The Sun.
London, England, 1857-02-02 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Little Dorrit. No. XV. By Charles Dicicens.
A capital number—one of the very best instal.
meats of " Little Dorrit" yet published. What
possibly, by the way, can be more deliciously lu-
dicrous than the comparison of Mr. Dorlit's
" flourishes" about the subjectof Fanny's Mar-
riage the comparison of . those very Aha-
racteriatic flourishes with which writing inas-
tars are in the habit of embellishing copybooks
and ciphering-books : " whore the titles," writes
B. ex, " of the elementary rules of arithmetic diverge
into swans, eagles, griffins and othercaligraphic de-
corations, and where the capital letters go outoftheir
minds and bodies into ecstasies of pen and ink"—
what possibly, we. ask, than this in its way can be
more deliciously ludicrous ? Throughout alinost
the whole of this fifteenth Nuinber, Mr. Dickens is
" himself "—thoroughly. And ho could'nt by amy
chance when ho is in this mood be any one-snore
entirely, delightful. What a picture that is for
example of Mrs. General at bedtime ! " Her re-
tirement for the night
itwas always her froitiest
ceremony ;as if she felt necessary that the human
imagination should be chilled to prevent its following
her ;" to which is added—" When she had gone
through her rigid preliminaries, amounting to a
,
sort of genteel platoon exercise, she withdrew..
What again can be more comic 41 than the disparage-
meat pronounced upon Mrs. Merdle's false hair, as
viewed by her affectionate daughter-in-law that-is-
to-be—" for I am confident," says Fanny
Dorrit
to her sister, " it's not all real, ugly as it is, and
unlikely as it is that any ono in their senses would
go to the expense of buying it !" And that notion
about the " Roman Caesars," as revealed to
us through antique sculpture how horribly
true it is ! Where Mr. Dickens alludes to "The
murderous•headed statues of the wicked Emperors ,
of the Soldiery, whom sculptors had not been
to flatter out of their villanous hideousness." An
that final glimpse we have in the present number of
Mrs. General, assheappears when wanderingamong
the ruins of old Rome, ever accompanied by Prunes
and Prism, Mr.• Eustace, Papa, and Potatoes—
" scratching up the dryest little bones of antiquity,
and bolting them whole without any human visitings
—like a Ghoule in gloves !" Then Mr. Merdle,
in the midst of a conversation, suddenly getting
up "as if he had been waiting for his legs and
they had just come !" Or, better still, that great
Dyspeptic Capitalist, when—advancing to greet his
son-in-law, Sparkler's bride, newly arrived in Lon-
don from the continent—" His hand seemed to
retreat up his sleeve as he advanced to do so, and
he gave her such, a superfluity of coat cuff that it
was like being received by, the popular conception
of Guy Fawkes." Appended to which memo-
randum of Mr. Merdle's doings, we find it written
—" When he put his lips to hers, besides,
he took himself into custody by the wrists, and
backed himself among the ottomans, and chairs,
and tables, as if he. were his own police-officer,
saying to himself, Now, none of that! Come !
I've got you, you know, and you go quietly along
with me I' " Occasionally there is a little cynical
sparkle in Mr. Dickens' glance at the great world,
not at all of the old genial kind—as where he
describes, with a comical sneer, "the brilliant com-
pany of such as are not made of the dust of the
earth, but of some superior article for the present
unknown, shedding their lustrous benediction
upon Mr. Dorrit's daughter's marriage." For
Fanny Dorrit is married, after all, to Edmund
Sparkler ; and Mr. Dorrit accompanies the wedding
pair home from Florence to England, little Amy
Dorrit remaining, during the interval of his ab-
sence, under the custody of Mrs. General, in
Rome ! Returned 'for a while to London, Mr.
Dorrit makes rapturous (but the reader is also led
to conjecture, perilous) a-qniintance with Mr.
Merdle, the millionnaire—has a strange, tear-
ful, wrathful, confused interview with young
John Chivery sends by him a testimonial
of 1001. to ne distributed among the poor
fellows lying in the old. Marshalsea—hears from
Flora's incoherent lips of the mysterious disap-
pearance of Rigaud, otherwise Blandois—and to
make good the story of this disappearance (s story,
however, which he does not make good after all)
pays an anonymous visit of inquiry to the three
grim old occupants of the House upon Crutches !
On his solitary way back to Rome Mr. Dorrit,
while at Paris, buys, we are told, a gift ofjewellery
for a lady : asking for the commodity he wants
from a pretty little Frenchwoman thus described
—one whom Laurence Sterne could not have more
daintily pencilled :

" It was a charming little woman to whom he said it
—a sprightly little woman, dressed in perfect taste, who
came out of a green velvet bower to attend upon him,
from posting up some dainty little books of aczount
which one could hardly suppose to be ruled for the
entry of any articles more commercial than kisses, at a
dainty little shining desk which looked in itself like a
s weatoneat."
The gift of jewellery, by the way, being evidently
for Mrs. General's own exclusive wearing—Mr.
Dorrit having an eye obviously to that same
wily General's promotion !

Where must we Zook for the Future Prevention, of
Grime ? By William Ellis. Smith, Elder, and
Co.

Taking, as his standing ground, the fact that the
number of criminals or disturbers of the peace and
comfort of society is greater than it need, and,
consequently, ought to be, Mr. Ellis passes in
review Governmental and Educational means " for .
Promoting Good Conduct or for Preventing Bad
Conduct." Governmental means or punitive mea-
sures, intended to operate as deterrents, he pro-
nounces susceptible of improvement, but, never-
theless, incapable of being made efficient. Turning
to educational means he finds much room for hope.
The education to which he would have us look is
one vastly superior to anything hitherto attempted
and made universal, specially aiming at teaching
what good conduct is, and how it is to be attained ;
and at training so as to inspire a desire and love
for good conduct—at teaching what bad conduct is
and how it is to be avoided—and at training so as
to induce a horror of bad conduct. Oa an educa-
tion of this sort he is of opinion all intelligent and
well-disposed men must fix their thoughts if they
would effect any further sensible diminution in the
number of criminals. Considerable time, how-
ever, must elapse before education can be ex-
pected to prevent moral malformations. Mean-
while he would have active energetic mea-
sures taken with existing criminals, so as
to relieVe society from their alarming and con-
taminating prowling abroad. " Criminals," we
are told, "must be hunted out, seized upon, tried,
convicted, and placed in confinement. Further
than this, all -the criminally disposed, who have
thwarted the efforts of education in their behalf,
are not to be abandoned in despair as utterly irre-
claimable. Some, perhaps most of them, ought to
be subjected to reformatory discipline." On this,
however, he does not appear to pin much faith, to
judge by what follows :—" The expectation of a
large measure of success in, this latter and more
difficult, department of effort is hardly warranted.
Where partial success has been attained, relapses
are to be found. To reform a character is surely a
more arduous task than to form one. How can
those
sleo osvkhfor a
re success n a difficult
inadequate tohas,
however, this consolation for mankind—"In
easierund er undertaking k i n ge fromha
it
pro-
portion as they approach excellence in the. perform-
ance of the easier duty, so will the strain upon
them for the performance of the more difficult be
lessened." Mr. Ellis has evidently given the sub-
ject considerable thought, and if his conclusions be
open to dispute his sincerity is net.