Boythorne forms a strong and not unpleasing contrast to Skimpole, so that the consequences arising from the portrayal were not so disastrous as in the case of Leigh Hunt; in fact, no objection was made, as ludicrous traits were employed to enrich without impairing an attractive person in the tale. A striking pamphlet on the subject of Chancery abuses and delays afforded Dickens a valuable hint in his treatment of the great Chancery suit, in "Bleak House," of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. The case of Gridley (said the author, in his preface to the story) was in no essential altered from one of actual occurrence, in which, as in Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, costs were incurred to an enormous amount. He also referred to another well-known suit in Chancery, not then decided, which was commenced before the close of the last century, and in which a still more considerable sum had already been swallowed up in costs. It has been said that a certain Chancery suit now proceeding was that from which the Jarndyce case originated. The suit is that of Jennings v. Jennings, which also commenced before the close of the last century, and it arose from the intestacy of Mr. Jennings, the original owner of the property in dispute. He was a Suffolk man, who, when staying in London, became so seriously ill that he felt it desirable to complete his will, which only required his signature to make it valid; but his spectacles, which were specially needed for the purpose, had been accidentally left at his country house, whither a messenger was speedily despatched. Unfortunately, before his return the testator breathed his last, and the document was therefore valueless. The property then went to the next of kin, when the unexpected arrival on the scene of one who claimed that position (and the property appertaining thereto) caused a dispute as to the rightful heir; the property fell into Chancery, and, owing to the fact that the claimants (now numbering about four hundred) have not yet succeeded in identifying the real successor, the result is likely to be as unsatisfactory as that attending Jarndyce v. Jarndyce. One of the suitors in that great case was "a little mad woman in a squeezed bonnet, who is always in court, from its sitting to its rising, and always expecting some incomprehensible judgment to be given in her favor. . . . She carries some small letters in her reticule which she calls her documents; principally consisting of paper matches and dry lavender." The name of the "little old lady" was Flite, and her portrait was taken from life. One who knew her well informs me that she was always hovering in or about the Chancery Courts, generally in court, and that she was the victim of some prolonged Chancery suit which had turned her head. Another character in "Bleak House can be identified. The portrait of that expert detective, Inspector Bucket, was taken from the late Mr. Field, chief of detective police, who frequently had the honor of accompanying Dickens during his exploration of the haunts of crime, vice, and misery in the great metropolis, where he found so much material for his famous stories. We are told that the first notion of the "Tale of Two Cities occurred to the author while acting with his friends and his children in Mr. Wilkie Collins's drama of "The Frozen Deep," and there can be no doubt that the idea was still further promoted by a perusal of Carlyle's "French Revolution," written many years previously. The principal personage in Mr. Collins's play, named Richard Wardour, is remarkable for extreme self-denial and other good qualities, the dramatic nature of which so struck Dickens that he availed himself of that conception of the character by reproducing the same qualities in the person of Sydney Carton, the hero of the story. Richard Wardour may therefore be considered as the original form of Sydney Carton. Mr. Edmund Yates is, I believe, responsible for the statement that the character of Mr. Stryver, Sydney Carton's great ally, was drawn from Mr. Edwin James, a well-known legal functionary some thirty years ago. Mr. Yates says: “One day I took Dickens - who had never seen Édwin James-to one of these consultations. James laid himself out to be specially agreeable; Dickens was quietly observ ant. About four months after appeared the early numbers of A Tale of Two Cities,' in which a prominent part was played by Mr. Stryver. After reading the description, I said to Dickens: 'Stryver is a good likeness!' He smiled. Not bad, I think,' he said, 'especially after only one sitting!"" The Christmas stories published with Household Words, and All the Year Round, were the joint product of several well-known writers, each preparing one or two chapters, which in reality form a series of distinct tales. The initial chapter of "The Haunted House" was from Dickens's pen, and he there alludes to "Mr. Undery, my friend and solicitor . . . who | Green, midway between Hitchin and