April): "Chuffey is admirable. . . . I never
read a finer piece of writing: it is deeply pathetic and affecting."

[71] It may interest the reader, and be something of a curiosity of
literature, if I give the expenses of the first edition of 6000, and of
the 7000 more which constituted the five following editions, with the
profit of the remainin