t the book was a living thing, and still lives.
It is, moreover, perhaps the best, most accurate picture of character and
manners that are quite gone by: in it the meaning and significance of old
buildings, old inns, old churches, and old towns are reached, and
interpreted in most interesting fashion; the humour, bubbling over, and
never forced, and always fresh, is sustained through some six hundred
closely-printed pages; all which, in itself, is a marvel and
unapproached. It is easy, however, to talk of the boisterousness, the
"caricature," the unlicensed recklessness of the book, the lack of
restraint, the defiance of the probabilities. It is popular and
acceptable all the same. But there is one test which incontestably
proves its merit, and supplies its title, to be considered all but
"monumental." This is its prodigious fertility and suggestiveness.

At this moment a review is being made of the long Victorian Age, and
people are reckoning up the wonderful changes in life and manners that
have taken place within the past sixty years. These have been so
imperceptibly made that they are likely to escape our ken, and the eye
chiefly settles on some few of the more striking and monumental kind,
such as the introduction of railways, of ocean steamships, electricity,
and the like. But no standard of comparison could be more useful or more
compendious than the immortal chronicle of PICKWICK, in which the old
life, not forgotten by some of us, is summarised with the completeness of
a history. The reign of Pickwick, like that of the sovereign, began some
sixty years ago. Let us recall some of these changes.

To begin: We have now no arrest for debt, with the attendant sponging-
houses, Cursitor Street, sheriffs' officers, and bailiffs; and no great
Fleet Prison, Marshalsea, or King's Bench for imprisoning debtors. There
are no polling days and hustings, with riotous proceedings, or
"hocussing" of voters; and no bribery on a splendid scale.

Drinking and drunkenness in society have quite gone out of fashion.
Gentlemen at a country house rarely or never come up from dinner, or
return from a cricket match, in an almost "beastly" state of
intoxication; and "cold punch" is not very constantly drunk through the
day. There are no elopements now in chaises and four, like Miss
Wardle's, with headlong pursuit in other chaises and four; nor are
special licenses issued at a moment's notice to help clandestine
marriages. The