which never failed to win the enthusiastic advocacy of Dickens. He
fought, as men still have to fight to-day, against those Pharisees who
prescribe for the working classes how they should spend their weekly day
of freedom; he supported the opening on Sunday of parks, museums, and
galleries; whole-heartedly he loved the theatre and the circus, and he
wished as many as possible to share those delights. In defiance of 'Mrs.
Grundy' he ventured to maintain that the words 'music-hall' and
'public-house', rightly understood, should be held in honour. It is one
thing to hate drunkenness and indecency; it is quite another to assume
that these must be found in the poor man's place of recreation, and this
roused him to anger. To him 'public-house' meant a place of fellowship,
and 'music-hall' a place of song and mirth; and if some critics complain
of an excess of material good-cheer in his picture of life, Dickens is
certainly here in sympathy with the bulk of his fellow-countrymen.

Another cause in which Dickens was always ready to lead a crusade was
the amendment of the Poor Law. This will remind us of the early days of
Oliver Twist, of such a friendless outcast as Jo in _Bleak House_, of
the struggle of Betty Higden in _Our Mutual Friend_ and her
determination never to be given up to 'the Parish'. But, even more than
the famous novels, the casual writings of Dickens in his own magazines
and elsewhere throw light on his activities in this cause and on the
researches which he made into the working of the system. Mr. Crotch
describes visits which he paid to the workhouses in Wapping and
Whitechapel, quoting his comments on the 'Foul Ward' in one, on the old
men's ward in the other, and on the torpor of despair which settled down
on these poor wrecks of humanity. Could such a system, he asked himself,
be wise which robbed men not of liberty alone but of all hope for the
future, which left them no single point of interest except the
statistics of their fellows who had gone before them and who had been
finally liberated by death? A still more striking passage, just because
Dickens here shows unusual restraint and moderation in his language,
tells us of the five women whom he saw sleeping all night outside the
workhouse through no fault of any official, but simply because there was
no room for them inside and because society had nothing to offer, no
form of 'relief' which could touch these unfortunates. Many will be
familiar with pa