Dickens, Charles

DEATH OF CHARLES DICKENS.
The death of this celebrated novelist and writer occurred suddenly on the 9th inst., and has cast a gloom not only over the community with which he was more immediately connected, but wherever the English language is spoken. The profound regret expressed by the London papers is echoed across the ocean, and is felt with no less poignancy in America than in Europe. As the Times well says - "The ordinary expressions of regret are now cold and conventional. Millions of people feel the personal bereavement. Statesmen and benefactors of the race can leave no such void; they cannot, like this great novelist, be an inmate of every house." Probably no writer has made himself so universally popular as Dickens, and few have had greater power over the feelings of their readers. His ideal characters became living impersonifications, exhibiting the virtues, eccentricities and follies of every-day life. The naturalness of his creations, his quaint humor and the ease of his style placed him at once in the front rank of modern novelists. At the time of his death he was engaged in the completion of "Edwin Drood" in periodical numbers, and showed no signs of exhaustion either in creative power or physical energy. Though he had been ill for some days before his death, nothing of a serious nature was apprehended. On Thursday he was entertaining a dinner party at his house, when he suddenly became unconscious and fell back in his chair. Physicians were hastily summoned from London, but their skill was unavailing, and they pronounced his case hopeless. He had barely completed his 58th year at the time of his death. For the last few years he had lived apart from his wife for some reason never publicly divulged, but had the care of his children, with the assistance of Mrs. Dickens' sister, who espoused his side of the domestic disagreement. An exhaustive analysis of his genius would occupy far more space than a mere newspaper article.