The Sun.
London, England, 1855-11-30 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

CHA :fLES DICKENsi. NEW
Little Dorrit. No. I. By Charles Dickens. Brad-
bury and Evans.
Gratefully, affectionately, earnestly we here re-
peat what we have already so frequently expressed
in these columns—we honour what Charles Dickens
has written, we love his very name, we glory in
his genius. But not for this. Not for the first
number of Little Dorrit. Compare it—this intro-
ductory instalment of the new serial story from his
master-hand, but just published within the last few
hours—compare the initial pages of Little Dorrit
with the memorable opening chapters of Pickwick,
of Oliver Twist, of Martin Chuzzlewit, of glorious
Nicholas Nickleby, of our great novelist's un-
doubted masterpiece, his exquisite and inimitable
history of David opperfield ! Compared with
these, and judging it (as we have a right to do,
so far) by its prefatory number, we conceive
" Little Dorrit" to be capable alone of being aptly
described as shall we say it I Bleak-House-
and-ditch-water I It is as though Charles
Dickens—to our thinking incomparably the most
delightful humorist in the whole range of English
Literature—sat clown to write his new serial story
with a painful and even overwhelming conscious-
ness of his immense powers, of all that is expected
from them, of the magnitude of the responsibilities
involved in his far-spread and unparalleled
popularity. The result being a constraint of the I
most distressing character—a constraint almost
amounting to intellectual paralysis. Insomuch that
the greatest living master of fiction, in his own
peculiar and unapproachable department, seems
scarcely to know exactly what to be at while pen-
ning these introductory pages of his new story,
entitled " Little Dorrit." Had he been as shrewd
in taste and as sagacious in judgment as he has
often and often shown himself, by our tears and
our laughter, to be matchless in humour and inimi-
table in pathos, he would never have written
any single one of the works ho has actually
produced since he penned those last thrilling
words of his exquisite story of "David Copper-
field." As Prospero broke his wand and buried
his book—so he, too, should have thrown his pen
aside for over, rather than use it as he has
since then used it, after completing, as we all of us
remember he did complete so wondrously well, that
noblest of his works as a whole, a masterpiece
marking the loftiest point in the progress of his
genius, a point which might be regarded not in-
correctly as that of its veritable culmination. In-
stead of which, however, in lieu of reposing thus
wisely upon his well-won laurels, Charles Dickens
has since then been more and more adventurous—
Writing almost always, as we have said, under the
constraining influence of his great powers, of his
vast popularity, and of the immense responsibilities
resulting from their combination. Rather than write
them thus, he should never, we repeat, have penned
another of his extended serial stories after bringing
to so fine a close the twentieth instalment of
"David Copperfield"—as he should never, for toe
same reason, have produced another Christmas
story after he had given to the world those five
staves of his immortal " Carol." We grieve to
remember that in neither instance has our glorious
Charles Dickens acted thus prudentially. Bine
illce lachrymcv. Hence, too, Bleak Bouse, and
-Hard Times, and now at last Little Dori•it.
" Bleak House" revealing to us his fine genius—as
when first tainted with the signs of its decay.
"Hard Times"—presenting to us barely anything
More of it than its dry bones. "Little Dorrit"—
bringing us, as by a lamentable climax, to the
contemplation of the cold dust or crumb-
ling loam into which even those have in
turn been resolved. And what is worst of all,
judging from these four first chapters of the new
serial, " even in his ashes" lives not, alas I one
spark of the "wonted fires" of our great novelist.
Chapter one describes Marseilles in the glare of a
summer's day at noon—describes it, too, without
one touch of Mr. Dickens's hitherto magical
Powers of description. Chapter two intro-
duces us to a group of travelling companions
just released from the " durance vile" of Quaran-
tine—men and women almost as vague as those
of Mr. Browning, personages sketched in without
a jot of Boz's heretofore marvellous skill in the de-
lineation of character. Chapter three brings us
under his wandering guidance to a corner of Lon-
(Ion as squalid as Tom-all-Alone's, but altogether
More dim and indistinguishable. Chapter four
Makes us acquainted with certain shadowy creatures
More mean, repulsive, and detestable than even the
repulsive,and detestable family of the Small-
Weeds. No—Charles Dickens will be remembered
(let him rely upon that) for the sake of such crea-
tions as Tom Pinch, and Sam Weller, and John
Isrowdie, and Betsey Trotwood : not for the sake of
Such beings as Edith Dombey, or Mademoiselle II or-
tense, or filmy Mrs. Gradgrind, much less for that
of spectral Miss Wade, of horrid old Jeremiah
Plintwinch, of his " ghostly, grim, and ancient
raven" of a wife, Mistress Affery, of serious Mr.
criennarn, and jolly Mr. Meagles, and detestable
John Baptist Rigaud, and unaccountable Signor
Cavalletto, and oddest of all, as regards both name
and nature, that preposterous wench Tattycoram !
}Jere is about the only passage in the whole of
these thirty-two pages making up the first number
°f " Little Dorrit," about the only passage and
one brief enough, alas ! in all conscience, which we
feel in any way tempted to give by way of illus-
trative quotation. It is where mention is made
of Monsieur Rigaud's ghastly aspect when he
emerged from the dark prison into daylight to
March away, and be judged on a charge of mur-
dering his wife, once the widow of Monsieur Bar-
ronneau ! Thus, iu the spirit of Henri de Balzac,
Writes Dickens

