mature rent collectors as to ask a respectable old accountant to “give him a back,” in the Marshalsea court, and leaps over his head, we are obviously in a world of pantomime.  Dickens’ comic effects are generally quite forced enough, and should never be further forced when translated into the sister art of drawing.  Rather, if anything, should they be attenuated.  But unfortunately exaggeration happened to be inherent in the draftsmanship of both Cruikshank and Browne.  And, having said this, I may as well finish with the subject of the illustrations to Dickens’ books.  “Our Mutual Friend” was illustrated by Mr. Marcus Stone, R.A., then a rising young artist, and the son of Dickens’ old friend, Frank Stone.  Here the designs fall into the opposite defect.  They are, some of them, pretty enough, but they want character.  Mr. Fildes’ pictures for “Edwin Drood” are a decided improvement.  As to the illustrations for the later Household Edition, they are very inferior.  The designs for a great many are clearly bad, and the mechanical execution almost uniformly so.  Even Mr. Barnard’s skill has had no fair chance against poor woodcutting, careless engraving, and inferior paper.  And this is the more to be regretted, in that Mr. Barnard, by natural affinity of talent, has, to my thinking, done some of the best art work that has been done at all in connection with Dickens.  His Character Sketches, especially the lithographed series, are admirable.  The Jingle is a masterpiece; but all are good, and he even succeeds in making something pictorially acceptable of Little Nell and Little Dorrit.

Just a year, almost to a day, elapsed between the conclusion of “The Tale of Two Cities,” and the commencement of “Great Expectations.”  The last chapter of the former appeared in the number of All the Year Round for the 26th of November, 1859, and the first chapter of the latter in the number of the same periodical for the 1st of December, 1860.  Poor Pip—­for such is the name of the hero of the book—­poor Pip, I think he is to be pitied.  Certainly he lays himself open to the charge of snobbishness, and is unduly ashamed of his connections.  But then circumstances were decidedly against him.  Through some occult means he is removed from his natural sphere, from the care of his “rampageous” sister and of her husband, the good, kind, honest Joe, and taken up to London, and brought up as a gentleman, and started in chambers in Barnard’s Inn.  All this is done through the instrumentality of Mr. Jaggers, a barrister in highest repute among the criminal brotherhood.  But Pip not unnaturally thinks that his unknown benefactress is a certain Miss Havisham, who, having been bitterly wronged in her love affairs, lives in eccentric fashion near his native place, amid the mouldering mementoes of her wedding day.  What is his horror when he finds that his education, comfort, and prospects have no more reputable foundation than the bounty of a murderous criminal called Magwitch, who has showered