ined, been able to surround himself with the society of
the leading literary lights of his time.

Surely, though, the Cockney _pur sang_ never had so true a delineator as
he who produced those pen-pictures ranging all the way from the
vulgarities of a Sykes to the fastidiousness of a Skimpole. It is a
question, wide open in the minds of many, as to whether society of any
rank is improving or not; surely the world is quite as base as it ever
was, and as worthily circumspect too. But while the improvement of the
aristocracy in general, since mediaeval times, in learning and
accomplishments, was having its untold effect on the middle classes, it
was long before the immense body of workers, or perhaps one should say
skilled labourers, as the economists call them, partook in any degree of
the general amendment. Certainly we have a right to assume, even with a
twentieth-century standpoint to judge from, that there was a constantly
increasing dissemination of knowledge, if not of culture, and that sooner
or later it might be expected to have its desired, if unconscious, effect
on the lower classes. That discerning, if not discreet, American,
Nathaniel Parker Willis, was inclined to think not, and compared the
English labourer to a tired donkey with no interest in things about him,
and with scarce surplus energy enough to draw one leg after the other. He
may have been wrong, but the fact is that there is a very large proportion
of Dickens' characters made up of a shiftless, worthless, and even
criminal class, as we all recognize, and these none the less than the
other more worthy characters are nowhere to be found as a thoroughly
indigenous type but in London itself.

There was an unmistakable class in Dickens' time, and there is to-day,
whose only recourse, in their moments of ease, is to the public
house,--great, strong, burly men, with "a good pair of hands," but no
brain, or at least no development of it, and it is to this class that your
successful middle-Victorian novelist turned when he wished to suggest
something unknown in polite society. This is the individual who cares
little for public improvements, ornamental parks. Omnibuses or trams,
steamboats or flying-machines, it's all the same to him. He cares not for
libraries, reading-rooms, or literature, cheap or otherwise, nothing, in
fact, which will elevate or inspire self-respect; nothing but
soul-destroying debauchery and vice, living and dying the life of the
beas