Steplays whist better than the whole Law venage. James Lucas, when he was eight List, from the red cover at the beginning or ten years of age, first went to reside to the red cover at the end." The description of Mr. Undery is taken from the late Mr. Fred Ouvry, who was actually the novelist's friend and solicitor. In another Christmas number, entitled "Tom Tiddler's Ground," there are three chapters by Dickens, in which is introduced a remarkable personage, Mr. Mopes, a hermit, who, "by suffering everything about him to go to ruin, and by dressing himself in a blanket and skewer, and by steeping himself in soot and grease and other nastiness, had acquired great renown in all that countryside. . . . He was represented as being all the ages between five-and-twenty and sixty, and as having been a hermit seven years, twelve, twenty, thirty-though twenty, on the whole, appeared the favorite term." Mr. Mopes is no illusion or creation of the fancy. He really lived, moved, and had his being, much in the manner as described. His abode in the county of Hertford pretty closely resembled the rotting, tumble-down dwelling-place so picturesquely described in "Tom Tiddler's Ground." His real name was James Lucas, and the spot where he resided is about two miles from Stevenage, a station on the Great Northern Railway. The hermit was so well known, that any one in the neighborhood could direct a stranger to the habitation of "Mad Lucas," as people familiarly called him. One of his visitors describes him as "distinctly dirty, comprehensively and permanently so, a fact that was by no means difficult to ascertain, for if on other days the hermit was so far extravagant in dress as to indulge himself in a blanket and skewer, he afterwards-from economical motives, perhaps dispensed with the skewer and retained the blanket alone, which he continually adjusted and readjusted that it might the more effectually fulfil the requirements of a fastidious public." James Lucas died nearly fourteen years ago, and shortly after that event a pamphlet was published giving the history of the hermit of Hertfordshire, from which we learn some interesting particulars concerning that eccentric personage. He was descended from an ancient and wealthy Irish family; his father was a man of fortune and had estates in various parts of England, besides owning large sugar plantations in the West Indies. His son, James, was born in London about the year 1811. The family residence is known as Elmwood House, situated at Redcoat's there with his parents, aud those who remember him at that time describe him as a strange child, the germs of his subsequent eccentricities being very apparent. As time advanced he allowed his hair to grow long, and rode on horseback, with or without a saddle, at all hours of the day and night. He was, however, intellectually most acute, well versed in Shakespeare, and in the standard works of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, could compose and recite poetry, and was fond of athletics. The determining cause of that life of wretchedness and seclusion which he led for a quarter of a century was, without doubt, the death of his mother, when his eccentricity developed into madness. He was passionately fond of his mother, was intensely grieved at her death, and absolutely refused to allow her body to be interred, watching it night and day for thirteen weeks, immovable and unconsolable. The funeral at length took place, when he commenced to isolate himself from the world, closed up all the rooms in the house, and lived, as we have seen, in a state of filth and semi-starvation, in such manner passing the remainder of his days and becoming an object of interest to numerous visitors, with whom he would converse through the bars of a window. Mr. Forster, who was a lunacy commissioner, examined him to see if he could find any trace of insanity, and, far from discovering any aberration of mind, he found the hermit to be a man of most acute intellect. He was discovered in an apoplectic fit one morning in April, 1874, and death took place a few days later. Dickens, when staying with his friend Lord Lytton at Knebworth, was driven over to see the original of Mr. Mopes, but Lucas said that the novelist never visited him. A copy of "Tom Tiddler's Ground," given him by a friend, bore unmistakable signs of having been carefully perused by the hero himself, who pronounced the publication to be neither more nor less than one of the many attempts to injure and annoy him; he believed that an enemy, understood to be a relative, had instigated Dickens, and probably paid him well to make up the story, which, he said, was false from beginning to end, and contained many inaccuracies. The story of "Hunted Down" was specially written for the New York Ledger. Dickens had seized upon the career of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, the poi soner, as a foundation for his fiction, | Drood," considered by Longfellow as one where his name