part of the dreamy, dramatic little story,
the various characters, it will be remembered, are involved in a mazy
entanglement of cross purposes. Mystery sometimes, pathos often, terror
for one brief interval, rose from the Reading of the "Home Fairy-Tale."
There was a subdued tenderness which there was no resisting in the
revelation to the blind girl, Bertha, of the illusions in which she had
been lapped for years by her sorcerer of a lather, poor little Caleb,
the toy-maker. There was at once a tearful and a laughing earnestness
that took the Reader's audience captive, not by any means unwillingly,
when little Dot was, at the last, represented as "clearing it all up at
home" (indirectly, to the great honour of the Cricket's reputation,
by the way) to her burly husband--good, stupid, worthy, "clumsy man in
general,"--John Peerybingle, the Carrier. The one inconsistent person in
the whole story, it must be admitted, was Tackleton, who turned out
at the very end to be rather a good fellow than otherwise. Fittingly
enough, in the Reading as in the book, when the "Fairy Tale of Home"
was related to its close, when Dot and all the rest were spoken of as
vanished, a broken child's-toy, we were told, yet lay upon the ground,
and still upon the hearth was heard the song of the Cricket.

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY.

A variety of attractive Readings might readily have been culled from
Nicholas Nickleby's Life and Adventures. His comical experiences as
a strolling-player in the Company of the immortal Crummleses--his
desperate encounter with Sir Mulberry Hawk on the footboard of the
cabriolet--his exciting rescue of Madeline from an unholy alliance
with Gride, the miser, on the very morning fixed for the revolting
marriage--his grotesque association for a while with the Kenwigses and
their uncle Lilliyick--his cordial relations with the Brothers Cheeryble
and old Tim Linkinwater--any one of these incidents in the career of the
most high spirited of all the young heroes of our Novelist, would have
far more than simply justified its selection as the theme of one of
these illustrative entertainments. Instead of choosing any one of those
later episodes in the fictitious history of Nicholas Nickleby, however,
the author of that enthralling romance of everyday life, picked out, by
preference, the earliest of all his young hero's experiences--those
in which, at nineteen years of age, he was brought into temporary
entanglement with the dome