Cleveland daily leader. [volume] ([Cleveland, Ohio]) 1865-1873, 1865-11-30
View Novel.

The London Atheneun9 says OF some OF
the characters of Dickens new novel:
Bradley Headstone, the schoOlmaster,
doeeed. sensual, unready-his tremen-
do6s passions compressed by the response
biiities and responsibilities Of his position
takes the foremost plaes among them as
an original conception. Frightfully
though he suffers, even though when he
confronts W~rayburn, his D~oepearante RI
val, there is q show of reason and CHAM
pionship on His side, there is no possibility
of any ones feeling q moments pity on
his behalf, so utterly is the master-desire
of his life rendered un~loveable by the
forms in which it is clad. There have
been many murders and many pictures of
remorse in novels-and mono more power
full than the pages in which we were
shown the wanderings Of "BiIl Sykes"
and the sinking home of "Jonas Chuzzle-
wit after his bloody deed in the wood ;
but Mr.. Dickins has exceeded even those
in the scene where the wretched criminal,
tortured by the rebuking consciousness of
his having failed in his diabolical design,
is logged and dragged back to the fatal
SPOT BY his hideOus confdant- Nothing
can be more mastery as a display OF
blank, inevitable tetfibution and wretched-
ness. Reckoning touCh there is none
about Brady Headstone, even the con-
cealed love for him of the soft-heartsd
prim little schoolmistress, delicately ndl-
Gated as it is fails to furnish it.
To change the fancy-the author OF
aPickwickH never revealed among Iicher
WITNESSES than are to be found in the comic
parts of this tale i'm the Veneerlng
household, and the guests assembled near
it. The mistress of the mansion and OF
the camels on the dinner-table, with her
readiness to weep, her stupid sentiment
talities about 'Baby," her mate admira-
ton of the prancing gossip Of that old
mechanical harridan, Lady Tippins, be-
cause the same passes with her rs a fash
ionable pearl Of great price-the porten-
tious Podsnap, who knocks down argu-
mont by British sentiments and laeonic
i~nsolent dogmatism-the civil, misty, no
bly-connected old Twemlow (who would
be a true gentleman, every inch of him,
were he not a little too promiscuously
willing to sit at anybody's feast)-the
pair Of lawyers, Mortimer and Eugene
whose sincerity of attachment one for the
other is not the worst point in the book
the supers las they say on the stage)
Boots Snd Brewer-are all new people in
print, wEom every diner-Out has met every
week of ais life in private. The vivacity
and variety of this division of the novel
are admirable. But when talking Of din
ners in Our Mutual Friend, we must not
forget the most incompatible dinner of
all, that of the newly-married Bella and
John. at Greenwich, for the sake Of the
sentimental waiter, Hthe young man on
liking" so ANONYMOUSLY thrust aside by
the arch-potentate in waiting, who con-
ceived that he had s.alone q right to the
solemn monopoly of the secret of the
day. T.,
We must stop-though touches and
| traits rise on us by the hundred justify
ing what has been said, that "Our Mutual
Friend" is one of Mr.. Dickens richest
and most carefully-wrought books. If
we demur to Wegg and to Miss Jenny
Wren as to a pair of eccentrics approach
ing that boundary line of caricature
toward which their creator is, by fits,
| tempted, we cannot recall any thing more
real, more cheering than the sketch of the
Acknowledgements and clergyman's
wife, both so unconscious of their s~elf-sac-
rifcing virtue and goodness, yet the two
SO eapitally Disseminated by the extra
touch of zeal and briskness land suspicion
of the Jews) on the woman's part.