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THE

CHRISTIAN EXAMINER

AND

GENERAL REVIEW.

VOL. XXXII.

THIRD SERIES, VOLUME XIV.

BOSTON:

PUBLISHED BY JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY.

NEW YORK: C. S. FRANCIS.

LONDON: JOHN GREEN, 121 NEWGATE STREET.

1842.

MARVARD
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

CAMBRIDGE PRESS:

LYMAN THURSTON AND WILLIAM TORRY.

7362

42.150

OF

VOL. XXXII.-THIRD SERIES, VOL. XIV.

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THE

CHRISTIAN EXAMINER.

MARCH, 1842.

--

ART. I. Master Humphrey's Clock. 1. The Old Curiosity Shop and other Tales. By CHARLES DICKENS. With numerous illustrations by Cattermole & Browne. Philadelphia Lea & Blanchard. 1841. 8vo. pp. 362.

66

2. Barnaby Rudge. By CHARLES DICKENS, (Boz,) author of the "Old Curiosity Shop," " Pickwick," "Oliver Twist," &c. &c. With numerous illustrations by Cattermole, Browne & Sibson. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard. 1842. 8vo. pp. 323.

IN the various forms of the epic and the pastoral, the romance and the novel, fiction has constituted a large proportion of the literature of the world, and a still larger proportion of the popular literature of modern Christendom. Yet its source, its theory, and its laws, have not been, so far as we can ascertain, brought to the test of philosophical inquiry. In the present article we shall endeavor to answer the following questions. Whence springs fiction, from what elements of human nature and condition? What is its aim? Is it an enduring form of literature? If not, what will occupy its place? In what other form can imagination find its free scope, and exert its full power?

We read in classic fable of the Titans, who, that they might scale the heavens, heaped Ossa upon Pelion, and rolled leafy Olympus upon Ossa; and the earliest of authentic history tells us of certain rash and aspiring builders, who essayed to erect a tower of brick and mortar, whose top should reach the sky. What they attempted by their handiwork, fiction aims to accomplish for the mind. It is the vehicle by which men

VOL. XXXII. 3D S. VOL. XIV. NO. I.

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