The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1870-12-24
DAILY PRESS
PORTE ND.
SATURDAY. Morning December "a. 1870
PORTEIANl
A Christmas without Dickens.

A Christmas Without Dickens.
Apart from the sacred associations Of the
Christmas festival no others will this wear
have anything like the prevalence and the
power of those come cted withK great au-
thor, whose sudden death OF the 9th of June
plunged the world in sorrow. 1t is not mere
ly because his rank as writer of fiction will
cseF eesfit 80. 20 of Shakespeare as dra-
M use the world has lost one
of the grea .esr ana best men that was ever
sent to cheer and bless it, that the thought of
Dickens will check the merrymaking at many
festal board. 1t is because the genial story
teller's words were more in harmony with
the spirit of the festival, and more efficient in
awakening emotions and inspiring actions
consonant with lis profound humanity and
benefcence than those of any other OF the
sons of men, be they laymen or priests, that
have lived for these many hundred years. If
any man may claim the homage of thought
on day sacred to Him who laid the deep
foundations of all our brothery kindness and
human sympathy, it is he who has done SO
much to enforce and render beautiful and at
tractive the precepts of the great Teacher.
1t is no wonder that to-day the chief regret
in many hearts is that "this year we can have
no Christmas story from Dickens" For so
far as man may be said, without impety,
to write supplement on the New Tesla
ment Charles Dickens did SO. The burden
ofthe New Testament exhortations to virtue
the characteristic feature of the New Tes-
lament teaching-the only dogma that all
sects find among the Saviours words-the
essential thing IN the Christian theology, in
deed, if we may estimate its Importance by
its constant reiteration and the emphasis with
which it is promulgated, is this simple rule Of
morals-"Gve to the poor-help the suffer
ing" In variously modified phraseology and
in situations thousand times changed, this
specific direction into which the generality of
the golden rule is translated always reappears.
1t is the constant element. The poor! the
poor! the poor!-the Gospel will let no one
forget them, for it speaks of them and for
them always. And our dead novelist, on
whom all bigots, Pharisees and idiots frown,
echoes the sacred refrain, and with him, too
it is always the poor the poor! the poor!
The workhouse, the debtors prison and the
jal-these are the dark places that his gen.
Jus has illuminated. A hundred times has
he caused all men to sympathize with power
ty and woe by compelling them to feel an TO-
terest in the victims of such variety of mis-
fortunes and sufferings as Betty Higien,
Oliver Twist, Sloppy, Lizzie Hexen and poor
10, all in abject poverty: Smike, the Mar
chioness, and Tom Pinch, all of whom suf-
fered from the tyranny which their helpless
ness invited; Toots, Mr.. Dick, Mrs. Gum
nudge, Miss Elite and Barnaby Rudge, all in
one way or another suffering from impaired
mental vigor; Little Emily, Martha, Lady
Dedlock and Nancy, all guilty of woman's
greatest crime, and suffering woman's great
es. sorrow; Magwitch and Jingle, criminals;
Miss Mowcher and Jenny Wren, cripples;
Little Nell, Tiny Tim and Little Dombey,
children whose exquisite senstiveness, moral
as well as physical, untitled them for the I'M
plying world; Joe Gargery, Captain Cutie,
1.-The Cherub" and twenty more honest, poor
and simple men and women with kind and
generous hearts; Wemmicks, "Aged p" and
old Mr. Dorritt, men in the impotence of Sec
ond childhood. Here is wonderful range
OF sympathy, wide enough for an archangel
The greatness of Dickens philanthropy is
all the more conspicuous from the sharp con-
trast afforded by that other popular English
novelist, through whose dainty volumes none
humber than baronet may walk; whose
duchess must be presented in his first two
lines; whose dreary pages are laden with the
sleepy platitudes aud labored compliments of
polite society"-that vulgar dime novelist
whose crafty genius once made him the FORE
most man of great empire-that heartless
novelist who wearies you with his insipid
moon-calf dukes, his dssipated viscounts, his
foppish barons, his castles, his diamonds and
his pearls. His father should have outlived
him in order that it mig ht be set down in his
"Curiosities of Literature" that there lived in
the last half of the nineteenth century Jew
so bleodless as to be capable of writing such
cruel, barbarous, satanic-commonplace.
SCHENcK's TERM IN CoNaREss.-A WASH
ington correspondent of the Tribune makes
the following interesting statement in regard
to the term of service in Congress of our new
minister to England:
Gen. Schenck has had longer service in
Congress thau any member OF the House, hav-
ing been member OF eight different Con-
crosses, from the XXVIIith to the XXXIst,
and from the XXXVIIIth to the XLIst,
making 16 years OF Congressional experience.
There is not single member now serving in
the House who was a member when General
Schenck took his seat in 1S43. Fernando
Wood, however. had been a member of the