IF THINGS ETERNAL ARE MADE UP OF ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS that repeat themselves in Dickens's creation, so is the human scene composed of familiar things that rarely change save on the surface or in detail. These are of man rather than of Nature, where even the bells and clocks marking time are only a convenience for men to determine their present relationship to what always is. The protagonist in Dickens tends to move between two places, one good, one evil, as in the Paris and London of A Tale of Two Cities. In Great Expectations, Pip must survive the clashing influences of Joe's wholesome forge and the dark rottenness of Satis House.That mansion has the effect of quickening the hero's fatal desire for wealth and social place, of fixing until it is too late the illusions certain to be lost.

This dualism of place leads us immediately to London and country with their manifold associations; to the journeys, the unceasing movements to and fro that give such life and variety to Dickens's action; to the houses, seen from without and within, that tell us what the life and character of their inhabitants must be, given the surroundings in which they pass their lives.

I.THE CITY

Any comment upon the human scene in Dickens must have London for its center.There is no need to make yet another attempt to seize the essence of Dickens's London, but we shall be content with a survey of its attributes as they accumulate so as to sustain the action that Dickens builds upon them from Sketches by Boz through Great Expectations to the end of his creation. The qualities of London that establish and maintain themselves throughout may derive from, sum- marize or comment upon, but not correspond in detail to the actual, contemporary London of Dickens’ own experience.

London too is seen then from morning till night, in light and darkness, fog and sunshine, the typical Dickensian impressions being reviewed already in Sketches by Boz. At dawn

Gradually London comes alive, and by noon all is animated by a huge concourse of people.