CHARLES DICKENS—WHAT THE WOULD THINKS OF HIM.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 1949, 3 April 1875, Page 4

CHARLES DICKENS—WHAT THE WOULD THINKS OF HIM.

111. Having, so far as I have been able, discoursed on the subject of Dickens' religious tendency, or, as part of the world would deena it, his non-religious tendency, I may proceed further to a consideration of Dickens and what the world thinks of him. I feel a difficulty in approaching the themo : not from a conscious inability, unlegsit be an inability to do justice to its greatness, as in the case of the simpleminded, but great-souled Mr Toots, whose language was always inadequate to express the emotions "of his soul; but from the many points of interest there are to choose, and which in their very extent and variety present^themselves to one's mind in a sort of wild confusion, not unlike a discorded profusion of flfh jewels laying in waste. It would be advisable, perhaps, to look at the works of Dickens-—all that now remain of him—in their moral light. I wish this word morality to be considered in its most comprehensive light. Some persons-are disposed to confine the meaning of a word to their own individual and erroneous; conception of it, without regard to its roots, and with no sympathy for Johnsonian labors. Morality being, in fact, part and parcel of religion, is a connecting link in the chain of my argument, and fitly takes its place here. I once heard a reverend gentleman remark that he never rose from the perusal of one of Dickens' novels without feeling improved in mind. To what, may be asked, is such a^remarkable influence to be attributed ? I say with every confidence, that it is to be attributed to Dickens' moral, self-living in the indelible words which his hand has imprinted. Such men's spirits do not die. Their bodies may decay as the wheel of time spins round in its monotonous course, leaving some behind to rest for ever on the way side, while it brings into life others to replace them; but their dust will be "recognised as the dust of gold; ashes, as the ashes of the Phoenix!" Dickens was a moral preacher. In all his works there is the same evidence of his love for goodness, truth and beauty. Recognising, with true nobility, all men arid women as the children of one common parentage, he took side with the poor and oppressed. For them he labored, and successfully, in some degree, it is to be hoped. Arrogant wealth and self love, pride of birth with nothing to recommend it but the birth itself, hypocrisy, cant, and the numerous dark shadows that are dreary blots on the face of God's creation —he loatlbed. This is so evident of Dickens. It is not, as some have sagely remarked, that ho entertained a plebeian aversion to the powerful class—gradually becoming less powerful—-known as the nobility and gentility. Though most of his scenes are laid in the meaner walks of life, it must not be supposed by the sage critics aforesaid that he did not take higher flights occasionally. Dickens' pencil has touched up the fashionable world, to use an artistic phrase, and touched it up to some purpose ; but there is in this as in all things else the same sympathy with all that is worthy of sympathy of a' great soul—an honest aclcnowfedjgment of the good where He finds it to exist, and an equallj honest condemnation of the bad. Eotten to the core he found much of the life in the fashionable world, and finding it so, he laid it bare. There ii a contrast forcibly suggested here, between Dickens' arid one of his contemporaries, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton. The latter delighted in parading virtues of the gentry and oftentimes speaking with a too marked indifference of the lower Orders; the former, tolerant of all men, favored none where the favor would have been undeserved. If Dickens was ever too severe in his attacks—if his representation of certain evils known to exist were a shade too dark in color, the generous impulses which prompted him must plead an eloquent excuse. It is interesting to note how quickly he perceived the effect of careless end mistaken charity; and how even charity can be so perverted and let run to waste that it may become a curse. He is particularly admirable in his description of the Charitable Grinders' establishment, where youth of the poorer classes had instilled into them a knowledge of rudimentary education through the instrumentality, of a cheaply-hired ignoramous, whose idea of imparting information to the small creatures placed nnder his care was a vigorous and impartial application of the lash. Gentle, human treatment was this for little souls who are as capable of being influenced for good as other, little souls more carefully nurtured. The Charitable Grin* 3 institution is; doubtless, afao-g'*- ' -viers' Charitable Grinders in sop*- ..mile of a which existed (in all other name, fyeneyolence) *p ** '.«* the glory of its . une time of Dickens. , "Alas for the rarity Of Christian Charity . „ Under the sun." Balance the good and evil that spring out of an institution such as that, and tremble for the reckoning. In the Charitable Grinders' model establishment there was disgraceful maladministration of a most sacred trust, and the aims of benevolence were thwarted. So with many institutions, not perhaps founded upon Charity, and which Dickens saw fit to expose that others might be able to see as clearly as himself, and that there might be some reform which would have for its object the amelioration of the conditions in which they live who are most influenced and interested in such institutions.