He could not rest here; he was, after all, a child of an age that grew sad, and earnest, and thoughtful. He saw abuses round him--injustice, and oppression, and cruelty. He had a heart to which those things were not only abhorrent, but, as it were, maddening. He knew how great an influence he wielded, and who can blame him for using it in any cause he thought good? Very possibly he might have been a greater artist if he had been less of a man, if he had been quite disinterested, and had never written "with a purpose." That is common, and even rather obsolete critical talk. But when we remember that Fielding, too, very often wrote "with a purpose," and that purpose the protection of the poor and unfriended; and when we remember what an artist Fielding was, I do not see how we can blame Dickens. Occasionally he made his art and his purpose blend so happily that his work was all the better for his benevolent intentions. We owe Mr. Squeers, Mrs. Squeers, Fanny Squeers, Wackford and all, to Dickens's indignation against the nefarious school pirates of his time. If he is less successful in attacking the Court of Chancery, and very much less successful still with the Red Tape and Circumlocution Office affairs, that may be merely because he was less in the humour, and not because he had a purpose in his mind. Every one of a man's books cannot be his masterpiece. There is nothing in literary talk so annoying as the spiteful joy with which many people declare that an author is "worked out," because his last book is less happy than some that went before. There came a time in Dickens' career when his works, to my own taste and that of many people, seemed laboured, artificial--in fact, more or less failures. These books range from "Dombey and Son," through "Little Dorrit," I dare not say to "Our Mutual Friend." One is afraid that "Edwin Drood," too, suggests the malady which Sir Walter already detected in his own "Peveril of the Peak." The intense strain on the faculties of Dickens--as author, editor, reader, and man of the world--could not but tell on him; and years must tell. "Philip" is not worthy of the author of "Esmond," nor "Daniel Deronda" of the author of "Silas Marner." At that time--the time of the Dorrits and Dombeys--_Blackwood's Magazine_ published a "Remonstrance with Boz"; nor was it quite superfluous. But Dickens had abundance of talent still to display--above all in "Great Expectations" and "A Tale of Two Cities." The former is, after "Pickwick," "Copperfield," "Martin Chuzzlewit," and "Nicholas Nickleby"--after the classics, in fact--the most delightful of Dickens's books. The story is embroiled, no doubt. What are we to think of Estelle? Has the minx any purpose? Is she a kind of Ethel Newcome of odd life? It is not easy to say; still, for a story of Dickens's the plot is comparatively clear and intelligible. For a study of a child's life, of the nature Dickens drew best--the river and the marshes--and for