treatment of great topics that it is like his treatment of persons—it is too often rash, and wanting in self-suspicion.

The process by which Dickens reached the most positive and the most controlling of his opinions in matters of politics, and social philosophy generally, is never disclosed to you. Perhaps there hardly ever was a process, such as takes place in the minds of thoughtful students of life, history, and biography. It is difficult to conceive how there could have been; for he never read much, and he passed at one bound from undistinguished striplinghood to what might be called the mature manhood of life-absorbing fame. The wonder is that his brain did not turn round; it says much, very much, for his natural goodness and strong common sense that he kept his head as he did. There is nowhere a trace of pride (in any vulgar sense) about the man; you can see in his portraits, especially the later ones, that he was entirely simple. A little dignity of the soft and reticent order would have done him good. But to return to the point we have for a moment left, there is no case on record like his-a man who must be called great as a humorist, and ranked, after all deductions, with the foremost men, living entirely the life of the brain, and yet being so utterly destitute of the pure thinking faculty, and the tendency to resort to artistic and scientific checks. His common sense had all the force of genius; and there the matter stood. His morality-considered as a system-was altogether secondhand, and he displayed no leaning towards any great, any leading idea, that he had to do more than open his hand to receive. He was always ready to take the part of the poor, and he was the friend of "the working man." He hated humbug and cant, not only because they were things at war with his natural directness, but because they were in an especial manner hindrances in the way of good-fellowship, and his off-hand, earnest good-fellow's view of life. That view had nothing in common with the outlook of the mere bon vivant; the nature of Dickens was stringent; he set metes and bounds everywhere, to himself as well as to others; there was not a lax-drawn stitch in his scheme of life.

But it cannot be denied that commonplace was at the bottom of much of his work, and that sometimes you feel this in a very irritating manner. Strong opinions on political or social questions do not always come with the best grace (though all sincerity is good) from a man who, you feel afraid, would have been a Mohammedan all his life if he had been born one, and who never showed the slightest disposition to attack any evil at its tap-roots. It would be interesting to know how he got at his religious opinions. In one of his letters he shows that he had a fairly good understanding of the drift of such a book, for example, as the "Essays and Reviews;" but that is not saying much, for the noise made by that work proved nothing so much as the dense ignorance of the religious public: since there was scarcely one idea in it from cover to cover which was not familiar to intelligent and

thoughtful people who had made anything like a study of such matters. However, Dickens did understand it, and abstracts it very well. His letters to his boys, when he starts them in life, are also good from the "serious" point of view; but never for a moment, never by the turn of a phrase, do you see the bottom of his mind in matters of moral and religious speculation. It has been very unjustly said that his writings are mainly a glorification of the spirit of the English Christmas. They are much more than that-they are, apart from the attractive force of their humour, mighty lessons in the first humanities, they have the immense merit of never lowering your faith and hope. When we consider how many villains Dickens has drawn; how he has groped and grubbed-we were going to say-in the lowest kennels of human baseness and squalor, it is a fine thing to say, it is a noble feather in his cap, that he never gives you a heart-ache in the bad sense. This suffices to give him high rank. It places him by the side of men like Goldsmith and Scott, whose great glory it is that they are always ready to reconcile us to human nature when we have fallen out with it. It is, indeed, true that Dickens is never in advance of his time, and seldom in advance of his theme. He is thoroughly at home in the world as it is, willing and often eager to change the machinery of civilization, but never intent on questioning accepted principles, either as to their history or their relevancy; but if his want of apprehensive intelligence on certain great questions compels us now and then to feel as if we should like a little more sense of solid foundation for so much very decisive writing about this or that, he makes us amends by putting us on the heights which we should be only too glad to keep in our most restless and most revolutionary moods.

It does not follow that the master is never sad, or never overwhelms you with pictures of human misery, or suggestions of the devil that lurks in too many of us. It appears from these letters that it was only after an effort, which made him ill, that he could bring himself to read the Death of Nancy in public. And who can wonder? that scene may be criticized, but who can forget it, or who, remembering it after the lapse of years, can help feeling the old creepiness come over him? If it were not for the sudden outbursts of humour, the picture of Dotheboys Hall, and of the early troubles of Oliver Twist, would be cruel reading. But there is something better than that. Now and then, there is a touch that thrills you to the roots of your being with the sense of brotherhood, of the oneness of the whole human story. There is a striking instance in the little tale told by Boots, in the Christmas Number entitled the Holly Tree Inn. There are others in the Poor Relation's Story, and the Child's Story; but the one which is put into the mouth of Boots we will venture to quote:

The story is of two little children who have run away to get married :---

"Boots don't know-perhaps I do-but never mind-it don't signify either

way, why it made a man fit to make a fool of himself, to see them two pretty babies a lying there in the clear still sunny day, not dreaming half so hard when they was asleep, as they done when they was awake. But, Lord! when you come to think of yourself, you know, and what a game you have been up to ever since you was in your own cradle, and what a poor sort of a chap you are, and how it's always either Yesterday with you, or else To-morrow, and never To-day, that's where it is!"

There is the hand of the master there. You feel his touch on your own arm, and you are his captive. And it is usually through the mouth of the poor that our beloved humourist utters things that Shakspeare or Cervantes might have said. Among them, we unhesitatingly place that speech of Boots, simple and trite as it seems.

