"I frankly confess that having met innumerable men and had dealings with innumerable men, I never met one with an approach to his genuine, unaffected, unchanging kindness, or one that ever found so sunshiny a pleasure in doing one a kindness. I cannot call to mind that any request I ever made to him was ungranted, or left without an attempt to grant it." Upon this point all who ever knew the man are well agreed. It will suffice. To him who loved so much, if need be much will be forgiven. As we close this paper, how softly pass before us the long procession of the men and women he has created,--for they all seem thus to us,--not characters, but people, many of them personal acquaintances of our own. There are actual tears in our eyes as the little company of children pass in review, led by David Copperfield, and followed by Oliver Twist, with Paul Dombey in his wake, and little Nell timidly pressing near; while trooping after, sad, tearful, or grotesque, come Florence Dombey, poor Joe, Pip and Smike, Sloppy and Peepy, Little Dorrit and Tiny Tim, and many more of those with whose sorrows we have sympathized, and over each and all of whom we have wept hot tears in the days that are no more. Dream-children, he calls them; but the great world acknowledges them as real beings, and sorrows and rejoices with them, even more, it is to be feared, than it does sometimes with the children of flesh and blood, homeless and forsaken as many of them are. But for the sake of Tiny Tim many an old Scrooge has softened his hard heart somewhat; and in memory of poor Joe many a hardened city man has been a little less imperious to the beggar-boy about "moving on." Even poor Smike has served the purpose of ameliorating a trifle the hard lot of such unfortunates as he, who are tyrannized over in public institutions; and, altogether, Dickens's dream-children can be said to have been useful in their day and generation.