Chadband, and Stiggins; the rude devotion of Captain Cuttle, Sam Weller, and Mark Tapley; the sturdy strength of Boythorn; the villainy of Carker, Jonas Chuzzlewit, Fagin, and Sikes; the noble generosity of the Cheeryble Brothers; the selfish obstinacy of Dombey and Gradgrind; the imperiousness of Bounderby; the dying face of Stephen Blackpool, turned to the star that "ha' shined upon me in my pain and trouble down below;" the simplicity of Tom Pinch, and the sweet child-life of Paul Dombey, Florence, and Little Nell! As the diamond-cutter chips from the rough stone an angle here and an angle there to give perfection to the brilliant, so did Dickens develop thought until it became prismatic and picturesque, each character standing out as the incarnation of some virtue, vice, or absurdity. Nor was the satire of Dickens without a healthful purpose. His descriptions of Debtor's Prisons, the Court of Chancery, the Yorkshire schools and school-masters, the circumlocution Office, the spurious philanthropists, hypocritical pretenders to goodness, organized business swindlers, stonyhearted capitalists, and brutal hospital nurses, illustrate the power with which he thrust his victim through and through until life was extinct. His irony and ridicule thus concentrated upon all the classes of institutions which he exposed, directed public attention to the existing evils, and resulted in reform. In the language of Thackeray, "As for the charities of Mr. Dickens, the multiplied kindnesses which he has conferred upon us all, upon our children, upon people educated and uneducated, upon the myriads who speak our common tongue, have not you, have not I, all of us, reason to be thankful to this kind friend, who soothed and charmed so many hours; brought pleasure and sweet laughter to so many homes; made such multitudes of children happy; endowed us with such a sweet store of gracious thoughts, fair fancies, soft sympathies, hearty enjoyments? There are creations of Mr. Dickens which seem to me to rank as personal benefits; figures so delightful that one feels happier and better for knowing them, as one does for being brought into the society of very good men and women. Thankfully I take my share of the feast of love and kindness which this gentle, and generous, and charitable soul has contributed to the happiness of the World. I take and enjoy my share, and say a benediction for the meal." No novelist has been more thoroughly identified and associated with the illustrations originally made for his books than Charles Dickens. No author has ever been more fortunate and happy in the artists employed to embody and carry out to the eye the creations of his fancy, and rarely have illustrations been designed which have appealed more forcibly to the imag ination of the reader. Unlike most book illustrations, where the designers have been chosen by the publisher, the original artists for illustrating Dickens' works were chosen by the author himself, and most of the subjects were by him selected and carefully considered. The pictures throughout this volume are not only faithful realizations of the Author's fancies, but they are exquisite designs in themselves-artistic and graceful, tender and touching, dramatic and painful, humorous and comic in the highest degree-while conveying a definite and truthful idea of the period and the times in which the stories were written. This "CYCLOPEDIA OF BEST THOUGHTS" Contains upwards of fifteen hundred selections and embodies a versatility of thought and felicity of expression that make it the cream of the works of the popular novelist. It is therefore earnestly commended not only to those who have complete editions and desire a companion volume for ready reference, but to the general reader who may seek the pleasure that is to be derived from an irregular and cursory perusal of these "Best Thoughts." August 1, 1883. F. G. DE FONTAINE. THE BEST THOUGHTS OF CHARLES DICKENS. "So live thy better-let thy worst thoughts die." SIR WALTER RALEIGH. ABBEY-Nell in the old. chapel, and here were effigies of warriors stretchAlready impressed, beyond all telling, by the ed upon their beds of stone with folded hands silent building and the peaceful beauty of the-crost-legged, those who had fought in the spot in which it stood-majestic age surrounded Holy Wars-girded with their swords, and by perpetual youth-it seemed to her, when she cased in armor as they had lived. Some of heard these things, sacred to all goodness and these knights had their own weapons, helmets, virtue. It was another world, where sin and coats of mail, hanging upon the walls hard by, sorrow never came; a tranquil place of rest, and dangling from rusty hooks. Broken and where nothing evil entered. dilapidated as they were, they yet retained their ancient form, and something of their ancient aspect. Thus