appears as Mr. Julius of the novelist's most beautiful works, Slinkton of the Middle Temple. The actual facts incidental to the career of T. G. Wainewright are even more extraordinary than those related in the narrative, and it is worthy of remark that Lord Lytton, in his powerful novel, "Lucretia," also availed himself of the record of the villany of the same notorious criminal. there are given but very slight indications of the prototypes of the characters. The picture of the opium-eater and her den was drawn from nature, the former being thus described by Mr. Fields, who accompanied the novelist to the spot: "We found a braggart old woman blowing at a kind of pipe made of an old ink-bottle; and the words which Dickens puts into the mouth of this wretched creature in Edwin Drood,' we heard her croon as we leaned over the tattered bed in which she was lying." 6 be recognized in Mr. John Brooker, of Higham. The origin of some of the names may be traced to Rochester and neighborhood, for that of Jasper is a common one in the old city, and Drood is an adaptation of Trood, the cognomen of the late landlord of the Sir John Falstaff at Gad's Hill. After the completion of the first three numbers of "Our Mutual Friend," the illustrator of that work, Mr. Marcus Stone, told Dickens of an extraordinary trade he had discovered, through one of his painting requirements. It was the establish- A visitor on being shown over Rochesment of Mr. Venus, preserver of animals ter Cathedral a few years ago, by chance and birds, and articulator of human bones; asked the gossipping old verger whether the same establishment as that so minutely Dickens had not got him for one of the described by Mr. Venus himself. "My characters in his last novel. Said he, working bench. My young man's bench." The question is whether I am not Tope." A Wice. Tools. Bones, warious. Skulls, It is suggested that some of the better warious. Preserved Indian baby. Afri- qualities and peculiarities of Durdles may can ditto. Bottled preparations, warious. Everything within reach of your hand, in good preservation. The mouldy ones a-top. What's in those hampers over there again, I don't quite remember. Say, human warious. Cats. Articulated English baby. Dogs. Ducks. Glass eyes, warious. Mummied bird. Dried cuticle, warious. Oh, dear me! That's the general panoramic view." Mr. Percy Fitzgerald has identified the shop as No. 42 St. Andrew Street, near The Dials, which he describes as a shop whose window is filled with as disagreeable a category of objects as was found in the establishment of the apothecary in "Romeo and Juliet" skulls, jaw and thigh bones, skeletons of monkeys, stuffed birds, horns of all kinds, prepared skins, and everything unpleasant in the anatomical line. The proprietor of this miscellaneous stock in trade was, of course the prototype of Mr. Venus. This original character," writes Mr. Fitzgerald, "excited much attention; and a friend of the great writer, as well as of the present chronicler, passing through this street was irresistibly attracted by this shop and its contents kept by one J. Willis. When he next saw Mr. Dickens, he said, 'I am convinced I have found the original of "Venus;"' on which said Mr. Dickens, 'You are right!' Any one who then visited the place could recognize the dingy, gloomy interior, the articulated skeleton in the corner, the genial air of thick grime and dust; but now the place is changed, Mr. Venus has departed, and his successor deals in second-hand clothing for ladies. 46 NOTE. Since this article was written, an item of Dickensian interest was elicited by an amusing digression in an action for damages recently heard in the High Court of Justice before Baron Huddleston. This was nothing less than the identification of the origin of the name of Pickwick. Mr. Henry Fielding Dickens, a son of the novelist, was retained as counsel for the defence, and in the course of the trial he intimated that he meant to call as a witness a Mr. Pickwick. Baron Huddleston: "Pickwick is a very appropriate witness to be called by Dickens (laughter). Mr. Dickens: "I fully believe that the sole reason why I was instructed in this case was that I might call Mr. Pickwick " (laughter). "And it may interest your lordship to learn that the witness is a descendant Pickwick, who kept a coach at Bath, and that the grandnephew, I believe of Mr. Moses I have every reason to believe that it was from this Moses Pickwick that the name of the immortal Pickwick was taken. I dare say your lordship will remember that that very eccentric and faithful follower of Mr. Pickwick"Sam Weller-seeing the name outside the coach, was indignant, because he thought it was a personal reflection upon his employer, and he was accordingly anxious to inflict condign punishment upon the offender." In the unfinished story of "Edwin Mr. Dickens, having apologized for the digression, and admitted that the temptation was too strong for him, resumed the conduct of the