suppression of facts. Had Sarah Gamp been allowed by Dickens to speak as she would speak in life, she would have been unspeakably repugnant, never cherished as a permanently laughable, even lovable figure of fiction. Dickens was a master of omissions as well as of those enlargments which made him carry over the foot lights. Mrs. Gamp is a monumental study of the coarse woman rogue: her creator makes us hate the sin and tolerate the sinner. Nor is that other masterly portrait of the woman rascal--Thackeray's Becky Sharp--an example of strict photography; she is great in seeming true, but she is not life. So much, then, for the charge of caricature: it is all a matter of degree. It all depends upon the definition of art, and upon the effect made upon the world by the characters themselves. If they live in loving memory, they must, in the large sense, be true. Thus we come back to the previous statement: Dickens' people live--are known by their words and in their ways all over the civilized world. No collection of mere grotesques could ever bring this to pass. Prick any typical creation of Dickens and it runs blood, not sawdust. And just in proportion as we travel, observe broadly and form the habit of a more penetrating and sympathetic study of mankind, shall we believe in these emanations of genius. Occasionally, under the urge and surplusage of his comic force, he went too far and made a Quilp: but the vast majority even of his drolls are as credible as they are dear. That he showed inequality as he wrought at the many books which filled the years between "Pickwick" and the unfinished "Mystery of Edwin Drood," may also be granted. Also may it be confessed that within the bounds of one book there are the extremes of good and bad. It is peculiar to Dickens that often in the very novel we perchance feel called upon to condemn most, occurs a scene or character as memorably great as anything he left the world. Thus, we may regard "Old Curiosity Shop," once so beloved, as a failure when viewed as a whole; and yet find Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness at their immortal game as unforgettable as Mrs. Battle engaged in the same pleasant employment. Nor because other parts of "Little Dorrit" seem thin and artificial, would we forego the description of the debtor's prison. And our belief that the presentation of the labor-capital problem in "Hard Times" is hasty and shallow, does not prevent a recognition of the opening sketch of the circus troop as displaying its author at his happiest of humorous observation. There are thus always redeeming things in the stories of this most unequal man of genius. Seven books there are, novels in form, which are indubitable masterpieces: "Martin Chuzzlewit," "Dombey and Son," "David Copperfield," "Bleak House," "A Tale of Two Cities," "Great Expectations" and "Our Mutual Friend." These, were all the others withdrawn, would give ample evidence of creative power: they have the largeness,