violent deeds live after men upon the earth, and traces of war and bloodshed will survive in mournful shapes long after those who worked the desolation are but atoms of earth When the bachelor had given her in connection with almost every tomb and flat gravestone some history of its own, he took her down into the old crypt, now a mere dull vault, and showed her how it had been lighted up in the time of the monks, and how, amid lamps de-themselves. pending from the roof, and swinging censers exhaling scented odors, and habits glittering with gold and silver, and pictures, and precious stuffs, and jewels all flashing and glistening through the low arches, the chaunt of aged voices had been many a time heard there, at midnight, in old days, while hooded figures knelt and prayed around, and told their rosaries of beads. Thence, he took her above ground again, and showed her, high up in the old walls, small galleries, where the nuns had been wont to glide along-dimly seen in their dark dresses so far off or to pause, like gloomy shadows, listening to the prayers. He showed her, too, how the warriors, whose figures rested on the tombs, had worn those rotting scraps of armor up above-how this had been a helmet and that a shield, and that a gauntlet-and how they had wielded the great two-handed swords, and beaten men down with yonder iron mace. The child sat down, in this old silent place, among the stark figures on the tombs-they made it more quiet there than elsewhere, to her fancy-and gazing round with a feeling of awe, tempered with a calm delight, felt that now she was happy, and at rest. She took a Bible from the shelf, and read; then, laying it down, thought of the summer days and the bright springtime that would come-of the rays of sun that would fall in aslant upon the sleeping forms-of the leaves that would flutter at the window, and play in glistening shadows on the pavement-of the songs of birds, and growth of buds and blossoms out of doors-of the sweet air that would steal in and gently wave the tattered banners overhead. What if the spot awakened thoughts of death! Die who would, it would still remain the same; these sights and sounds would still go on as happily as ever. It would be no pain to sleep amidst them. Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 53. ABILITY-Misdirected. (Stryver.) Old Curiosity Shop, Chap. 54. The very light coming through sunken windows, seemed old and gray, and the air, redolent of earth and mould, seemed laden with decay, When his host followed him out on the stairpurified by time of all its grosser particles, and case with a candle, to light him down the stairs, sighing through arch, and aisle, and clustered the day was coldly looking in through its grimy pillars, like the breath of ages gone! Here was windows. When he got out of the house, the the broken pavement, worn so long ago by pious air was cold and sad, the dull sky overcast, the feet that Time, stealing on the pilgrims' steps, river dark and dim, the whole scene like a lifehad trodden out their track, and left but crumb- less desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning ling stones. Here were the rotten beam, the sink-round and round before the morning blast, as ing arch, the sapped and mouldering wall, the lowly trench of earth, the stately tomb on which no epitaph remained-all, marble, stone, iron, wood, and dust, one common monument of ruin. The best work and the worst, the plainest and the richest, the stateliest and the least imposingboth of Heaven's work and man's-all found one common level here, and told one common tale. Some part of the edifice had been a baronial if the desert-sand had risen far away, and the first spray of it, in its advance, had begun the overwhelming of the city. Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honorable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision there were airy gal ACTOR leries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears. Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away. Tale of Two Cities, Chap. 5. ACTOR-The Dying. "I kept my promise. The last four-andtwenty hours had produced a frightful alteration. The eyes, though deeply sunk and heavy, shone with a lustre frightful to behold. The lips were parched, and cracked in many places; the dry hard skin glowed with a burning heat, and there was an almost unearthly air of wild anxiety in the man's face, indicating even more strongly the ravages of the disease. The fever was at its height. every way he turned, some obstacle impeded his progress. There were insects too, hideous, crawling things, with eyes that stared upon him, and filled the very air around-glistening horribly amidst the thick darkness of the place. The walls and ceiling were alive with reptiles -the vault expanded to an enormous sizefrightful