case. F. G. KITTON. From Blackwood's Magazine. hymns grow so fast on every side, that it is hardly possible to form any correct estimate of their number, especially since it has become the fashion amongst many congregations outside the Established Churches (who generally keep to one) to have compilations of their own. In such a state of things, one naturally calls to mind St. Paul's rebuke to the Church of Corinth: "How is it, then, brethren? when ye come together, every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine," etc. But this superfluity of hymns-if not in doctrine happily corrects itself. It is apt to die of its own too much." The tree bears more fruit than it can ripen, and the weaklings wither off. Taking no account of the vast quantity of religious verse which every year issues from the press merely to die and make no sign, there are about twenty-five hundred hymns extant from which the compiler can choose, and 66 THE question, What is a hymn? may be fairly set down as one of those subordinate and collateral queries growing out of the larger and more central one, What is poetry? a question that has obtained such a diversity of answers from the philosophical critic possessed of a misdirected craze for analysis. Both the central and the secondary question belong to that category of inquiries which, from the nature of the case, do not admit of exact definition. All of us who are acquainted with the masterpieces of Wesley, Montgomery, Keble, Milman, Faber, New man, and many others, know a good hymn when we see it; but a specimen is one thing, a definition quite another. In our attempt to explain and lay bare the hidden manna of power which has enabled the best of these compositions to find their way into the mind and heart of the Enyet not more than ten per cent. of these glish-speaking world, and hold their places there against all comers, we lose our labor. In appraising the value of any poetical product of the highest order, whether it be a hymn or a lyric — and at their best there is more than a likeness between the two -it is impossible to resolve them into their component parts, and disengage that invisible attribute, that "participation of divineness" in them, which gives them their unnamable charm, and, in short, makes them what they are. are common to our best collections, so difficult is it for a hymn to reach that point of excellence which enables it to take a permanent place in both the religion and literature of the country, and at which it becomes impossible for any compiler, with credit to himself, to exclude it. If we take the number of hymns in a collection to average about five hundred (they usually run from four to six hundred), and deduct the ten per cent. - the two hundred and fifty we have spoken of as finding a place in every good hymnal When St. Augustine defined a hymn as a "song of praise to God," he was speak- we are still left with two hundred and ing to an age and to an audience whose fifty which are more or less infrequently hymnology, both in character and extent, used, and which are still undergoing that was widely different from ours. Like probationary existence in which their final everything else, the subject has widened merit is not yet set at rest. The gradual with the process of the suns, and to re- selection of the fittest in English hym strict our hymns to subjects having refer-nology has been the quiet work of generaence only to direct adoration of the Al- tion upon generation. Our best hymns mighty, it would be necessary to dismiss have come to us through a slow but sure from our best collections more than half ordeal. Time has put them into his unof their contents. Such a rule, strictly failing crucible, and though the net proenforced, would indeed exclude from our portion of pure metal seems small beside service, for example, that universally the mass under assay, yet these two hunknown and approved version of the Hundred and fifty hymns -or thereaboutdredth Psalm paraphrased by Kethe, although commonly attributed to Hopkins. For, admirably appropriate as it is for public worship, the psalm is not addressed directly to Heaven, but rather an exhortation to earth and its people to praise and magnify the Lord. St. Augustine's definition, then, if at any time it ever did decide the difficulty, can no longer cover the immense area over which the modern hymn has dispersed, diffused, and, in some cases, dissipated itself. Compilations of VOL. LXII. 3204 LIVING AGE. which have passed through the experi ment, constitute perhaps a more glorious anthology of sacred song than has ever been brought together in any language. That this refining process must be continuous and unceasing, in order to meet the growing aspirations of the future, nothing proves more conclusively than the past history of the subject. Life, spiritual as well as physical, is a finely adjusted balance between replenishment and waste. Stagnant water does not breed impurity more quickly than stagnant emotion in