Nobody ever doubted it, but still it is a pleasure to find in these Letters that Dickens was a man of a sincerely and persistently affectionate heart. The result of the death of his wife's sister Mary was, we all remember, that he had to suspend the "Pickwick Papers for two months; and there is a very affecting reference to her in a letter to his wife :

"Is it not extraordinary that the same dreams which have constantly visited me since poor Mary died follow me everywhere? After all the changes of scene and fatigue, I have dreamt of her ever since I left home, and no doubt shall till I return. I should be sorry to lose such visions, for they are very happy ones, if it be only the seeing her in one's sleep. I would fain believe, too, sometimes, that her spirit may have some influence over them, but their perpetual repetition is extraordinary."

It is hard not to deplore the immense popularity of this man, and (cruel as it sounds) the manner in which he was followed up by troops of friends all his life. To lie fallow was what was wanted, both for his genius as a writer, and his better nature as a man. There is something startling in the frequent recurrence of illness and exhaustion from literary labour which these letters record. He had a very powerful physique, and yet the breakdowns are painful to read about. Let those who fancy literature, as a profession, is an easy one, be warned! He died of downright wear and tear-mainly the wear and tear of inventing and writing.

Upon these volumes, considered as literary memorials, a word or two will be sufficient. The lady editors have wisely prefixed to the letters of each year, from 1833-4 to 1870, an introductory chapter of explanation. These chapters are good, but the reader wishes them longer and fuller: to say nothing of points left unexplained, which call for explanation. If about half the collection, as it stands, were omitted, and such of the more private letters as could properly be made public, were printed, we should receive a much more nearly perfect impression of the man. It often happens that "chops-andtomato-sauce" contains a volume of meaning, which you would vainly look for in a score of set epistles.

MATTHEW BROWNE.

THE CHARACTER AND WRITINGS OF

CYRUS THE GREAT.

W

RITINGS of Cyrus! the reader may exclaim; do such exist? Have we really anything authentic from the hand of this great conquering chief, whose history reads like a myth in Herodotus, and like a romance in Xenophon? Was the "Warrior King," who nearly two thousand five hundred years ago, overran Asia from the Suliman mountains to the Egean Sea, everywhere beating down opposition, and welding one-half of the Eastern continent into an Empire, an author no less than a soldier, a "learned clerk" no less than a "Hammer of Nations"? Kings in the olden time were more apt to write their histories in blood than ink-the sword was more familiar to their hand than the pen or stylus-not often did they drop the one to assume the other, or pause in their career of havoc and slaughter to cultivate the arts of peace and the graces of literary composition. Still, there were exceptions to the general rule. David, the "man of blood," who built up an empire which extended from the Euphrates to the borders of Egypt by a long series of successful wars, wielded nevertheless "the pen of a ready writer," and was known to his contemporaries as "the sweet psalmist of Israel." Three early Egyptian kings are said by Manetho to have composed treatises. The literary tastes of Orodes, the conqueror of Crassus, and of Chosroës Anushirvan are well known. Cyrus the Great cannot, let it be at once confessed, compete with such monarchs as these. It is not literature, in the proper sense of the word, with which he stands connected. But still, he has left writings. There exist, on clay or stone, three inscriptions or pieces of writing belonging to his time, of which he is in our opinion to be considered the author; and there exist two documents, embodied in the literature of the Jews, which we believe to be also faithful translations of decrees, or proclamations, put

forth in his reign and with his authority. These five documents constitute the "writings" whereto we propose to call attention in the present paper, and from them, in their combination, we expect that we shall be able to throw quite a new light on the character of the great Persian monarch.

There are, however, one or two preliminary objections, to which we must address ourselves, before adducing the documents themselves. It may be said that the writings are not really the composition of Cyrus, but of his ministers, and that consequently they throw no light at all on the personal character or disposition of the king. And it may be held, as indeed it has been held of some of them, that their language has been so coloured by passing through the medium of a foreign tongue as to render them an unsafe basis for speculations such as those on which we propose to enter.

We meet the first objection by remarking, that, though royal proclamations would not now-a-days, and among ourselves, be much evidence of the disposition of a monarch, yet in the despotic East, where kings govern" as well as "reign," and with a king possessing the originality and vigour of mind which all agree in assigning to Cyrus the Great, the case would be different. Even modern Turkish hatts are some evidence of the disposition of an Abdul-Aziz or an Abdul-Hamid. Decrees of such energetic Persian monarchs as Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius Hystaspes, are, à fortiori, of weight, and must be regarded as really emanating from themselves. They run in the first person; and no subject, whatever his rank, would dare to put into his royal master's mouth any words or phrases which did not express his known mind on the subjectmatter of the proclamation. To make the great king say to his subjects that which he had not wished to say, would, if discovered, be a capital offence; and men were too anxious about keeping their heads upon their shoulders to run such a risk.

Much the same may be said with respect to the supposed "colouring" of a decree in the process of translation. The translation of State documents was a regular part of the Persian governmental system, and there must have been a class of officials trained to the duty, who no doubt knew their business. The documents which we possess in two or three languages (e.g. the Behistun Inscription) are translated very carefully indeed. An interpreter would know that he might have to answer with his head for any important mistake that he made, and would be vigilant accordingly. It is in the highest degree improbable that the tone and spirit of any royal decree or proclamation would have been seriously affected by translation under any of the early Persian monarchs.

So much by way of preface. We proceed now to adduce the documents. And, first of all, we will bring forward the shortest. This is a bilingual legend, in the Persian cuneiform writing, and the (so-called) Median, still remaining in its original position on the jambs of a gate