Propanty few of the China residents who have beguiled hours of languor or convalescence with the novels of Charles Dickens, recollect that perhaps his least fortunate delineation was of one of themselves. Arthur Clennam, the gloomy hero of "Little Dorrit," is re presented as a man who has worked hard in business in China, and who returns characteristically enough without having made a fortune. The, best years of his life are represented as having been passed in China, and he returns with a very firm resolution to leave the unproductive line of business, and never to return to it again! It is easy to say that Dickens, having to introduce a hero who had been abroad, thought that China would do as well as any other remote country for the scene exile; the "golden South Americas" having been used in another book, and an Indian career being unsuitable to the position and prejudices of Clennam, But China always seems to have had an interest for Dickens, perhaps from the fact of his son having been there, and had he lived to conclude the work on which he was engaged when he died, we should probably have seen 2
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.