l glowed with the inspiration of a quick moral and
religious, as well as common, sense, would not, in our humble opinion,
at all detract from his practical efficiency.

_Works of Charles Dickens Household Edition_. Illustrated from Drawings
by F.O.C. Darley and John Gilbert. The Pickwick Papers. New York: W.A.
Townsend & Co. 4 vols. 12mo.

We have long needed a handsome American edition of the works of the most
popular English novelist of the time, and here we have the first volumes
of one which is superior, in type, paper, illustrations, and general
taste of mechanical execution, to the best English editions. It is to
be published at the rate of two volumes a month until completed, and in
respect both to cheapness and elegance is worthy of the most extensive
circulation. Such an enterprise very properly commences with "The
Pickwick Papers," the work in which the hilarity, humor, and tenderness
of the author's humane and beautiful genius first attracted general
regard; and it is to be followed by equally fine editions of the
romances which succeeded, and, as some think, eclipsed it in merit and
popularity. We most cordially wish success to an undertaking which
promises to substitute the finest workmanship of the Riverside Press for
the bad type and dingy paper of the common editions, and hope that the
publishers will see the propriety of adequately remunerating the author.

It is pleasant to note that years and hard work have not dimmed the
brightness or impaired the strength of Dickens's mind. The freshness,
vigor, and affluence of his genius are not more evident in the "Old
Curiosity Shop" than in "Great Expectations," the novel he is now
publishing, in weekly parts, in "All the Year Round." Common as is the
churlish custom of depreciating a new work of a favorite author by
petulantly exalting the worth of an old one, no fair reader of "Great
Expectations" will feel inclined to say that Dickens has written
himself out. In this novel he gives us new scenes, new incidents, new
characters, and a new purpose; and from his seemingly exhaustless fund
of genial creativeness, we may confidently look for continual additions
to the works which have already established his fame. The characters
in "Great Expectations" are original, and some of them promise to rank
among his best delineations. Pip, the hero, who, as a child, "was
brought up by hand," and who appears so far to be led by it,--thus
illustrating the pernicious eff