ABSTRACT
We are happy to find that Mr Dickens, in his annual volume for the present year, has left the question of social wrongs and rights to the discussion of those who can consider them in a calmer and less partial spirit, and turned his attention to a subject of purely moral interest, more within the scope of his powers, and better suited to his habits of thought and feeling. The title of his new book indicates a theme of the domestic kind, embellished with fancy. The contents justify the anticipation thus raised. It is a picture of humble life, contemplated in its poetic aspects, and at its more romantic crises; and shows its author, in one sense, ambitious of becoming the Wordsworth of prose fiction. Deficient in the profundity and stern power of that great master, the novelist yet has some requisites which the poet wants—a certain wit and humour, and, above all, an experience of civic life, that the bard of Rydal has failed to cultivate. Moreover, Mr Dickens succeeds quite as much by tact as genius.
