The Sun.
London, England, 1856-07-10 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

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Little Dorrit. No. VIII. By Charles Dickens.
Tattycoram runs away from the House of Mr.
Meagles, at Twickenham—taking refuge (!) with
Miss Wade in a dilapidated mansion in Mayfair
whence those two amiable females subsequently
take their departure together mysteriously. Would
that neither of the young hags could ever trouble •
the readers of " Little Dorrit" by any subsequent
reapparition ! Such, however, of course, is inevit-
able : at any rate when they do ultimately appear
again we may hope at least that it may then at
length be revealed, why on earth they were either
of them introduced, at all into the narrative !
Meanwhile, turning from the contemplation of
that abominable Miss Wade, and her perfectly
congenial handmaiden Tattycoram—we may now
briefly enumerate some other of the striking
incidents narrated iu the present instalment.
Foremost among these, Harry Gowan is the
accepted suitor for the hand of Pet, other-
wise Minnie; more than this they are formally
bethrothed ; more even than this they are actually
on the eve of being married. As the natural
consequence of all which, we learn in due
course all about " Nobody's Disappearance."
It is the title of the twenty-eighth chapter
of Part I. of " Little Dorrit "—one of the love-
liest and most loveable- love-passages ever
penned by novelist ! A chapter so sweet, so fresh,
so tender, so graceful, that as we read it the tears
brim up into our eyes spontaneously. Charles
Dickens, even glorious Charles Dickens, has but
very seldom written anything more beautiful.
It is a love scene full of nature, full of poetry, full
of pathetic truthfulness. There is not a syllable in
it either hackneyed or conventional. It has no-
where about it the faintest vestige of mere senti-
mentalism—a thing unendurable alike to gods and
men—and by this time happily restricted to the
Rosa-Matildas of literature. Hero is the scene of
Arthur Clennam's interview with Minnie :
"A tranquil summer sunset shone upon him as he ap-
proached the end of his walk, and passed through the mea-
dows by the riverside. He had that sense of peace, and of
being lightened of a weight of care, which country quiet
awakens in the breasts of dwellers in towns. Every-
thing within his view was lovely and placid. The rich
foliage of the trees, the luxuriant grass diversified with
wild flowers, the little green islands in the river, the beds of
rushes, the water-lilies floating ou the surface of the stream,
the distant voices in the boats borne musically towards him
on the ripple of the water and the evening air, were all ex-
pressive of rest. In the occasional leap of a fish, or dip of an
oar, or twittering of a bird not yet at roost, or distant bark-
ing of a dog, or lowing of a cow—in all such sounds there
was the prevailing breath of rest, which seemed to encompass
him in every scent that sweetened the fragrant air. The long
lines of red and gold in the sky, and the glorious track of
the descending sun, were all divinely calm. Upon
the purple tree-tops far away, and on the green height near
at hand up which the shades were slowly creeping, there was
au equal hush. Between the real landscape and its shadow
in the water, there was no division ; both were so untroubled
and clear, and, while so fraught with solemn mystery of life
and death, so hopefully reassuring to the gazer's soothed
heart, because so tenderly and mercifully beautiful."
In the subsequent chapter in which " Mrs. Flint-
winch goes on Dreaming," there is a brief but won-
derful description of a wild stormy twilight in the
City, forming a marvellous contrast in every way
to this exquisite sketch of the summer's evening at
Twickenham. It is immediately anterior to the
abrupt reappearance of the assassin Rigaud, with
his moustache going up and his nose coming down
as he grins upon poor dazed Affery shut acciden-
tally out of the house-upon-crutches by the bang-
ing-to of the street door by an unexpected gust of
wind. Hero is the description alluded to, imme-
diately before Affery is swung out into the paved
forecourt by the wind aforesaid—
" She stood at the open door, staggering herself with this
enigma, oa a rainy, thundery evening. The clouds were
flying fast, the wind was coming up in gusts, banging
some neighbouring shutters that had broken loose, twirling
the rusty chimney-cowls and weathercocks, and rushing round
and round a confined adjacent churchyard as if it had a
mind to blow the dead citizens out of their graves. The low
thunder, muttering in all quarters of the sky at once, seemed
to threaten vengeance for this attempted desecration, ard to
mutter, Let them rest ! Let them rest !' "
The number altogether ends this month in a sort
of wild, wierd, grimly, ghostly disorder. Affery
having just fetched old Flintwinch of the cut-down
aspect from a neighbouring public-house, where he
has been carousing 1 Rigaud the murderer, muf-
fled in a large cloak, and looking eagerly for them
over his hooked nose and ragged moustache, as he
awaits their cowing in the dark gusty doorway of
the house upon crutches ! Mrs. Clennam calling
from her room up stairs in the darkness—bewil-
dered by so many strange sounds and footsteps—
" Who is it ? What is it ? Why does no one an-
swer Who is that, down there ?" And so the
number terminates ? What is it all coming to
What is going to happen ? Tile reader is left
breathlessly expectant, but at the same titnn ut-
terly bewildered.
It should be observed, before putting the present
number aside that there are introduced here and
there in the course of it, quite incidentally, some
little sketches of street sceneryand street character
that Boz alone, we do believe, could ever have
thought of, or, having thought, could possibly have
described. Here, for example, is Boz's description
of—