two doctors and Mr Dombey's return to poor Mrs Dombey's death-bed, when the reader _feels_ that they are almost instantly to witness her death, by the introduction of two tiresome twaddlers, reproductions of old stock characters of the author, Mrs Chick and Miss Tox, whose descriptions and utterly irrelevant conversation detain us for nearly three pages. At length these motley "stagers"--if I may be allowed the word--are grouped round the poor lady's death-bed; and let me here say, that in my opinion the character and situation of poor Mrs Dombey are both exquisitely conceived, and appeal to the deepest sympathies of the heart; but, alas! the perverse, provoking, incorrigible writer will not let us enjoy "the luxury of grief;" but while we are bending over her death-bed, our attention is called off to a remarkably interesting and appropriate circumstance--two watches of two of the doctors "seem in the silence to be _running a race_!" * * "they seem to be racing faster!!" * * "The race, in the ensuing pause, was fierce and furious. The watches seemed to jostle, and to trip each other up!!!" and a moment or two afterwards the lady expires, under very moving circumstances, touched with perfect delicacy and truthfulness. Would the intrusion of a sow into a lovely flower-garden be more shocking or disgusting to the beholder? Again, in the first page, we are presented to Mr Dombey, gazing with unutterable feelings at his newly-born son, "forty-eight minutes of age;" and Mr Dickens tastefully suggests the comparison of the little creature, which is "somewhat _crushed and spotty_ in his general effect!!" whose mother is at that moment in dying agonies in that very room, to "a _muffin_, which it was essential to toast brown while it was very new!!" And a few lines forward, the posture of the innocent unconscious little being suggests the brutal idea of a _prize-fighter_--his "little fists, curled up and clenched, seemed, in his feeble way, to be SQUARING AT EXISTENCE for having come upon him so unexpectedly!!!" Was ever any thing more monstrous? To find a gentleman of Mr Dickens' great genius, and experience in literary composition, sinning in this way, is provoking beyond all measure. The above abominations to be perpetrated by him, who at page seventeen can present us with so exquisite a touch as the following:--He is describing the blank appearance of the dismantled house, immediately after the funeral of the poor, neglected, and heart-broken lady. "The dead and buried lady was awful, in a picture frame of ghastly bandages. Every gust of wind that rose, brought eddying round the corner, from the neighbouring mews, some fragments of the straw that had been strewn before the house when she was ill; mildewed remains of which were still cleaving to the neighbourhood, and these being always drawn by some invisible attraction to the threshold of the dirty house to let opposite, addressed a dismal