The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-12-26 00:00:00

(From the Guardian.)

Again has Dickens taken up his pen to give us a Christ-
mas present, this time with more than average success. If
not equal to his Christmas Carol, this new tale is very
superior to The Battle of Life. As a whole it does not
rise above the level of his previous works; there is the
same deficiency of plot; the same clever but over-drawn
sketChes; the same thin dialogue, and the same abrupt
bursts of sentiment, which his readers value as much or
as little as they please: .

The haunted man is a chemical lecturer at an old col-
lege, who, on a Christmas Eve, brooding over the memo-
ries of the past, and his fire at the same time, in a nonde-
script sort of apartment, is interrupted by the porter
bringing his dinner, and his wife and father bearing holly
and evergreens for the decoration of his chamber. The
old man wishes " a merry Christmas and a happy new
year, and many of them," to the anything but merry pro-
fessor, who avows his disbelief that the old man can have
merry and happy recollec:ions of the eighty-seven anni-
versaries of the season he has passed ; though he delights
in referring to an old portrait of the founder of the college,
with the motto, " Lord, keep my memory green." On
the departure of these domestic visitors we have the
ghost ;—but let Mr. Dickens describe the appearance
of the apparition :
" As they passed out and shut the heavy door, which,
however carefully withheld, fired along train of reverbera-
tions when it shut at last, the room turned darker.
" As he fell a-musing in his chair alone, the healthy
holly withered on the wall, and dropped—dead branches.
" As the gloom and shadow thickened behind him, in
that place where it had been gathering so darkly, it took:
by slow degrees,—or out of it there came, by some unreal,
unsubstantial process, not to be traced by any human
sense,—an awful likeness of himself !

" Ghastly and cold, colourless in its leaden face and
hands, but with his features, and his bright eyes, and his
grizzled hair, and dressed in the gloomy shadow of his
dress, it came into its terrible appearance of existence,
motionless, without a sound. As he leaned his arm upon
the elbow of his chair, ruminating before the fire, it leaned
upon the chair-back, close above him, with its appalling
copy of his face looking where his face looked, and bear-
ing the expression his face bore.
" This, then, was the Something that had passed and
gone already This was the dread companion of the
haunted man
The haunted man bargains with the ghost to lose his
memory of the past, " to forget the sorrow, wrong, and
trouble he has known," the condition being that he shall
" destroy its like in all whom it approaches." Then fol-
low scenes of happy families made miserable, and the
most wretched creatures still more wretched, through
coming in contact with the being who looks on happiness
as consisting in oblivion of past trouble; till the latter is
taught to hate himself, from the selfishness that takes pos-
session of each individual, as soon as his memory is ren-
dered by the haunted man, in the hope of conveying hap-
piness, a dreary blank. The sickly student rising from his
couch sees hut selfish officiusness in the tender solici-
tude of her he has hitherto deemed the kindest of nurses ;
the children, instead of sharing lovingly as before, their
short commons, fight for the breakfast yet in perspective;
the husband and wife revile each other for present misery,
forgetful of the sorrow they had shared together • the dy-
ing penitent returns to blasphemy on his death bed, when
the memory of his earlier days are blotted out; the son
thinks his old father has lived too long, and the parent,
in his turn, becomes a drivelling discontented imbecile;
all alike suffer from the intended boon, except an idiot
boy, or rather a wholly untaught chili, who defies the
haunted man, and is impervious to all attempts to destroy
the memory he never had. The counteracting Spirit of
Good interferes at last ; herself (she is a woman, of course)
unconscious of, her powers ; but the manner of their in-
terference we must leave our readers to find in the tale it-
self. We have said enough to give our readers a notion
of the moral of the story, and, making full allowance for
some inconsistencies in the working out of the plot, it will
be found amusing. We shall conclude our notice with a
couple of extracts. Here is a sketch of a shop in a coun-
try town, or out of the way suburbs of a city :
Tetterby's was the corner shop in Jerusalem Build-
ings. There was a good show of literature in the window,
chiefly consisting of picture newspapers out of date, and
serial pirates, and footpads. Walking-sticks, likewise,
and marbles, were included in the stock in trade. It had
once extended into the light confectionery line; but it
would seem that those elegancies of life were not in de-
mand about Jerusalem Buildings, for nothing connected
with that branch of commerce remained at the window,
except a sort of small glass lantern containing a languish-
ing mass of bull's-eyes, which had melted in the summer
and congealed in the winter until all hope of getting them
out, or of eating them without eating the lantern too,was
gone for ever. Tetterbv's had tried its hand at several
things. It had once made a feeble little dart at the toy
business ; for, in another lantern, there was a heap of mi-
nute wax dolls, all sticking together upside down. in the
direst confusion, with their feet on one another's heads,
and a precipitate of broken arms and legs at the bottom.
It had made a move in the millinery direction, which a few
dry, wiry bonnet shapes remained in a corner of the win-
dow to attest. It had fancied that a living might lie hid-
den in the tobacco trade, and had stuck up a representa-
tion of a native of each of the three integral portions of
the British empire, in the act of consuming that fragrant
weed ; with a poetic legend attached, importing that,
united in one cause, they sat and joked, one chewed to-
bacco, one took snuff, one smoked: but nothing seemed
to have come of it—except flies. Time bad been when it
had put a forlorn trust in imitative jewellery, for in one
pane of glass there was a card of cheap seals, and another
of pencil-cases, and a mysterious black amulet of inscru-
table intention, labelled ninepence. But, to that hour,
Jerusalem Buildings had bought none of them. In short,
Tetterby's had tried so hard to get a livelihood-out of Je-
rusalem Buildings in one way or other, and appeared to
have done so indifferently in all, that the best position in
the firm was too evidently Co.'s ; Co., as a bodiless crea-
tion, being untroubled with the vulgar inconveniences of
hunger and thirst, being chargeable neither to the poor's-
rates nor the assessed taxes, and having no young family
to provide for."

