he dread
stillness after the ruffian's cruel blows have fallen on her upturned
face. Again comes back to me the break in Bob Cratchit's voice, as he
speaks of the death of Tiny Tim. As of old I listen to poor little
Chops, the dwarf, declaring, very piteously, that his "fashionable
friends" don't use him well, and put him on the mantel-piece when he
refuses to "have in more champagne-wine," and lock him in the
sideboard when he "won't give up his property." And I _see_--yes, I
declare I _see_, as I saw when Dickens was reading, such was the
illusion of voice and gesture--that dying flame of Scrooge's fire,
which leaped up when Marley's ghost came in, and then fell again. Nor
can I forbear to mention, among these reminiscences, that there is
also a passage in one of Thackeray's lectures that is still in my ears
as on the evening when I heard it. It is a passage in which he spoke
of the love that children had for the works of his more popular rival,
and told how his own children would come to him and ask, "Why don't
you write books like Mr. Dickens?"

CHAPTER XI.

Chancery had occupied a prominent place in "Bleak House."
Philosophical radicalism occupied the same kind of position in "Hard
Times," which was commenced in the number of _Household Words_ for the
1st of April, 1854. The book, when afterwards published in a complete
form, bore a dedication to Carlyle; and very fittingly so, for much of
its philosophy is his. Dickens, like Kingsley, and like Mr. Ruskin and
Mr. Froude, and so many other men of genius and ability, had come
under the influence of the old Chelsea sage.[25] And what are the
ideas which "Hard Times" is thus intended to popularize? These: that
men are not merely intellectual calculating machines, with reason and
self-interest for motive power, but creatures possessing also
affections, feelings, fancy--a whole world of emotions that lie
outside the ken of the older school of political economists.
Therefore, to imagine that they can live and flourish on facts alone
is a fallacy and pernicious; as is also the notion that any human
relations can be permanently established on a basis of pure supply
and demand. If we add to this an unlimited contempt for Parliament, as
a place where the national dustmen are continually stirring the
national dust to no purpose at all, why then we are pretty well
advanced in the philosophy of Carlyle. And how does Dickens illustrate
these points? We are at Coketown,