"There is no sort of whiteness in all the hues under
the sun, at all like the whiteness of Monsieur Rigaud's
ace as it was then. Neither is there any expression of
the human countenance at all like that expression, in
every little line of which the frightened heart is seen to
beat. Both are conventionally compared with death ;
but the difference is the whole deep gulf between the
struggle done, and the fight at its most desperate ex-
tremity.
4.11 d so, with this brief extract, close we this first
Lumber of " Little Dorrit"—(having obtained
through it merely a momentary glimpse of its girl-
heroine)—as we lay its green leaves aside, thinking
of both novel and novelist, with a sense of very
Poignant sorrow, and of a moot bitter and even
Painful disappointment.

The Duchess of Atholl has left the St. George's Hotel
fur Dunkeld Lions .
The Marquis of., Anglesey has left the St. George's
Rotel for Beaudes7trt.
The Msn. Mr. and Mrs. Vernon have arrived at the
St. George's Hotel.
The M.trquis of Lansdowne, Earl Granville, the Duke
of
Argyll, Sir George Grey, the Earl of Clarendon, Mr.
Sir
Labouchere, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
Earl
C. Wood, the Right Hon. R. Vernon Smith, the
of Harrowby, Lord Stanley of Alderley, and the
lion. M. T. Baines were present at the Cabinet
dinner given by Viscount Palmerston on Wednesday
evening.
Despatches from the Governor of New Zealand were
received yesterday at the Colonial Office.
A deputation from the committee of the Dissenting
deputies of the three denominations for the protection of
(..,°:r civil rights had an interview with Sir George
'rey yesterday, at the Home-office. The deputation
„U__insisted of Mr. Apsley Pellatt, M.P. (chairman), Mr.
illiam Gover, Mr. James Carter, Mr. Charles Reed,
and the scretary, attended by the Rev. Geo. Smith, th©
secretary of the Congregational Union, and the Rev. J.
11,.,Rinton, the secretary of the Baptist Union.
ATIONAL GALLERY. --A large picture by Paolo
veronese formerly in the church of St. Silvestro,f in
Venice has been purchased for the National Gallery.
The subject is "The Adoration of the Magi;" a reduced
copy of part of it, attributed to Carlo Cagliari, is at
liampton Court. The date on the St. Silvestro picture
is 1573, when the artist was about 45. The picture is
noticed by Sansovino in his Venetia Descritta, published
eight years later, and is described by subsequent writers,
such as Ridolfi, Boechini, and Zanetti, as well as by
more modern authors, in terms of the highest praise ; it
18 said to be in excellent preservation. Some alterations
in one of the walls of the principal room in the National
Gallery have been recently made under the direction of
the Office of Works. The masons' work being coin-
Pleted, some changes have taken place in the arrange-
inept of the pictures, and the large Sebastiano del
Piocabo has been transferred to the east side of the room.
The arrangement is, however, temporary, as a further
its will be required when the Paolo Veronese makes
ePeearance' probably early in the new year.
DEATH OF AIRS. WILLOUGHBY MOORS.—It is with
deep regret that we have to announce the loss of another
valuable life, sacrificed at the shrino of duty,—that of
'l.B. Willoughby Moore, lady superintendent of the
officers' hospital at Scutari. Mrs. Moore was the widow
Of that gailant soldier, Colonel Willoughby Moore, who
Perished in the Europa, rather than forsake the burning
ship so long as any of his men were in it. She went out
this last summer with a band of nurses to organise and
superintend an hospital at Scutari for sick and wounded
officers similar to those for the men under Miss Nightin-
gale ; and the unequivocal testimony of those who were
under her care proves the zeal, the diligence, and the
Judgment evinced by this devoted lady in her sacred,
Mission. A dysentery which lasted three weeks proved
fatal, and she died on Thursday last, to the deep regret
of all around her. The loss of such a woman is not
easily replaced. Not only from the high qualities and
devoted spirit which she brought to her work, but from
being the wife of ono so universally honoured among his
brother officers, her services were received with less jea-
lousy by those in command than otherwise, perhaps,
Would have been the case. Her memory will long be
cherished by those relatives and friends whose society
she resigned in order to devote herself to that sacred
Mission for which she felt herself called ; but she has
left an example to England's daughters, as her gallant
husband did to England's sons, how noble it is faithfully
to live and unflinchingly to die in the discharge of duty