Of these the first in importance is that which comes last in order. I mean the three remarkable pamphlets upon the English Sunday, called _Sunday under Three Heads_. Here, at least, we find the eternal Dickens, though not the eternal Dickens of fiction. His other political and sociological suggestions in this volume are so far unimportant that they are incidental, and even personal. Any man might have formed Dickens's opinion about flogging for garrotters, and altered it afterwards. Any one might have come to Dickens's conclusion about model prisons, or to any other conclusion equally reasonable and unimportant. These things have no colour of the great man's character. But on the subject of the English Sunday he does stand for his own philosophy. He stands for a particular view, remote at present both from Liberals and Conservatives. He was, in a conscious sense, the first of its spokesmen. He was in every sense the last.
In his appeal for the pleasures of the people, Dickens has remained alone. The pleasures of the people have now no defender, Radical or Tory. The Tories despise the people. The Radicals despise the pleasures.
+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Notes and Errata | | | | The Illustrations have been moved to between chapters. | | | | The following typographical errors have been corrected: | | | | |Error |Correction | | | |a dupe and who was |a dupe who was | | | |pyschology |psychology | | | |Similiarly |Smilarly | | | | | The following words were found in both hyphenated and | | un-hyphenated forms in the text. The numbers in parentheses | | show the number of times each form occurred. | | | | |framework (3) |frame-work (1) | | | |cocksure (2) |cock-sure (2) | | | |Ironmaster (1) |Iron-master (2) | | | |footprints (1) |foot-prints (1) | | | |goodwill (1) |good-will (1) | | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens, by G. K. Chesterton