ing affection for the broken prisoner of the Marshalsea ; - these are but a few among many instances of that searching pathos of Dickens which irresistibly affects the great body of his readers, and even forces unwilling tears from hostile critics.

Why, then, it may be asked, is Dickens not to be ranked with the greatest masters of characterization? The objection as to his exaggerated manner of representation we have found to be superficial, as his exaggeration rather increases than diminishes our sense of the reality of his personages; the true objection is to his matter. Great characterization consists in the creation and representation of great natures; and the natures which Dickens creates may be original, strange, wild, criminal, humorous, lovable, pathetic, or good, but they are never great. The material of which they are composed is the common stuff of humanity, even when it is worked up into uncommon forms. His individualizing imagination can give personality to everything coming within the range of his thoughts, sentiments, and perceptions; but that range does not include the realm of ideas, or the conflict and complication of passions in persons of large intellects as well as strong sensibility. The element of thought is comparatively lacking in his creations. Captain Cuttle is as vividly depicted as Falstaff, but the Captain

would be a bore as a constant companion, while we can conceive of Falstaff as everlastingly fertile in new mental combinations, and as never losing his power to stimulate and amuse. Esther Summerson is, like Imogen, an individualized ideal of womanhood; but Esther's mind never passes beyond a certain homely sense, while Imogen is the perfection of imagination and intelligence as well as of tenderness, and we feel that, though she should live a thousand years, she would never exhaust her capacity of thinking, any more than her capacity of loving. But if Dickens's genius never goes beyond a certain limit of observation, nor rises above a certain level of thought, it has still peopled the imagination, and touched and gladdened the hearts, of so many thousands of readers, that it seems ungenerous to subject him to tests he does not court, and ungrateful to note the shortcomings of a power which in itself is so joyous, humane, and benefi

cent.

SHODDY.
DY.

AFTER the firing on Fort Sumter had proved the malignity of the Rebel feeling, there was a general burst of patriotism out of the depths of the nation's heroic heart, which seemingly swept into its current and overwhelmed in its flood every mean prejudice and huckstering policy and selfish impulse on the surface of the public mind; but events soon proved that while honest men were eager to sacrifice everything for the country, knaves were scheming to make money out of the country's necessities, and coolly seizing on the very disinterestedness of their nobler neighbors as an excellent occasion to glut their ravenous greed. The marvels of moral inspiration all round them, emancipating men from the dominion of mercenary motives, only seemed to sharpen their vulpine minds and intensify their wolfish instincts; and to prey on the patriotism they disdained to emulate became the one object of their ambition. To pillage the government which they would not defend, and swindle the soldiers whose

breasts shielded them from pillage, seemed a proper exercise of their peculiar gifts, while the nation, realizing the vision of the poet, "was rousing herself, like a strong man out of his sleep, and shaking her invincible locks." Soon came the cry from the camps that cheats at home were thriving on the miseries of the volunteers; that the soldier starved in order that the contractor might feast; especially that the defenders of the nation, hurrying from their homes to insure safety to the homes of their plunderers, were so sleazily clothed that they were literally "left naked to their enemies"; and a word of ominous and infamous significance, a word in which is concentrated more wrath and wretchedness than any other in the vocabulary of the camp, the word "shoddy," flew into general circulation, to embody the soldier's anathema on the soldier's scourge.

But it seems to us that a word of such ill repute should not be confined to one class of offences, but should be extended to follies, errors, vices, and policies which, though they boast of softer names, illustrate the same essential quality. For what is the essential characteristic of shoddy clothing? Is it not this, that it will not wear? In its outside appearance it mimics good cloth, but use quickly reduces it to its elemental rags. Now, it might be asked, have we, in our expe

rience during the past ten years, been deceived by no other plausible mockeries of reality than shoddy uniforms? Have we not all, more or less, been wearing shoddy clothing on our minds and consciences? Have we not seen it fall into shreds and tatters with perhaps only a week's use. And have we not quickly replaced the sleazy garment of opinion and prejudice with one only a little less "ready made," anxious at all events not to be clad in the well-woven cloth of enduring principle? Is shoddy, in fact, anything more than a superficial symbol of a deep-seated moral disease? Shoddy in business everybody detects and denounces ; let us see if we have not been fooled as much by shoddy politics, shoddy generalship, shoddy literature, shoddy ethics, and shall we say it?.

shoddy religion. In all these great instrumentalities of individual and national well-being have we always selected those which will stand the test of experience, — which will wear?

And first for our politics, and our politics in connection with the Confederate War. If there ever was an occasion in the history of nations when the national heart should have given depth and sagacity to the national mind, when principle should have been identified with policy and impassioned purpose with practical performance, it was on the breaking out of that contest in which a perjured horde of slaveholders and liberti