upon earth are past finding out, and their madness beyond
interpretation!

It is not only children--and yet it is children most of all--who get the
sense, in a weird, sudden flash, of the demonic life of inanimate
things. Why are our houses so full of things that one had better not
look at, things that, like the face of Salome, had better be seen in
mirrors, and things that must be forbidden to look at us? The houses
of mortal men are strange places. They are sepulchres and
cemeteries. Dungeons are they, and prison cells. Not one of them
but have murderous feet going up and down. Not one of them but
have lavisher's hands, fumbling, back and forth, along the walls. For
the secret wishes, and starved desires, and mad cravings, and furious
revolts, of the hearts of men and women, living together decently in
their "homes," grow by degrees palpable and real and gather to
themselves strange shapes.

No writer who has ever lived can touch Dickens in indicating this
sort of familiar sorcery and the secret of its terror. For it is children,
more than any, who are conscious how "haunted" all manner of
places and things are. And people themselves! The searching
psychologists are led singularly astray. They peer and pry and repine,
and all the while the real essence of the figure lies in its momentary
expression--in its most superficial gesture.

Dickens' world is a world of gnomes and hob-goblins, of ghouls and
of laughing angels. The realist of the Thackeray School finds
nothing but monstrous exaggeration here--and fantastic mummery.
If he were right, par-dieu! If his sleek "reality" were all that there
was--"alarum!" We were indeed "betrayed"! But no; the children are
right. Dickens is right. Neither "realist" or "psychologist" hits the
mark, when it comes to the true diablerie of living people. There is
something more whimsical, more capricious, more _unreal,_ than
philosophers suppose about this human pantomime. People are
actually--as every child knows--much worse and much better than
they "ought" to be. And, as every child knows, too, they tune their
souls up to the pitch of their "masks." The surface of things is the
heart of things; and the protruded goblin-tongue, the wagged head,
the groping fingers, the shuffling step, are just as significant of the
mad play-motif as any hidden thoughts. People _think_ with their
bodies, and their looks and gestures; nay! their very garments are
words, tones, whispers, in their gen