feel as much sympathy with her as I ought, is because I do not seem to
know her very well. With Paul Dombey I am intimately acquainted. I
should recognize the child anywhere, should be on the best of terms
with him in five minutes. Few things would give me greater pleasure
than an hour's saunter by the side of his little invalid's carriage
along the Parade at Brighton. How we should laugh, to be sure, if we
happened to come across Mr. Toots, and smile, too, if we met Feeder,
B.A., and give a furtive glance of recognition at Glubb, the discarded
charioteer. Then the classic Cornelia Blimber would pass, on her
constitutional, and we should quail a little--at least I am certain
_I_ should--as she bent upon us her scholastic spectacles; and a
glimpse of Dr. Blimber would chill us even more; till--ah! what's
this? Why does a flush of happiness mantle over my little friend's
pale face? Why does he utter a faint cry of pleasure? Yes, there she
is--he has caught sight of Floy running forward to meet him.--So am
I led, almost instinctively, whenever the figure of Paul flashes into
my mind, to think of him as a child I have actually known. But
Nell--she has no such reality of existence. She has been etherealized,
vapourized, rhapsodized about, till the flesh and blood have gone out
of her. I recognize her attributes, unselfishness, sweetness of
disposition, gentleness. But these don't constitute a human being.
They don't make up a recognizable individuality. If I met her in the
street, I am afraid I should not know her; and if I did, I am sure we
should both find it difficult to keep up a conversation.

Do the passages describing her death and burial really possess the
rhythm of poetry? That would seem to me, I confess, to be as ill a
compliment as to say of a piece of poetry that it was really prose.
The music of prose and of poetry are essentially different. They do
not affect the ear in the same way. The one is akin to song, the other
to speech. Give to prose the recurring cadences, the measure, and the
rhythmic march of verse, and it becomes bad prose without becoming
good poetry.[15] So, in fairness to Dickens, one is bound, as far as
one can, to forget Horne's misapplied praise. But even thus, and
looking upon it as prose alone, can we say that the account of Nell's
funeral is, in the high artistic sense, a piece of good work. Here is
an extract: "And now the bell--the bell she had so often heard, by
night and day, and lis