dict of Mr. Ruskin. Who shall decide between
the two? or, if a decision be necessary, then I would venture to say,
yes, entirely right in feeling. Dickens is right in sympathy for those
who toil and suffer, right in desire to make their lives more human
and beautiful, right in belief that the same human heart beats below
all class distinctions. But, beyond this, a novelist only, not a
philosopher, not fitted to grapple effectively with complex social and
political problems, and to solve them to right conclusions. There are
some things unfortunately which even the best and kindest instincts
cannot accomplish.

The last chapter of "Hard Times" appeared in the number of _Household
Words_ for the 12th of August, 1854, and the first number of "Little
Dorrit" came out at Christmas, 1855. Between those dates a great war
had waxed and waned. The heart of England had been terribly moved by
the story of the sufferings and privations which the army had had to
undergo amid the snows of a Russian winter. From the trenches before
Sebastopol the newspaper correspondents had sent terrible accounts of
death and disease, and of ills which, as there seemed room for
suspicion, might have been prevented by better management. Through
long disuse the army had rusted in its scabbard, and everything seemed
to go wrong but the courage of officers and men. A great demand arose
for reform in the whole administration of the country. A movement, now
much forgotten, though not fruitless at the time, was started for the
purpose of making the civil service more efficient, and putting John
Bull's house in order. "Administrative Reform," such was the cry of
the moment, and Dickens uttered it with the full strength of his
lungs. He attended a great meeting held at Drury Lane Theatre on the
27th of June, in furtherance of the cause, and made what he declared
to be his first political speech. He spoke on the subject again at the
dinner of the Theatrical Fund. He urged on his friends in the press to
the attack. He was in the forefront of the battle. And when his next
novel, "Little Dorrit," appeared, there was the Civil Service, like a
sort of gibbeted Punch, executing the strangest antics.

But the "Circumlocution Office," where the clerks sit lazily devising
all day long "how _not_ to do" the business of the country, and devote
their energies alternately to marmalade and general insolence,--the
"Circumlocution Office" occupies after all only a secondary p