Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900 edition. Excerpt: ...had hired MacGregor's glens for game preserves, and the inhabitants had been exiled or exterminated. A new variety of nervous organism possessed the world. An organism as different from the organism which preceded it as is the organism of the ox from the organism of the wolf; and this latter organism found its chronicler in Charles Dickens, as its predecessor had found its bard in Scott. Read from this standpoint, the works of Dickens abound with suggestion. Reduced to its ultimate analysis, the fundamental difference between the antique and the modern social type consists in the elimination of courage as an essential quality in a ruling class. This quality being eliminated, the ideal of courage contained in the conception of the gentleman fell, and with the destruction of this conception went the capacity for enthusiasm, the sympathy with the instinct for self-devotion, and, in fine, all the chief attributes of the heroic mind. Taken as a whole, the salient trait which runs through Dickens's writing is fear. Fear both of the unknown and of the known. Many of his best novels have this passion for the foundation of the story. The " Old Curiosity Shop," " Oliver Twist," " Martin Chuzzlewit," where the catastrophe hinges on the terror of Jonas, which makes him murder Tigg. Take at random a passage from " Barnaby Rudge"; the evening at the Maypole when Solomon Daisy fled from the church where he had met Rudge. " A more complete picture of terror than the little man presented, it would be difficult to imagine. The perspiration stood in beads upon his face, his knees knocked together, his every limb trembled, the power of articulation was quite gone; and there he stood, panting for breath, gazing on them with such livid ashy looks, that they...
