There is little Pip and honest old Joe Gargery, who pauses for a moment at his anvil to observe with animation, "Which I mean ter say, that if you come into my place bull baiting and badgering me, come out! Which I mean ter say, as sech, if yu're a man, come on! which I mean to say that what I mean ter say, I mean to say and stand or fall by;" and Mrs. Joe over watchful and over masterful always, who in the alembic of nature had discovered no better way of bringing little Pip up than "by hand." Then there is little Oliver Twist, a poor little waif, always hungry, licking the platter and now and then, embarrassingly asking "for more;" and poor Smikes is more terribly tragic, for he lived longer; and little Nell the heart child of unnumbered thousands, tramping along the roads, footsore and ever so weary, a poor little wanderer without home, until the good Lord looks down into her tearful eyes and says one day, "Little Nell your little hands and your little feet and your little heart are so tired, will you not come with me, child?" And little Paul Dombey lying wearily in the trundle bed, within sound of the manifold voices of the sea, turns languidly to his sister Florence and asks with the natural inquisitiveness of a child, "What are the wild waves saying?" And Joe All Jones moves almost heedlessly on to death through more streets than those of London; and Tom Pinch, Betsy Trotwood and faithful old Peggotty and Ham, whose very oddities and deficiencies are turned into a crown of glory; and the sneering melodramatic villains and scape-graces, Monck and Quilp, and the blind man in Barnaby Rudge, and the Jew Fagan and Murdstone and Carker; and the high spirited Steerforth and Nickleby and Creakle, and Stiggins and Chadband and Sampson Brass and Snawley; and poor little idiotic Barnaby, as on the way to the gallows he points to the stars, and says to Hugh of the Maypole, "I guess we shall know who made the stars now;" and last of all, but not least, Pecksniff, the masterpiece of them all. From boot to hat he is all over and all under, Pecksniff; drunk or sober he is Pecksniff. He is the virtuous Pecksniff all the time, and altogether. He hugs himself to his own heart as the embodiment of all the virtues of the decalogue and the beatitudes. No matter into what rascality he may be plunging, his serene self conscious virtue never forsakes him. The child wife, too, passes by us into the spirit land, and there is the beautiful, dreamy eyed Agnes, who quite charms us with her love and trust, and the sad, calm face of Florence looks timidly upon us; and Mrs. Jellyby tells us to look out for Borioboola Gha; and poor Micawber informs us that nothing has turned up yet, and hinting darkly about laudanum and razors. What a marvellous characterization! Will the world ever tire of this man and his children, that he has materialized out of ideals so unpromising; whom he has reared up in the slums of London, many of them upon garbage?