Doctor Strong’s was an excellent school: as different from Mr. Creakle’s as good is from evil. It was very gravely and decorously ordered, and on a sound system with an appeal, in everything, to the honour and good faith of the boys, and an avowed intention to rely on their possession of those qualities, unless they proved unworthy of it, which worked wonders. We all felt we had a part in the management of the place, and in sustaining its character and dignity. Hence we soon became warmly attached to it, and learned with a good will, desiring to do it credit. We had noble games out of hours, and plenty of liberty; but even then, as I remember, we were well spoken of in the town, and rarely did any disgrace, by our appearance or manner, to the reputation of Doctor Strong and Doctor Strong’s boys. The Doctor himself was the idol of the whole school; and it must have been a badly composed school if he had been anything else, for he was the kindest of men; with a simple faith in him that might have touched the stone hearts of the very urns upon the wall. —From DICKENS’S _David Copperfield_. IV His style, created from moment to moment, subordinates the form of the language to the need of expressing the immediate sensation in its original vividness. He multiplies ellipses, anastrophes, words unexpectedly connected; he takes from every vocabulary its most expressive terms; he models himself upon the very appearance of things as they are; he knows no other rhythm than that of successive impressions. He is perpetually on the move. His agility occasionally seems a little feverish. We feel some anxiety; we are afraid that the sentence may not find its balance. A few lines from his works can be recognized at a glance, for he has only had clumsy imitators, his style being, moreover, in the language of Montaigne, of one substance with the author, being the author himself. And yet one could hardly say that this style breaks with tradition. He stops short just at the point at which his idiosyncrasies would degenerate into faults.—From PETIT DE JULLEVILLE, _Histoire de la littérature française_, vol. viii. V