the old house but the garden wall, and as I stood
looking along the desolate garden walk a solitary figure came up. I saw
it stop, and half turn away, and then let me come up to it. It faltered
as if much surprised, and uttered my name, and I cried out, "Estella!"

I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and as the
morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so the
evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil
light they showed to me I saw no shadow of another parting from her.

* * * * *

Hard Times

"Hard Times" is not one of the longest, but it is one of the
most powerful of Dickens's works. John Ruskin went so far as
to call it "in several respects the greatest" book Dickens had
written. It is, of course, a fierce attack on the early
Victorian school of political economists. The Bounderbys and
Gradgrinds are typical of certain characters, and, though they
change their form of speech, are still recognisable to-day. As
a study of social and industrial life in England in the
manufacturing districts fifty years ago, "Hard Times" will
always be valuable, though allowance must be made here as
elsewhere for the novelist's tendency to
exaggeration--exaggeration of virtue no less than of vice or
weakness. In Josiah Bounderby and Stephen Blackpool this
characteristic is pronounced. The first, according to John
Ruskin, being a dramatic monster, and the second a dramatic
perfection. The story first appeared serially in "Household
Words" between April 1 and August 12, 1854.

_I.--Mr. Thomas Gradgrind_

"Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of facts and calculations. With a rule and
a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket,
sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you
exactly what it comes to."

In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether
to his private circle of acquaintance or to the public in general. In
such terms Thomas Gradgrind presented himself to the schoolmaster and
children before him. It was his school, and he intended it to be a
model.

"Now, what I want is facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but
facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. You can only form the minds of
reasoning animals upon facts. This is the principle on which I bring up