Those were pleasant and innocent excitements. We have other things to
engage us now, but I sometimes think all is not _gain_ that the march of
progress brings.
Young people then had fewer books to read, but read them thoroughly. What
excitement and discussion attended the monthly instalments of Dickens'
novels in _All the Year Round_; how eagerly they were looked for. Lucky
he or she who had heard the great _master_ read himself in public. His
books were read in our homes, often aloud to the family circle by
paterfamilias, and moved us to laughter or tears. I never now see our
young people, or their elders either, affected by an author as we were
then by the power of Dickens. He was a new force and his pages kindled
in our hearts a vivid feeling for the poor and their wrongs.
Scott's _Waverley Novels_, too, aroused our enthusiasm. In the early
sixties a cheap edition appeared, and cheap editions were rare things
then. It was published, if I remember aright, at two shillings per
volume; an event that stirred the country. My father brought each volume
home as it came out. I remember it well; a pale, creamy-coloured paper
cover, good type, good paper.
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