he can "put down" any thing among "this sort of people,” and so sets about putting down the nonsense that is talked about want, and the cant in vogue about starvation; and declares his intentior of putting down distressed wives, boys without shoes and stockings, wandering mothers, and indeed all young mothers of all sorts and kinds, all sick persons and young children; and, if there is one thing on which he can be said to have made up his mind more thar on another, it is to put suicide down. Under this name Mr. Dick ens scarified Sir Peter Laurie, a wealthy Scotch saddler residing ir London, who was knighted in 1823 on being appointed sheriff of London and Middlesex, and who was chosen alderman from Aldersgate in 1826, and was elected lord-mayor in 1832. Sir Peter was a garrulous and officious magistrate, severe in his treatment of the poor, and in the habit of threatening to put down want, vagabondage, suicide, and the like, among them. (1st, 3d quarter.) Fern, Lilian. An orphan; niece to Will Fern. (2d-4th quarter.) Fern, Will. A poor but honest man, who only wants " to live like one of the Almighty's creeturs," but has a bad name, and can't. (2d-4th quarter.) Filer, Mr. A low-spirited gentleman of middle age, of a meagre habit and a disconsolate face, full of facts and figures, and ready to prove any thing by tables; a friend of Alderman Cute's. quarter.) (1st, 3d Fish, Mr. Confidential secretary to Sir Joseph Bowley. (2d, 3d quarter.) Lilian. See FERN, LILIAN. Richard. A handsome, well-made, powerful young smith, engaged to Meg Veck. (1st, 3d, 4th quarter.) Tugby. Porter to Sir Joseph Bowley; afterwards married, as Toby Veck dreams, to Mrs. Chickenstalker. (2d, 4th quarter.) Veck, Margaret or Meg. Toby Veck's daughter. (1st-4th quarter.) Veck, Toby, called TROTTY from his pace, "which meant speed, 'f it did n't make it." A ticket-porter. A weak, small, spare old man, he was a very Hercules, this Toby, in his good intentions. He loved to earn his money. He delighted to believe - Toby was very poor, and could n't well afford to part with a delight — that he was worth his salt. With a shilling or an eighteen-penny message or small parce in hand, his courage, always high, rose higher. As he trotted on, he would cal out to fast postmen ahead of him to get out of the way, devoutly believing, that, in the n◄ral course (f things, he must inevitably ov-take and run them down; and he had perfect faith-not often tested in his being able to carry any thing that man could lift. Toby has a great liking for the bells in the church near his station. Being but a simple man, he invested them with a strange and solemn character. They were so mysterious (often heard, and never seen), so high up, so far off, so full of such a deep, strong melody, that he regarded them with a species of awe; and sometimes, when he looked up at the dark arched windows in the tower, he half expected to be beckoned to by something which was not a bell, and yet was what he heard so often sounding in the chimes. For all this, Toby scouted with indignation a certain flying rumor that the chimes were haunted, as implying the possibility of their being connected with any evil thing. In short, they were very often in his ears, and very often in his thoughts, but always in his good opinion; and he very often got such a crick in his neck by staring, with his mouth wide open, at the steeple where they hung, that he was fain to take an extra trot or two afterwards to cure it. On Christmas Eve, Toby falls asleep by the fireside, while reading a newspaper, and dreams that he is called by the chimes, and so goes up into the church-tower, which he finds peopled by dwarf phantoms, spirits, elfin creatures of the bells, of all aspects, shapes, characters, and occupations. As he gazes, the spectres disappear, and he sees in every bell a bearded figure, mysterious and awful, of the bulk and stature of the bell, at once a figure and the bell itself. The Great Bell, or the Goblin of the Great Bell, after arraigning him for sundry instances of wrong-doing, puts him in charge of the Spirit of the Chimes, a little child, who shows him various sorrowful scenes of the future, the actors in which he knows, and some of whom are very near and dear to him. But all these scenes point the same moral,-"that we must trust and hope, and neither doubt ourselves, nor the good in one another." And when Toby breaks the spell that binds him, and wakes up suddenly with a leap that brings him upon his feet, he is beside himself with joy to find that the chimes are merrily ringing in the New Year, and that all the sin and shame and suffering and desperation which he has witnessed is but the baseless fabric of a vision. The lesson is not forgotten, however, and the New Year is made all the happier by his troubled dream. The Ericket on the Hearth. A FAIRY TALE OF HOME. PUBLISHED in 1845, inscribed to Lord Jeffrey, and illustrated with a frontis piece and titlepage by Maclise, and woodcuts from drawings by Doyle, Leech, Clarkson, Stanfield, and Landseer. The story takes its name from the quaint description with which it opens, of a match or trial of skill, in the cozy home of an English carrier, between the tea-kettle and a cricket, in which the latter gains the victory. "To have a cricket on the hearth," Dot, the carrier's wife, tells her husband, "is the luckiest thing in all the world." CHARACTERS INTRODUCED. Boxer. John Peerybingle's dog. (Chirp 1st-3d.) Fielding, May. A friend of Mrs. Peerybingle's. She is overpersuaded into consenting to bestow her hand upon Tackleton, a surly, sordid, grinding old man; but, on the morning of the day appointed for the wedding, she marries Edward Plummer, a former lover, who suddenly returns after a long absence, and whom shẹ has believed to be dead. (Chirp 2d, 3d.) Fielding, Mrs. Her mother; a little, querulous chip of an old lady with a peevish face, and a most transcendent figure (in right of having preserved a waist like a bedpost). She is very genteer and patronizing, in consequence of having once been better off, or of laboring under an impression that she might have been, if something had happened (in the