By way of contrast, we will give the scene where the
benign influence of Memory first shadows forth a return
of peace to the haunted man :
"At such a time, the Christmas .music he had heard
before, began to play. He listened to it at first, as he had
listened in the churchyard ; but presently—it playing
still, and being borne towards him on the night air, in a
low, sweet, melancholy strain—he rose, and stood stretch-
ing his hands about him, as if there were some friend
approaching within his reach, on whom his desolate
touch might rest, yet do no harm. As he did this, his
face became less fixed and wondering ; a gentle trembling
came upon him ; and at last his eyes filled with tears, and
he put his eyes before them, and bowed down his head.
" His memory of sorrow, wrong, and trouble, had not
come back to him ; he knew that it was not restored ; he
had no passing belief or hope that it was. But some
dumb stir within him made him capable, again, of being
moved by what was hidden, afar off, in the music. If it
were only that it told him sorrowfully the value of what
he had lost, he thanked Heaven for it with a fervent
gratitude. _ _

"As the last chord died upon his ear, he raised his
head to listen to its lingering vibration. Beyond the boy,
so that his sleeping figure lay at its feet, the Phantom
stood, immovable and silent, with its eyes upon him.
" Ghastly it was, as it had ever been, but not so
cruel and relentless in its aspect—or he thought or hoped
so, as he looked upon it, trembling. It was not alone,
but in its shadowy hand it held another hand.
"And whose was that? Was the form that stood
beside it indeed Milly's, or but her shade and picture ?
The quiet head was bent a little, as her manner was, and
her eyes were looking down, as if in pity, on the sleeping
child. A radiant light fell on her face, but did not touch
the Phantom ; for, though close beside her, it was dark
and colourless as ever.

" Spectre !' said the Chemist, newly troubled as he
looked, ' I have not been stubborn or presumptuous in
respect of her. Oh, do not bring her near. Spare me
that 1'

" This is but a shadow,' said the Phantom ; when
the morning shines, seek out the reality whose image I
present before you.'
" ' Is it my inexorable doom to do so ?' cried the
Chemist.

" It is,' replied the Phantom.
" To destroy her peace, her goodness ; to make her
what I am myself, and what I have made of others !'

" I have said " seek her out," ' returned the Phan-
tom. have said no more.'

Oh, tell me,' exclaimed Redlaw, catching at the
hope which he fancied might lie hidden in the words,
` Can I undo what I have done ?'
" ` No,' returned the Phantom.

" Ido not ask for restoration to myself,' said Redlaw,
What I abandoned, I abandoned of my own will, and
have justly lost. But for those to whom I have transfer-
red the fatal gift; who never sought it: who unknowingly
received a curse of which they had no warning, and which
they had no power to shun • can I do nothing ?'
" Nothing,' said the Phantom.
" ' If I cannot, can any one ?'

" The Phantom, standing like a statue, kept its gaze
upon him for a while; then turned its head suddenly,
and looked upon the shadow at its side.

" Ah ! Can bile ?' cried Redlaw, still looking upon
the shade.
" The Phantom released the hand it had retained till
now, and softly raised its own with a gesture of dismissal.
Upon that, her shadow, still preserving the same attitude,
began to move or melt away.
Stay,' cried Redlaw, with an earnestness to which
he could not give enough expression. For a moment !
As an act of mercy ! I know that some change fell upon
me, when those sounds were in the air just now. Tell
me, have I lost the power of harming her ? May Igo
near her without dread ? Oh, let her give me any sign of
hope !'
" The Phantom looked upon the shade as he did—not
at him—and gave no answer.

" At leasl, say this—has she, henceforth, the con-
sciousness, of any power to set right what I have done.'
" ' She has not,' the Phantom answered.
" ' Has she the power bestowed on her without the
consciousness
" The Phantom answered : Seek her out.' And her
shadow slowly vanished.
" They were face to face again, and looking on each
other, as intently and awfully as at the time of the be-
stowal of the gift, across the boy who still lay on the ground
between them, at the Phantom's feet. •
" ' Terrible instructor,' said the Chemist, sinking on
his knee before it, in an attitude of supplication, by
whom I was renounced, but by whom I am revisited, (in
which, and in whose milder aspect, I would fain believe
have a gleam of hope,) I will obey without inquiry, pray.
ing that the cry I have sent up in the anguish of my soul
has been, or will be, heard, in behalf of those whom I