His next work was
_Nicholas Nickleby_, a complete story, in which he was entirely
successful. Wonderful in the variety and reality of his characters, his
powerful satire was here principally directed against the private
boarding-schools in England, where unloved children, exiled and forgotten,
were ill fed, scantily clothed, untaught, and beaten. Do-the-boys' Hall
was his type, and many a school prison under that name was fearfully
exposed and scourged. The people read with wonder and applause; these
haunts of cruelty were scrutinized, some of them were suppressed; and
since Nicholas Nickleby appeared no such school can live, because Squeers
and Smike are on every lip, and punishment awaits the tyrant.
Our scope will not permit a review of his numerous novels. In _Oliver
Twist_ he denounces the parish system in its care of orphans, and throws a
Drummond light upon the haunts of crime in London.
_The Old Curiosity Shop_ exposes the mania of gaming, and seems to have
been a device for presenting the pathetic pictures of _Little Nell_ and
her grandfather, the wonderful and rapid learning of the marchioness, and
the uncommon vitality of Mr.
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