Anecdotes of public men; by John W. Forney.

400 ANECDOTES OF PUBLIC MEN.
blamed, who effected much good and much evil, and whose
genius was equally adapted to both. Having vanquished the
aristocracy, he turned upon those who contributed to his victory, arrested their course by his eloquence, and commanded
their admiration even while he provoked their hostility."
But how different the recollection of these two men! Mirabeau is rarely recalled, and only as an impassioned tribune-a
man of sentiment rather than of action, with few fixed convictions. Greeley will live as a marvelous aggregate, strong in
good works, his fame growing riper with the increasing fruits of
his gigantic labors for humanity.
[December 15, 1872.]
XCII.
I AM reading, with infinite zest, John Forster's second volume
of the Life of Charles Dickens. Every page is a new pleasure,
every chapter a new revelation of the better side of the truest
friend of humanity in the literary world. Neither Shakespeare,
nor Byron, nor Walter Scott, nor Tom Moore, nor Alfred Tennyson, deigned to show so honest a devotion to the poor and the
unfortunate as Charles Dickens. He always seized the holidays, and especially Christmas, to extend his warnings to the
rich and his encouragement to the poor. "Blessings on your
kind heart," wrote the great Jeffrey, of the Edinburgh Review,
in 1842, after he had read "The Christmas Carol;" "you should
be happy yourself, for you may be sure you have done more
good by this little publication, fostered more kindly feelings,
and prompted more positive acts of beneficence than can be
traced to all the pulpits and confessionals in Christendom."
"Who can listen," exclaimed Thackeray, "to objections regarding such a book as this? It seems to me a national benefit,