The Sun.
London, England, 1856-03-10 00:00:00

Bleeding Heart Yard and Plornish the Plasterer,
both of thew, go even far beyond our expectations.
Bleeding Heart Yard—over whose gateway Daniel
Doyce's factory was " often heavily beating like a
bleeding heart of iron, with the clink of metal upon
metal !"—with its " one little golden grain of
poet ry"sparkling in the earthiest and coarsest sand
that filled the hour-glass of its ill-to-do and toiline.
population : to wit, its cherished legend of the
love-lorn song with the woful burden—" Bleeding
Heart, Bleeding Heart, bleeding away !"—itself
(that is the Yard), " all abundantly garnished with
light children nursing heavy ones !"—and so on,
through its many most striking and wonderfully
truthful characteristics. Plornish, also, living in
it, hard by "a limo-splashed gateway, in a
corner" where be kept " a ladder and a
barrel or two"—Plornish, " smooth-checked,
fresh-coloured, sandy-whiskered," about thirty,
"long in the legs, yielding at thi3 knees, foolish
in the face, flannel-jacketted, lime-whitened !"
As his Missus saith 7-." This is Plornish, sir.'
Plornish;-who lifts his eldest child (aged four) upon
his knee, that he may have " the moral support of
talking to a stranger over his head !"—who picks
a bit of lime out of his whisker, " and, putting it
between his lips, turns it with his tongue like a
sugarplum"—talkingl tautologically throughout,
and vowing " it 'll be ekally .i pleasure and a
it 'll be ekally a pleasure and a —" until finding
himself unable to balance his sentence after two
efforts, be wisely drops it And Mrs. Plornish,
'too—what a portrait hers is! Opening the door,
with a child in her arms, and with her unoccupied
hand hastily arranging the upper part of her dress
—of whom and of whose casual doings in this par-
ticular, writes the nature-observing historian of
Little Dorcit, " this was Mrs. Plornish, and this
natural action was the action of Mrs. Plornish
during a large part of her waking existence !" How
exquisite are the slight but all-suflicient profile-
touches, " bringing out" to the very life the like-
ness of the homely matron—wife of the humble
plasterer—" hushing the baby from side to side "
as she talks to Arthur Clennam—" laying her chin
upon the little hand as it tried to disarrange the
gown again"—" feigning to bite the fingers of the
little hand as she kissed it !" A sweet and charm-
ing picture—that—of a mother in the humbler
classes ! Then, there are the other characters in-
troduced—all of them wondrously now, but each
of them (already) wondrously familiar.
Old Christopher Casby, owner of that load !
"looking so very large because it shone so much"
—" so very bumpy in the head [that head !], so
grey, so slow, so quiet, so impassionate," that—
" Patriarch was the word for him !" Viewed in his
juvenile portrait as Master Christopher Casby, aged
ten—sitting in it ("on one of his own legs) upon a
bank of violets "—or viewed in his ancient reality
as old Christopher Casby—seated in his arm-chair
with his feet in list shoes, and his list shoes on the
rug, and his thumbs slowly revolving over one an-
other—what a broadly-handled, minutely-finished,
richly-coloured, marvellously-actual life-portrait
that is ! Himself, with his smooth face, having "a
bloom upon it like ripe wall fruit," with his long
grey hair at the sides and back of—that head !
shining " like floss silk or spun glass," and " look-
ing so benevolent because it was never cut with
his elephantine form habited in a long wide-
skirted bottle-green coat and a bottle-green pair of
trowsers and a bottle-green waistcoat—in regard to
all which, saith Boa, drily—" the Patriarchs were
not dressed in bottle-green broad cloth and yet his
clothes looked patriarchal 1" Christopher Casby's
conversation, too—reminding one somehow of what
Sam Weller once upon a time said to the gorgeous
flunky in sky blue, "Sir, I likes your conwersa-
tion—it's werry pretty." Christopher talking at
these moments in little vapid repetitions, with his
hands crossed before him, speaking softly the while,
"with his head on one sitie and a gentle smile, as
if he had something in his thoughts, too sweetly
profound to be put into words." Nay, more, "as
if he denied himself the pleasure of uttering it, lest
he should soar too high; and his meekness there-
fore preferred to be unmeaning." And' Flora
Casby also, his daughter, daughter of Christopher,
offspring of " that head"—a surprising Minerva,
`Joni of an unwieldy Jove in bottle-green broad-

cloth ! Flora—Arthur Clennam's old flame—
whom lie had left a Id), and found a peony—who,

" always tall, had grown to be very broadtoo, and

short of breath"—who had once seemed so enchant-
ing, but now proved so diffuse and silly—chattering
without any regard to punctuation, indulging in

no longer stops thati commas, and even in those
very sparingly—Flora, stout, rod, simpering, short-
winded, "as to me you know"—(she confesses as
much herself with a little scream)—" oh ! I am
dreadful !" And so she is, iu sooth—yet with a
kindly touch of human tenderness through all,
through her giggles,
.and her breadth, and her
short wind, and her general " red-facedness." But
—Pancks ! The little black energetic Tug, that

takes that lumbering, selfish, drifting old Booby of
a Christopher Casby, in tow—Pancks, the quick,
eager, short, dark man who comes into
the room with so • much " way" upon him
and greets Arthur ClennauL with a " lialloa !"
Who while Cleunam explains his being there—
" holds his breath and looks at him." Here he is.
L•Jok at him!