such a case, and the real vitality of the Church is probably more indebted to the receptivity and mobility of its hymnology - the free and unfettered reciprocity of its exports and imports than to all its articles of faith; articles of subscription having a readier tendency to degenerate, by their very taken-for-granted fixity, into the mere husk and letter of religion, while our books of praise, by the observance of this give-and-take law of life, retain their freshness and attractiveness. Fixity, however, has its proper place, and mobility is not without its risks, and nothing has demon strated more completely the danger of over-emphasizing the sentimental side of religion than the humiliating and some times profane depths to which the praise of God has been allowed to fall, under the influence of so-called revivals, proving that true religion, ever jealous of the falsehood of extremes, no more draws its real life from a washy and invertebrate emotion than it does from the doctrinal dry bones of the theological anatomist. extent, it has ever escaped the influence of "the tune o' the time." Our more important religious revivals have all of them left their mark, whether the movement came from priest or people, from High Church or Low Church, or whether the representative of the prevailing influence were John Wesley or John Keble. The extent to which our devotions have sometimes been controlled by the fashion of this world is a subject perhaps more profitable than pleasant to our self-esteem. It is a fact beyond dispute, nevertheless, that the Church has always been a very faithful mirror of the passing moment an abstract and brief chronicle of the time, as Shakespeare might have put it; for in fact it has been almost as instrumental as the stage itself in showing the age and body of the time his form and pressure, throwing off in endless variety representative types as widely asunder as the sporting parson of our fathers' day and the Father Ignatius of our own. The Church movement in vogue for the time being, has sometimes set its seal not only on the Happily our best collections, containing ritual of its exponents, but has frequently those hymns which stand accredited by affected even such sublunary particulars the approval and consensus of all the as dress and diet. Thackeray, speaking Churches, have escaped this deeper infec- of the Oxford movement, describes the tion, although, without regard to sect or period as that at which "the curate cut off party, or particular school of thought, their | his coat-collar and let his hair grow, when treasures have been drawn from all quarters, securing in this way a unity and catholicity which no other part of public worship can show. When unity on any theological basis seems as remote as ever, it is doubtless no small satisfaction to those who have that object really at heart, as well as to those who have not yet mastered the Christian grace of mental reservation in their attitude to the standards of the Church, to find that at all events they stand upon common ground in the praises sung and accepted by almost every shade of orthodoxy in Christendom, and without the leading of whose luminous incense cloud religious life to many would sometimes seem littie better than a desert of dogma and disruption. And who shall say that a unity of trust and aspiration may not be quite as acceptable to the God to whom it is directed, as a unity of subscription to a set of abstract problems, of which at least nineteen out of twenty professing Christians know absolutely nothing? Although we have said that our hymnology has, generally speaking, escaped the contamination of our grosser revival epidemics, it would not be true to the history of the subject to say that, to a certain he went without dinner on Fridays, and signed his letters on the feast of St. Soand-so, and the vigil of St. What-do-youcall-'em." But the great Anglican revival of the first decade of her Majesty's eventful reign, fertile as it was in material for the satiric pen of Thackeray or pencil of Leech, had its great and grave side, as well as its feeble and fashionable one. Stripped of the affectations of its weaker supporters, and all the medieval and ecclesiastical accretions which disfigured it, it stands out a great and remarkable movement; and it has furnished no better proof of its subtle and saintly power than the harvest it has left at the disposal of the eclectic gleaner in the field of sacred song. One would naturally suppose that the almost universal suffrage by which our best and most beautiful hymns have been selected and handed down to us, would have proved a sufficient guarantee against anything like serious tampering with the integrity of their text; but such, unfortunately, is not the case. The hymn, in common with many other things both in the animal and vegetable world, seems to possess the faculty of producing its own specific parasite; for, strange as it may appear, the most inveterate enemy of the |