attention is constantly directed. It is touching to read that final chapter, which must have brought back to the writer's mind the days long past, when, a little boy, he read and dreamt amid the scenes he was now describing. There is no gloom; he shows us such a brilliant morning as, after a lifetime, will yet linger in the memory from days of earliest childhood. He was tired, but not despondent; true to himself, he saw the sunshine above the world's dark places, nourished the hope of something beyond this present. "Changes of glorious light from moving boughs, songs of birds, scents from gardens, woods, and fields . . . penetrate into the cathedral, subdue its earthy odour, and preach the Resurrection and the Life." It was no form of words; what he wrote in that solemn mood assuredly he believed. Whatever his mistakes and his defects, insincerity had no place among them.
For him, there could be no truer epitaph than the words written by Carlyle on hearing he was dead:
"The good, the gentle, high-gifted, ever-friendly, noble Dickens—every inch of him an honest man."
