His next novel was Dombey and Son, in which he attacks British pomp and pride of state in the haughty merchant.  It is full of character and of pathos.  Every one knows, as if they had appeared among us, the proud and rigid Dombey, J. B. the sly, the unhappy Floy, the exquisite Toots, the inimitable Nipper, Sol Gills the simple, and Captain Cuttle with his hook and his notes.

This was followed by David Copperfield, which is, to some extent, an autobiography describing the struggles of his youth, his experience in acquiring short-hand to become a reporter, and other vicissitudes of his own life.  In it there is an attack upon the system of model prisons; but the chief interest is found in his wonderful portraitures of varied and opposite characters:  the Peggottys, Steerforth, the inimitable Micawber, Betsy Trotwood; Agnes, the lovely and lovable; Mr. Dick, with such noble method in his madness; Dora, the child-wife; the simple Traddles, and Uriah Heep, the ’umble intriguer and villain.

Bleak House is a tremendous onslaught upon the Chancery system, and is said to have caused a modification of it; his knowledge of law gave him the power of an expert in detailing and dissecting its enormities.

Little Dorrit presents the heartlessness of society, and is besides a full and fearful picture of the system of imprisonment for debt.  For variety, power, and pathos, it is one of his best efforts.

A Tale of Two Cities is a gloomy but vivid story of the French Revolution, which has by no means the popularity of his other works.

In Hard Times, a shorter story, he has shown the evil consequences of a hard, statistical, cramming education, in which the sympathies are repressed, and the mind made a practical machine.  The failure of Gradgrind has warned many a parent from imitating him.

Great Expectations failed to fulfil the promise of the name; but Joe Gargery is as original a character as any he had drawn.

His last completed story is Our Mutual Friend, which, although unequal to his best novels, has still original characters and striking scenes.  The rage for rising in the social scale ruins the Veneerings, and Podsnappery is a well-chosen name far the heartless dogmatism which rules in English society.

Besides these splendid works, we must mention the delight he has given, and the good he has done in expanding individual and public charity, by his exquisite Christmas stories, of which The Chimes, The Christmas Carol, and The Cricket on the Hearth are the best.

His dramatic power has been fully illustrated by the ready adaptations of his novels to the stage; they are, indeed, in scenes, personages, costume, and interlocution, dramas in all except the form; and he himself was an admirable actor.

HIS VARIED POWERS.—­His tenderness is touching, and his pathos at once excites our sympathy.  He does not tell us to feel or to weep, but he shows us scenes like those in the life of Smike, and in the sufferings and death of Little Nell, which so simply appeal to the heart that we are for the time forgetful of the wand which conjures them before us.