table, and somewhat below its level, is a shelf, where repose a carafe of water and a tumbler. This is covered with velvet, somewhat lighter in colour than the screen. No drapery conceals the table, whereby it is plain that Mr. Dickens believes in expression of figure as well as of face, and does not throw away everything but his head and arms, according to the ordinary habit of ordinary speakers. About twelve feet above the platform, and somewhat in advance of the table, is a horizontal row of gas-jets with a tin reflector; and midway in both perpendicular gas-pipes there is one powerful jet with glass chimney. By this admirable arrangement, Mr. Dickens stands against a dark background in a frame of gaslight, which throws out his face and figure to the best advantage.

He comes! A lithe, energetic man, of medium stature, crosses the platform at the brisk gait of five miles an hour, and takes his position behind the table. This is Charles Dickens, whose name has been a household word for thirty years in England. He has a broad, full brow, a fine head, -which, for a man of such power and energy, is singularly small at the base of the brain,—and a cleanly cut profile.

There is a slight resemblance between Mr. Dickens and the Emperor of the French in the latter respect, owing mainly to the nose; but it is unnecessary to add that the faces of the two men are totally different. Mr. Dickens's eyes are light-blue, and his mouth and jaw, without having any claim to beauty, possess a strength that is not concealed by the veil of iron-gray moustache and generous imperial. His head is but slightly graced with iron-gray hair, and his complexion is florid. There is a twinkle in his eye, as he enters, that, like a promissory note, pledges itself to any amount of fun-within sixty minutes.

People may think in perusing Mr. Dickens's books that he must be a man of large humanity, of forgiving nature, of

generous impulses; in hearing him read they know that he must be such a man. This, of course, does not alone make a great artist; but equally, of course, it goes a long way towards making one. To this general and catholic qualification for his task Mr. Dickens adds special advantages of a high order. He has action of singular ease and felicity, a remarkably expressive eye, and a mobility of the facial muscles which belongs to actors of the highest grade. As in the case of Garrick, it is impossible to say whether love or terror, humour or despair, are best simulated in a countenance which expresses each and all on occasion with almost absolute perfection. This is, no doubt, due in a great measure not to natural qualities only, but to a varied and peculiar experience. Some will have it that actors, like poets, are born, not made, but this is only true in a limited and guarded sense.

THE CHRISTMAS CAROL.*

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have the honour to read to you 'A Christmas Carol,' in four staves. Stave one, Marley's Ghost. Marley was dead. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail."

to.

At the close of this paragraph our first impression is that Mr. Dickens's voice is limited in power, husky, and naturally monotonous. If he succeeds in overcoming these defects,

*The reader who desires to further renew his recollections of Mr. Dickens's Readings is referred to Miss Kate Field's admirable "Pen Photographs," published in Boston, in 1868. The little volume is a valuable estimate of the readings recently given in America.

it will be by dramatic genius. We begin to wonder why Mr. Dickens constantly employs the rising inflexion, and never comes to a full stop; but we are so pleasantly introduced to Scrooge, that our spirits revive.

"Foul weather didn't know where to leave him. The heaviest rain and snow, and hail, and sleet could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect, they often 'came down' handsomely, and Scrooge never did." Here the magnetic current between reader and listener sets in, and when Scrooge's clerk "put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed;" the connexion is tolerably well established. We see old Scrooge very plainly, growling and snarling at his pleasant nephew; and when that nephew invites that uncle to eat a Christmas dinner with him, and Mr. Dickens goes on to relate that Scrooge said "he would see him-yes, I am sorry to say he did, he went the whole length of the expression, and said he would see him in that extremity first." He makes one dive at our sense of humour, and takes it captive. Mr. Dickens is Scrooge; he is the two portly gentlemen on a mission of charity; he is twice Scrooge when, upon one of the portly gentlemen remarking that many poor people would rather die than go to the workhouse, he replies: "If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population;" and thrice Scrooge, when, turning upon his clerk, he says, "You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" It is the incarnation of a hard-hearted, hard-fisted, hardvoiced miser.

"If quite convenient, sir." A few words, but they denote Bob Cratchit in three feet of comforter exclusive of fringe, in well-darned, thread-bare clothes, with a mild, frightened voice, so thin that you can see through it!

Then there comes the change when Scrooge, upon going home, "saw in the knocker, Marley's face!" Of course Scrooge saw it, because the expression of Mr. Dickens's face makes us see it "with a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar." There is good acting in this scene, and there is fine acting when the dying flame leaps up as though it cried, "I know him! Marley's ghost!" With what gusto Mr. Dickens reads that description of Marley, and how, "looking through his waistcoat, Scrooge could see the two buttons on his coat behind."

Nothing can be better than the rendering of the Fezziwig party, in Stave Two. You behold Scrooge gradually melting into humanity; Scrooge, as a joyous apprentice; that model of employers, Fezziwig; Mrs. Fezziwig "one vast substantial smile,” and all the Fezziwigs. Mr. Dickens's expression as he relates how "in came the housemaid with her cousin the baker, and in came the cook with her brother's particular friend the milkman," is delightfully comic, while his complete rendering of that dance where "all were top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them," is owing to the inimitable action of his hands. They actually perform upon the table, as if it were the floor of Fezziwig's room, and every finger were a leg belonging to one of the Fezziwig's family. This feat is only surpassed by Mr. Dickens's illustration of Sir Roger de Coverley, as interpreted by Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig, when "a positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig's calves," and he "cut so deftly that he appeared to wink with his legs!" It is a maze of humour. Before the close of the stave, Scrooge's horror at sight of the young girl once loved by him, and put aside for gold, shows that Mr. Dickens's power is not purely comic.

But the best of all, is Stave Three. We distinctly see that "Cratchit" family. There are the potatoes that

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"knocked loudly at the saucepan-lid to be let out and peeled;" there is Mrs. Cratchit, fluttering and cackling like a motherly hen with a young brood of chickens; and there is everybody. The way those two young Cratchits hail Martha, and exclaim-"There's such a goose, Martha !" can never be forgotten. By some conjuring trick, Mr. Dickens takes off his own head and puts on a Cratchit's. Later Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim come in. Assuredly it is Bob's thin voice that pipes out, "Why, where's our Martha?" and it is Mrs. Cratchit who shakes her head and replies, "Not coming!" Then Bob relates how Tiny Tim behaved: "as good as gold and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you have ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember, upon Christmas-day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.' There is a volume of pathos in these words, which are the most delicate and artistic rendering of the whole reading.

Ah, that Christmas dinner! We feel as if we were eating every morsel of it. There are "the two young Cratchits,' who "crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn;" there is Tiny Tim, who "beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried, 'Hoorray,'" in such a still, small voice. And there is that goose! I see it with my naked eye. And Othe

pudding! "A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastry-cook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding. Mr. Dickens's sniffing and smelling of that pudding would make a starving family