few survivors, looking back to that happy time, says enthusiastically, “Charles Dickens, beaming in look, alert in manner, radiant with good humour, genial-voiced, gay, the very soul of enjoyment, fun, good taste, and good spirits, admirable in organizing details and suggesting novelty of entertainment, was of all beings the very man for a holiday season."[21] The proceeds of the performances were devoted to various objects, but chiefly to an impossible “Guild of Literature and Art,” which, in the sanguine confidence of its projectors, and especially of Dickens, was to inaugurate a golden age for the author and the artist.  But of all this, and of Dickens’ speeches at the Leeds Mechanics’ Institute, and Glasgow Athenaeum, in the December of 1847, I don’t know that I need say very much.  The interest of a great writer’s life is, after all, mainly in what he writes; and when I have said that “Dombey” proved to be a pecuniary success, the first six numbers realizing as much as L2,820, I think I may fairly pass on to Dickens’ next book, the “Haunted Man.”

This was his Christmas story for 1848; the last, and not the worst of his Christmas stories.  Both conception and treatment are thoroughly characteristic.  Mr. Redlaw, a chemist, brooding over an ancient wrong, comes to the conclusion that it would be better for himself, better for all, if, in each of us, every memory of the past could be cancelled.  A ghostly visitant, born of his own resentment and gloom, gives him the boon he seeks, and enables him to go about the world freezing all recollection in those he meets.  And lo the boon turns out to be a curse.  His presence blights those on whom it falls.  For with the memory of past wrongs, goes the memory of past benefits, of all the mutual kindlinesses of life, and each unit of humanity becomes self-centred and selfish.  Two beings alone resist his influence—­one, a creature too selfishly nurtured for any of mankind’s better recollections; and the other a woman so good as to resist the spell, and even, finally, to exorcise it in Mr. Redlaw’s own breast.

“David Copperfield” was published between May, 1849, and the autumn of 1850, and marks, I think, the culminating point in Dickens’ career as a writer.  So far there had been, not perhaps from book to book, but on the whole, decided progress, the gradual attainment of greater ease, and of the power of obtaining results of equal power by simpler means.  Beyond this there was, if not absolute declension, for he never wrote anything that could properly be called careless and unworthy of himself, yet at least no advance.  Of the interest that attaches to the book from the fact that so many portions are autobiographical, I have already spoken; nor need I go over the ground again.  But quite apart from such adventitious attractions, the novel is an admirable one.  All the scenes of little David’s childhood in the Norfolk home—­the Blunderstone rookery, where there were no rooks—­are among the