--His tenderness is touching, and his pathos at once
excites our sympathy. He does not tell us to feel or to weep, but he shows
us scenes like those in the life of Smike, and in the sufferings and death
of Little Nell, which so simply appeal to the heart that we are for the
time forgetful of the wand which conjures them before us.
Dickens is bold in the advocacy of truth and in denouncing error; he is
the champion of honest poverty; he is the foe of class pretension and
oppression; he is the friend of friendless children; the reformer of
those whom society has made vagrants. Without many clear assertions of
Christian doctrine, but with no negation of it, he believes in doing good
for its own sake,--in self-denial, in the rewards which virtue gives
herself. His faults are few and venial. His merry life smacks too much of
the practical joke and the punch-bowl; he denounces cant in the
self-appointed ministers of the gospel, but he is not careful to draw
contrasted pictures of good pastors. His opinion seems to be based upon a
human perfectibility.
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