s
in the old church tower, is a bad substitute for Scrooge on his
midnight rambles. Nor are his dreams at all equal, for humour or
pathos, to Scrooge's visions and experiences. And the moral itself is
not clearly brought out. I confess to being a little doubtful as to
what it exactly is, and how it follows from the premises furnished. I
wish, too, that it had been carried home to some one with more power
than little Trotty to give it effect. What was the good of convincing
that kindly old soul that the people of his own class had warm hearts?
He knew it very well. Take from the book the fine imaginative
description of the goblin music that leaps into life with the ringing
of the bells, and there remain the most excellent intentions--and not
much more.

Such, however, was very far from being Dickens' view. He had
"undergone," he said, "as much sorrow and agitation" in the writing
"as if the thing were real," and on the 3rd of November, when the last
page was written, had indulged "in what women call a good cry;" and,
as usually happens, the child that had cost much sorrow was a child of
special love.[19] So, when all was over, nothing would do but he must
come to London to read his book to the choice literary spirits whom he
specially loved. Accordingly he started from Genoa on the 6th of
November, travelled by Parma, Modena, Bologna, Ferrara, Venice--where,
such was the enchantment of the place, that he felt it "cruel not to
have brought Kate and Georgy, positively cruel and base";--and thence
again by Verona, Mantua, Milan, the Simplon Pass, Strasbourg, Paris,
and Calais, to Dover, and wintry England. Sharp work, considering all
he had seen by the way, and how effectually he had seen it, for he was
in London on the evening of the 30th of November, and, on the 2nd of
December, reading his little book to the choice spirits aforesaid, all
assembled for the purpose at Forster's house. There they are: they
live for us still in Maclise's drawing, though Time has plied his
scythe among them so effectually, during the forty-two years since
flown, that each has passed into the silent land. There they sit:
Carlyle, not the shaggy Scotch terrier with the melancholy eyes that
we were wont to see in his later days, but close shaven and alert; and
swift-witted Douglas Jerrold; and Laman Blanchard, whose name goes
darkling in the literature of the last generation; and Forster
himself, journalist and author of many books; and the pai