too.  Such an opinion can only be based on a strange confusion between subject and treatment.  There is scarcely any subject not tainted by impurity, that cannot be treated with entire refinement.  Washington Irving wrote to Dickens, most justly, of “that exquisite tact that enabled him to carry his reader through the veriest dens of vice and villainy without a breath to shock the ear or a stain to sully the robe of the most shrinking delicacy;” and added:  “It is a rare gift to be able to paint low life without being low, and to be comic without the least taint of vulgarity.”  This is well said; and if we look for the main secret of the inherent refinement of Dickens’ books, we shall find it, I think, in this:  that he never intentionally paltered with right and wrong.  He would make allowance for evil, would take pleasure in showing that there were streaks of lingering good in its blackness, would treat it kindly, gently, humanly.  But it always stood for evil, and nothing else.  He made no attempt by cunning jugglery to change its seeming.  He had no sneaking affection for it.  And therefore, I say again, his attachment to Eugene Wrayburn has always struck me with surprise.  As regards Dickens’ own refinement, I cannot perhaps do better than quote the words of Sir Arthur Helps, an excellent judge.  “He was very refined in his conversation—­at least, what I call refined—­for he was one of those persons in whose society one is comfortable from the certainty that they will never say anything which can shock other people, or hurt their feelings, be they ever so fastidious or sensitive.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[26] His foolish quarrel with Bradbury and Evans had necessitated the abandonment of Household Words.

[27] See his pamphlet, “The Artist and the Author.”  The matter is fully discussed in his life by Mr. Blanchard Jerrold.

[28] Buss’s illustrations were executed under great disadvantages, and are bad.  Those of Seymour are excellent.

[29] I am always sorry, however, that Cruikshank did not illustrate the Christmas stories.

[30] See Cornhill Magazine for February, 1864.

CHAPTER XIII.

But we are now, alas, nearing the point where the “rapid” of Dickens’ life began to “shoot to its fall.”  The year 1865, during which he partly wrote “Our Mutual Friend,” was a fatal one in his career.  In the month of February he had been very ill, with an affection of the left foot, at first thought to be merely local, but which really pointed to serious mischief, and never afterwards wholly left him.  Then, on June 9th, when returning from France, where he had gone to recruit, he as nearly as possible lost his life in a railway accident at Staplehurst.  A bridge had broken in; some of the carriages fell through, and were smashed; that in which Dickens was, hung down the side of the chasm.  Of courage and presence