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The living dead in many shapes and forms,
To see the closing of this early grave.

What was the death it would shut in,

To that which still could crawl and creep above it!

Along the crowded path they bore her now;

Pure as the new-fall'n snow

That cover'd it; whose day on earth

Had been as fleeting.

Under that porch, where she had sat when Heaven
In mercy brought her to that peaceful spot,

She pass'd again, and the old church
Received her in its quiet shade.”

339

Throughout the whole of the above, only two unimportant words have been omitted--in and its; and " grandames" has been substituted for "grandmothers." All that remains is exactly as in the original, not a single word transposed, and the punctuation the same to a comma. Again, take the brief homily that concludes the funeral :

"Oh! it is hard to take to heart

The lesson that such deaths will teach,

But let no man reject it,

For it is one that all must learn,

And is a mighty, universal Truth.

When Death strikes down the innocent and young,

For every fragile form from which he lets

The parting spirit free,

A hundred virtues rise,

In shapes of mercy, charity, and love,

To walk the world and bless it.

Of every tear

That sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves
Some good is born, some gentler nature comes."

Not a word of the original is changed in the above quotation, which is worthy of the best passages in Wordsworth, and thus, meeting on the common ground of a deeply truthful sentiment, the two most dissimilar men in the literature of the century are brought into the closest approximation.

Something of a similar kind of versification in prose may be discovered in Chapter LXXVII. of "Barnaby Rudge," and there is an instance of successive verses in the Third Part of the "Christmas Carol," beginning

"Far in this den of infamous resort."

The following is from the concluding paragraph of "Nicholas Nickleby " :

"The grass was green above the dead boy's grave,

Trodden by feet so small and light,

That not a daisy droop'd its head

Beneath their pressure.

Through all the spring and summer time

Garlands of fresh flowers, wreathed by infant hands,
Rested upon the stone."

The following stanzas, entitled "A Word in Season," were contributed by Mr. Dickens in the winter of 1843 to an annual edited by his friend and correspondent, the Countess of Blessington. Since that time he has ceased to write, or at any rate to publish anything in verse.

This poem savours much of the manner of Robert Browning. Full of wit and wisdom, and containing some very re

markable and rememberable lines, an extract from it will fitly close this chapter of our volume.

A WORD IN SEASON.

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

"They have a superstition in the East,
That ALLAH, written on a piece of paper,
Is better unction than can come of priest
Of rolling incense, and of lighted taper:
Holding, that any scrap which bears that name,
In any characters, its front impress'd on,
Shall help the finder thro' the purging flame,
And give his toasted feet a place to rest on.
"So have I known a country on the earth,
Where darkness sat upon the living waters,
And brutal ignorance, and toil, and dearth

Were the hard portion of its sons and daughters :
And yet, where they who should have oped the door
Of charity and light, for all men's finding,
Squabbled for words upon the altar-floor,

And rent The Book, in struggles for the binding."*

The Keepsake for 1844, Edited by the Countess of Blessington, pp. 73, 74.

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NOTE. In the Introduction to the present volume, p. 42, it is stated that Dickens's "FIRST Reading" in public was given at Birmingham in the Christmas of 1853. The offer to read on this public occasion was certainly the FIRST which the great novelist made, but before the Christmas had come around he thought proper to give a trial Reading before a much smaller audience, in the quiet little city of Peterborough.-ED.

T must be sixteen or seventeen years ago-I cannot fix the date exactly, though the affair made a strong impression on me at the time---that I witnessed Charles Dickens's début as a public reader. The circumstances surrounding this event were so singular that I am tempted to recall them.

Scene, the City of Peterborough-dreamy and quiet enough then, though now a flourishing railroad terminus-a silent city, with a grand old Norman cathedral, round which the rooks cawed lazily all day, straggling narrow streets of brick-built houses, a large Corn Exchange, a Mechanics' Institute, and about seven thousand inhabitants. The Mechanics' Institute brought it all about. That well-meaning but weak-kneed organization was, I need hardly say, in debt. Mechanics' Institutes always are in debt.

That is their chief

peculiarity, next to the fact that they never by any chance have any mechanics among their members. Our institution was no exception to the rule. On the contrary, it was a bright and shining example. No mechanics' institute of its size anywhere around was so deeply in debt; none was more snobbishly exclusive in its membership. We had overrun our resources to such an extent that we could not even pay the rent of the building we occupied, and were in daily danger of being turned out of doors. Lectures on highly improving subjects had been tried, but the proceeds did not pay the printer. Concerts succeeded better, but the committee said they were immoral. We had given two monster tea meetings to pay off the debt, on which occasions all the cake required was supplied gratuitously by the members' mothers, and all the members and their friends came in by free tickets and ate it up. Henry Vincent delivered us an oration; George Dawson propounded metaphysical sophistries for our intellectual mystification; but with all this we got no better of our troubles-every flounder we made only plunged us deeper into the mud. At last it was resolved to write to our Borough members. This was in the good old days of Whig supremacy; and all the land and all the houses round about us being owned by one great Whig earl, our borough was privileged to return two members to represent the opinions of that unprotected earl in Parliament. A contested election had just come to a close, and the honeyed promises and grateful pledges of our elected candidates were still fresh in our memory. So to our members the committee addressed their tearful entreaties" deserving institution," "valuable agency of self-improvement,""pressing pecuniary embarrassments," and so forth. Member No. I sent his compliments and a five pound note. Member No. 2 delayed writing for several days, and then had great pleasure in informing us that the celebrated author,

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