thing to stem the current of a popular opinion.  But one can only go with the stream when one thinks the stream is flowing in a right channel.  And here I think the stream is meandering out of its course.  For me, Little Nell is scarcely more than a figure in cloudland.  Possibly part of the reason why I do not feel as much sympathy with her as I ought, is because I do not seem to know her very well.  With Paul Dombey I am intimately acquainted.  I should recognize the child anywhere, should be on the best of terms with him in five minutes.  Few things would give me greater pleasure than an hour’s saunter by the side of his little invalid’s carriage along the Parade at Brighton.  How we should laugh, to be sure, if we happened to come across Mr. Toots, and smile, too, if we met Feeder, B.A., and give a furtive glance of recognition at Glubb, the discarded charioteer.  Then the classic Cornelia Blimber would pass, on her constitutional, and we should quail a little—­at least I am certain I should—­as she bent upon us her scholastic spectacles; and a glimpse of Dr. Blimber would chill us even more; till—­ah! what’s this?  Why does a flush of happiness mantle over my little friend’s pale face?  Why does he utter a faint cry of pleasure?  Yes, there she is—­he has caught sight of Floy running forward to meet him.—­So am I led, almost instinctively, whenever the figure of Paul flashes into my mind, to think of him as a child I have actually known.  But Nell—­she has no such reality of existence.  She has been etherealized, vapourized, rhapsodized about, till the flesh and blood have gone out of her.  I recognize her attributes, unselfishness, sweetness of disposition, gentleness.  But these don’t constitute a human being.  They don’t make up a recognizable individuality.  If I met her in the street, I am afraid I should not know her; and if I did, I am sure we should both find it difficult to keep up a conversation.

Do the passages describing her death and burial really possess the rhythm of poetry?  That would seem to me, I confess, to be as ill a compliment as to say of a piece of poetry that it was really prose.  The music of prose and of poetry are essentially different.  They do not affect the ear in the same way.  The one is akin to song, the other to speech.  Give to prose the recurring cadences, the measure, and the rhythmic march of verse, and it becomes bad prose without becoming good poetry.[15] So, in fairness to Dickens, one is bound, as far as one can, to forget Horne’s misapplied praise.  But even thus, and looking upon it as prose alone, can we say that the account of Nell’s funeral is, in the high artistic sense, a piece of good work.  Here is an extract:  “And now the bell—­the bell she had so often heard, by night and day, and listened to with solemn pleasure almost as a living voice—­rang its remorseless toll, for her, so young, so beautiful, so good.  Decrepit age, and vigorous life, and blooming youth, and helpless infancy, poured forth—­on