r of the _Clock_, and very soon acted the
cuckoo's part of thrusting Master Humphrey and all that belonged to
him out of the nest. He disappeared pretty well from the periodical,
and when the novel was republished, the whole machinery of the _Clock_
had gone;--and with it I may add, some very characteristic and
admirable writing. Dickens himself confessed that he "winced a
little," when the "opening paper, ... in which Master Humphrey
described himself and his manner of life," "became the property of the
trunkmaker and the butterman;" and most Dickens lovers will agree with
me in rejoicing that the omitted parts have now at last been tardily
rescued from unmerited neglect, and finds [Transcriber's Note: sic] a
place in the recently issued "Charles Dickens" edition of the works.

There is no hero in "The Old Curiosity Shop,"--unless Mr. Richard
Swiveller, "perpetual grand-master of the Glorious Apollos," be the
questionable hero; and the heroine is Little Nell, a child. Of
Dickens' singular feeling for the pathos and humour of childhood, I
have already spoken. Many novelists, perhaps one might even say, most
novelists, have no freedom of utterance when they come to speak about
children, do not know what to do with a child if it chances to stray
into their pages. But how different with Dickens! He is never more
thoroughly at home than with the little folk. Perhaps his best speech,
and they all are good, is the one uttered at the dinner given on
behalf of the Children's Hospital. Certainly there is no figure in
"Dombey and Son" on which more loving care has been lavished than the
figure of little Paul, and when the lad dies one quite feels that the
light has gone out of the book. "David Copperfield" shorn of David's
childhood and youth would be a far less admirable performance. The
hero of "Oliver Twist" is a boy. Pip is a boy through a fair portion
of "Great Expectations." The heroine of "The Old Curiosity Shop" is,
as I have just said, a girl. And of all these children, the one who
seems, from the first, to have stood highest in popular favour, and
won most hearts, is Little Nell. Ay me, what tears have been shed over
her weary wanderings with that absurd old gambling grandfather of
hers; how many persons have sorrowed over her untimely end as if she
had been a daughter or a sister. High and low, literate and
illiterate, over nearly all has she cast her spell. Hood, he who sang
the "Song of the Shirt," paid her the tribu