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overdraws his incidents. Take his "Hard Times" as one example. For some reason he has taken umbrage at Political Economy. So in this novel be gives us an immensely distorted picture of life, that he may make a violent attack upon the whole science. Led away by his warm sympathies, he wishes to make an exception the rule and to dwarf the world into an exception, merely because the action of universal laws happens to go hard with the saintly Stephen Blackpool. Then he gives us in Gradgrind what he considers an embodiment of the principles of Political Economy It would not, perhaps, be safe to say that Gradgrinds do not exist, but the world is not made up of them, and they are so few as in no wise to affect general results.
But in my eyes almost the greatest fault of Dickens is his well nigh total failure to draw a live woman. Search through all his books, save one, and you will not find a single woman so naturally drawn as she is by many another novelist in other respects
greatly his inferior. Dora is a simpleton ; Esther Summerson is a priggish sermonizer ; Little Dorrit is colorless ; Lady Dedlock is a phantom ; Madam Dufarge a bloody shadow. In these he cannot forego his habit of newspaper exaggeration. But Bella Wilfer is very charming, and is the only real, live woman in all his books.
But to all this an almost sweeping exception can be made in favor of his characters from "low life." It is for these, I think, that we read many of his novels. We certainly read "Pickwick" for the Wellers; "Martin Chuzzlewit" for Sairey Gamp; "Copperfield" for the Micawber family. In these he does his best, and we instinctively recognize it.
No doubt the day will come when the novels of Charles Dickens will occupy the same position on the scholar's shelves as "Tom Jones" now does, when they will be read by students and neglected by the people. This will only show how very rare is the really "immortal" book. "R."
SHYLOCK AND DERONDA.
"If there are ranks in suffering, Israel takes precedence of all other nations; if the duration of sorrows and the patience with which they are borne ennoble, the Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say of a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes?"
The character of the Jew seems to have been a favorite one in literature. His nationality, religion, and peculiarity of manners and customs furnish good material upon which to base the plot of a story or to render him the central figure of tragedy. In the world of letters, as everywhere else, we see that different persons often view the same thing in an entirely different light, that in the portrayal of a certain character authors ofttimes differ very materially.
Take for example that of the Jew as set forth in the "Merchant of Venice," in the person of Shylock, by Shakspeare, and in