mpathy. That is a most welcome creed to an age overburdened
with social problems; and to criticise our cheery companion seems as
discourteous as to speak unkindly of a guest who has just left our home.
But we must consider Dickens not merely as a friend, but as a novelist, and
apply to his work the same standards of art which we apply to other
writers; and when we do this we are sometimes a little disappointed. We
must confess that his novels, while they contain many realistic details,
seldom give the impression of reality. His characters, though we laugh or
weep or shudder at them, are sometimes only caricatures, each one an
exaggeration of some peculiarity, which suggest Ben Jonson's _Every Man in
His Humour_. It is Dickens's art to give his heroes sufficient reality to
make them suggest certain types of men and women whom we know; but in
reading him we find ourselves often in the mental state of a man who is
watching through a microscope the swarming life of a water drop. Here are
lively, bustling, extraordinary creatures, some beautiful, some grotesque,
but all far apart from the life that we know in daily experience. It is
certainly not the reality of these characters, but rather the genius of the
author in managing them, which interests us and holds our attention.
Notwithstanding this criticism, which we would gladly have omitted, Dickens
is excellent reading, and his novels will continue to be popular just so
long as men enjoy a wholesome and absorbing story.

WHAT TO READ. Aside from the reforms in schools and prisons and workhouses
which Dickens accomplished, he has laid us all, rich and poor alike, under
a debt of gratitude. After the year 1843 the one literary work which he
never neglected was to furnish a Christmas story for his readers; and it is
due in some measure to the help of these stories, brimming over with good
cheer, that Christmas has become in all English-speaking countries a season
of gladness, of gift giving at home, and of remembering those less
fortunate than ourselves, who are still members of a common brotherhood. If
we read nothing else of Dickens, once a year, at Christmas time, we should
remember him and renew our youth by reading one of his holiday stories,--
_The Cricket on the Hearth, The Chimes_, and above all the unrivaled
_Christmas Carol_. The latter especially will be read and loved as long as
men are moved by the spirit of Christmas.

Of the novels, _David Copperfield_ is regarde