indigo-trade) which never did happen, and seemed to have never been particularly likely to happen. (Chirp 2d, 3d.) Peerybingle, John. A large, sturdy man, much older than his wife, but "the best, the most considerate, the most affectionate, of husbands" to her. (Chirp 1st-3d.) He was often near to something or other very clever, by his own account, this lumbering, slow, honest John; this John so heavy, but so light of spirit; so rough upon the surface, but so gentle at the core; so dull without, so quick within; so stolid, but so good! O mother Nature! give thy children the true poetry of heart that hid itself in this poor carrier's breast, he was but a carrier, by the way, and we can bear to have them talking prose, and leading lives of prose, and bear to bless thee for their company. Peerybingle, Mrs. Mary, called Dor from her small size. His wife, a blooming young woman, with a very doll of a baby. (Chirp 1st-3d.) Plummer, Caleb. A poor toymaker in the employ of Tackleton; a spare, dejected, thoughtful, gray-haired old man, wholly devoted to his blind daughter. (Chirp 1st-3d.) Plummer, Bertha. His daughter, a blind girl. With her father, she lives in "a little cracked nutshell of a wooden house, stuck to the premises of Gruff and Tackleton like a barnacle to a ship's keel." I have said that Caleb and his poor blind daughter lived here. I should have said that Caleb lived here, and his poor blind daughter somewhere else, in an enchanted home of Caleb's furnishing, where scarcity and shabbiness were not, and trouble never entered. Caleb was no sorcerer, but in the only magic art that still remains to us, -the magic of devoted, deathless love. Nature had been the mistress of his study; and from her teaching all the wonder came. The blind girl never knew that ceilings were discolored; walls blotched, and bare of plaster here and there; high crevices unstopped, and widening every day; beams mouldering, and tending downward. The blind girl never knew that iron was rusting, wood rotting, paper peeling off; the size and shape, and true proportion of the dwelling, withering away. The blind girl never knew that ugly shapes of delf and earthenware were on the board; that sorrow and faintheartedness were in the house; that Caleb's scanty hairs were turning grayer and more gray before her sightless face. The blind girl never knew they had a master cold, exacting, and uninterested; never knew that Tackleton was Tackleton, in short, but lived in the belief of an eccentric humorist, who loved to have his jest with them, and who, while he was the guardian angel of their lives, disdained to hear one word of thankfulness. And all was Caleb's doing; all the doing of her simple father! The consequence of this well-meant but ill-judged deception is, that Bertha comes secretly to love Tackleton with unspeakable af fection and gratitude, and is nearly heart-broken on finding that he means to marry May Fielding. This compels her father to tell her e truth; to confess that he has altered objects, changed the char acters of people, invented many things that never have been, te make her happier. The shock to her sensitive nature is great; bu instead of losing her confidence in him, she clings to him all the more closely, and cherishes him all the more devotedly, for his innocent deceit, springing from motives so pure and unselfish. (Chirp 2d, 3d.) Lovely as the character of Bertha is, it cannot be said to be true to nature; and there is much justice in the following criticism from The London "Times:" "So, Mr. Dickens, are not the blind misled. Exquisite are the spared senses, mercifully strengthened by Providence to make amends for the one tremendous deprivation. The fingers of the blind read the Bible; the cars of the blind-the figure is a bold one-see the friendly visitor long before you or I, even whilst his foot is lingering at the threshold. Would you have us believe that touch, feeling, hearing, remained for twenty years torpid and dead in the sensitive creature whom you have spoiled by your perversion? We tell you. and not without good warrant for the assertion, that no man living, journeyman or master, has power to stop up the avenues through which knowledge rushes to the soul of a poor innocent deprived of sight. Bertha, by your own account, had mixed in the world; she talked wisely, and even profoundly, on abstruse matters; she worked with her father; she knew every toy in the room, and where to seek it, and how to make it; she was in daily intercourse with those who knew the character of Tackleton, and who spoke of him with freedom. And yet you ask us to believe that this young lass, all feeling and perception, never knew that walls were blotched, and bare of plaster here and there; that iron was rusting, wood rotting, paper peeling off; that sorrow and faint-heartedness were in the house; that they had a master cold, exacting, uninterested. If we believe you, it must be when Nature proves a liar. Plummer, Edward. Son to Caleb, and brother to Bertha Plummer. After a long absence in the "Golden South Americas," he returns to claim the hand of May Fielding, to whom he had been engaged before leaving home. Hearing, when twenty miles away, that she has proved false to him, and is about to marry old Tackleton, he disguises himself as an old man, for the sake of observing and judging for himself, in order to get at the rea. and exact truth. He makes himself known to Mrs. Peerybingle (“Dot"), who advises him to keep his secret close, and not even to let Mr. Peerybingle know it, he being much too open in his nature, and too clumsy in all artifice, to keep it for him. She also offers to sound his sweetheart, and to go between them, and bring them together, which she does, and has the pleasure of seeing them married, and of expressing a hope that Tackleton may die a bachelor. Her mediation, however, becomes known, in part, to her husband, who misconstrues her actions, and suspects her of being untrue to himself. But in the end every thing is satisfactorily explained, and everybody is made happy; while even the kettle hums for joy, and the cricket joins the music with its "Chirp, chirp, chirp." (Chirp 1st-3d.) |