Gail Hamilton On Charles Dickens

Gail Hamilton, in au article on " Evi Times," in the New York Independent, as saus a Doctor of Divinity for a kind wou poken in regard to the conduct of the great novelist in discarding the wife o Kis youth, with the followmg womanly vehemence : " I have no tenderness for 3Tf. üickens. I do not beliere in his deep soul of truth and goodness, or in his noble and pure sympathy with -what is highest and best. 1 desire, in the most public and unreserved manner, to declare that a regiment of Little Nelk and Tiny Tims cannot redeepi the man who publicly dishonors the mother of his many children. Mr. Dickens, holding the pen of a ready writer, told his story glibly to the wfyrld. Mi's. Dickens, striïcring the deepest wound a wonian can know has remained steadfastly BÜent. The wife's silence is full of dignity; the husband's speech bristles with disgrace. Ho feels no shaine in saying that he lived with a woman as his wife, exacting from her all the duties and eni'orcing all the sufferiiigs of a wife until he had consunreö all the vigor of her youth ; and that he has then turned her away, and announces to the world that shtj was uniit for him ! He feels no shame in saying, virtually that, while this woman was living in his house as his wife, another woman was also in his house, holding in regard both ta himself ond his children a position which belonged to the legal wife and mother. England is beating her obstinate head against marriage with a deceased wife's sister ; but here is a living wife's sister superseding the living wife. It was Mr. Dickens himself who uiade.this public property. By his last will and testament he even stretchod his dead hand out of the grave to injuro his discardcd wife ; and neither in this world, nor the next, nor the world after the next, shall a man escape the cordial hatred of at least one heart for such coarse and shameless selfishness." íe;pkipttirps