ARRIVAL IN GREYMOUTH.

Grey River Argus, Volume XXXI, Issue 5335, 2 November 1885, Page 4

ARRIVAL IN GREYMOUTH.

The eminent English journalist, who for a quarter of a century has been the principal leader-writer, art-critic, and special correspondent to the London Daily Telegraph, arrived in Greymouth yesterday ; and as everybody knows he will give the first of his two lectures in the Public Hall this evening. The subject is " Two Princess of the Pen : Dickens and Thackeray." It is a happy selection. Several people, more or less competent, have lectured in New Zealand upon Charles Dickens ; buY their discourses were mere compilations. Mr Sala occupies a special " coign of vantage." He was an intimate friend of both Dickens and Thackeray, and was one of the band of brilliant young men whom the author of Pickwick gathered round him when he started Household Words. Having known both the great novelists from the commencement of +.helr literary career until their death, Mr Sala will be able to present delightful pictures of their home life— of Dickens' at Gad's Hill, and of Thackeray's at Onslow square and Palace Gardens. The author of "Twice Round the Clock" is also in a position to explain the purpose which lay behind Dickens' novels, a task necessarily neglected by recent critics, who were not acquainted with the social life and history of the times which the various works were written to illustrate. Amongstihe abuses which Dickens exposed were the horrors of imprisonment for debt, as exemplified in the King's Bench, Fleet, Marchalsea, and other prisons ; the cruelties perpetrated on chiidren in country schools ; the white slavery of needlewomen, whose cause he pleaded with trumpet and tongue ; the evils of selfehness and hypoorisy, as respectively shown in the ch:racters of old Chuzzlewit and Pecksniff ; and the monstrous iniquity and injustice wrought by the interminable proceedings of the Court of Chancery. These and other subjects will doubtless be dealt with by Mr Sala ; and probably, a more interesting lecture ■Rill never have been delivered in Greymouth. Mr Sala is enjoying his New Zealand trip very much ; and it is satisfactory to find that, according to the Wellington correspondent of the Argus, he everywhere leaves behind him troops of friends, and not a single enemy.