people called the Veneerings and their acquaintances, for they have no friends; and some fine sketches of the river-side population; striking and amusing characters too—­Silas Wegg, the scoundrelly vendor of songs, who ferrets among the dust for wills in order to confound the good dustman, his benefactor; and the little deformed dolls’ dressmaker, with her sot of a father; and Betty Higden, the sturdy old woman who has determined neither in life nor death to suffer the pollution of the workhouse; such, with more added, are the ingredients of the story.

One episode, however, deserves longer comment.  It is briefly this:  Eugene Wrayburn is a young barrister of good family and education, and of excellent abilities and address, all gifts that he has turned to no creditable purpose whatever.  He falls in with a girl, Lizzie Hexham, of more than humble rank, but of great beauty and good character.  She interests him, and in mere wanton carelessness, for he certainly has no idea of offering marriage, he gains her affection, neither meaning, in any definite way, to do anything good nor anything bad with it.  There is another man who loves Lizzie, a schoolmaster, who, in his dull, plodding way, has made the best of his intellect, and risen in life.  He naturally, and we may say properly, for no good can come of them, resents Wrayburn’s attentions, as does the girl’s brother.  Wrayburn uses the superior advantages of his position to insult them in the most offensive and brutal manner, and to torture the schoolmaster, just as he has used those advantages to win the girl’s heart.  Whereupon, after being goaded to heart’s desire for a considerable time, the schoolmaster as nearly as possible beats out Wrayburn’s life, and commits suicide.  Wrayburn is rescued by Lizzie as he lies by the river bank sweltering in blood, and tended by her, and they are married and live happy ever afterwards.

Now the amazing part of this story is, that Dickens’ sympathies throughout are with Wrayburn.  How this comes to be so I confess I do not know.  To me Wrayburn’s conduct appears to be heartless, cruel, unmanly, and the use of his superior social position against the schoolmaster to be like a foul blow, and quite unworthy of a gentleman.  Schoolmasters ought not to beat people about the head, decidedly.  But if Wrayburn’s thoughts took a right course during convalescence, I think he may have reflected that he deserved his beating, and also that the woman whose affection he had won was a great deal too good for him.

Dickens’ misplaced sympathy in this particular story has, I repeat, always struck me with amazement.  Usually his sympathies are so entirely right.  Nothing is more common than to hear the accusation of vulgarity made against his books.  A certain class of people seem to think, most mistakenly, that because he so often wrote about vulgar people, uneducated people, people in the lower ranks of society, therefore his writing was vulgar, nay more, he himself vulgar