figures flitted to and fro-and the faces of men he knew, rendered hideous by gibing and mouthing, peered out from among them-they were searing him with heated irons, and binding his head with cords till the blood started-and he struggled madly for life. "At the close of one of these paroxysms, when I had with great difficulty held him down in his bed, he sank into what appeared to be a slumber. Overpowered with watching and exertion, I had closed my eyes for a few minutes, when I felt a violent clutch on my shoulder. I awoke instantly. He had raised himself up, so as to seat himself in bed-a dreadful change had come over his face, but consciousness had returned, for he evidently knew me. The child, who had been long since disturbed by his ravings, rose from his little bed, and ran towards its father, screaming with fright-the mother hastily caught it in her arms, lest he should injure it in the violence of his insanity; but, terrified by the alteration of his features, stood transfixed by the bedside. He grasped my shoulder convulsively, and, striking his breast with the other hand, made a desperate attempt to articulate. It was unavailing-he extended his arm towards them, and made another violent effort. There was a rattling noise in the throat--a glare of the eye-a short stifled groan, and he fell back-dead!”—Pick., Chap. 3. ACTOR-His Reading of Hamlet. if not quite, with patronage. Herbert said from behind (again poking me), "massive and concrete." So I said boldly, as if I had originated it, and must beg to insist upon it, "massive and concrete." "I am glad to have your approbation, gentlemen," said Mr. Waldengarver, with an air of dignity, in spite of his being ground against the wall at the time, and holding on by the seat of the chair. I took the seat I had occupied the night before, and there I sat for hours, listening to sounds which must strike deep to the heart of the most callous among human beings-the awful ravings of a dying man. From what I had heard of the medical attendant's opinion, I knew there was no hope for him: I was sitting by his death-bed. I saw the wasted limbs, which, a few hours before, had been distorted for the amusement of a boisterous gallery, writhing under the tortures of a burning fever -I heard the clown's shrill laugh, blending with the low murmurings of the dying man. "It is a touching thing to hear the mind re- "How did you like my reading of the charac verting to the ordinary occupations and pur-ter, gentlemen ?" said Mr. Waldengarver, almost, suits of health, when the body lies before you weak and helpless; but when those occupations are of a character the most strongly opposed to anything we associate with grave or solemn ideas, the impression produced is infinitely more powerful. The theatre, and the public-house, were the chief themes of the wretched man's wanderings. It was evening, he fancied; he had a part to play that night; it was late, and he must leave home instantly. Why did they hold him, and prevent his going? -he should lose the money-he must go. No! they would not let him. He hid his face in his burning hands, and feebly bemoaned his own weakness, and the cruelty of his persecutors. A short pause, and he shouted out a few doggerel rhymes-the last he had ever learnt. He rose in bed, drew up his withered limbs, and rolled about in uncouth positions-he was acting-he was at the theatre. A minute's silence, and he murmured the burden of some roaring song. He had reached the old house at last : how hot the room was. He had been ill, very ill, but he was well now, and happy. Fill up his glass. Who was that, that dashed it from his lips? It was the same persecutor that had followed him before. He fell back upon his pillow and moaned aloud. A short period of oblivion, and he was wandering through a tedious maze of low-arched rooms-so low, sometimes, that he must creep upon his hands and knees to make his way along; it was close and dark, and "But I'll tell you one thing, Mr. Waldengarver," said the man who was on his knees, "in which you're out in your reading. Now mind! I don't care who says contrairy; I tell you so. You're out in your reading of Hamlet when you get your legs in profile. The last Hamlet as I dressed made the same mistakes in his reading at rehearsal, till I got him to put a large red wafer on each of his shins, and then at that rehearsal (which was the last) I went in front, sir, to the back of the pit, and whenever his reading brought him into profile, I called out, I don't see no wafers!' And at night his reading was lovely." * When we were in a side alley, he turned and asked, "How do you think he looked?—Į dressed him." I don't know what he had looked like, except a funeral; with the addition of a large Danish sun or star hanging round his neck by a blue ribbon, that had given him the appearance |