Thereby Tadpole's politics (for heaven's sake, bring them in your waistcoat pocket) are 'unbeknown' to me. . Shall I ever forget Vestris, n London Assurance, bursting out with certain praises (they always elicited three rounds) of a-of a country morning, I think it was. The atrocity was perpetrated, I remember, on a lawn before a villa. It was led up to by flower pots. The thing was as like any honest sympathy or honest English, as the rose-pink on a sweep's face on May-day is to a beautiful complexion; but Harley generally appeared touched to the soul, and a man in the pit always cried out 'Beau-ti-ful!' I am somehow reminded of a good story I heard the other night from a man who was a witness of it and an actor in it :-At a certain German town, last autumn, there was a tremendous furore about Jenny Lind, who, after driving the whole place mad, left it, on her travels. early one morning. The moment her carriage was outside the gates, a party of rampant students, who had escorted it, rushed back to the inn, demanded to be shown her bedroom, swept like a whirlwind upstairs into the room indicated to them, tore up the sheets, and wore them in strips as decorations. An hour or two afterwards, a bald old gentleman, of amiable appearance-an Englishman, who was staying in the hotel, came to breakfast at the table d'hote, and was observed to be much disturbed in mind, and to show great terror whenever a student came near him. At last he said, in a low voice, to some who were near him at the table, 'You are English gentlemen, I observe. Most extraordinary people these Germans. Students, as a body, raving mad, gentlemen!' 'Oh, no,' said somebody. else; 'excitable, but very good fellows, and very sensible.' 'By God! sir, returned the old gentleman, still more disturbed, 'then there's something political in it, and I am a marked man. I went out for a little walk this morning after shaving, and while I was gone'-he fell into a terrible perspiration as he spoke it 'they burst into my bedroom, tore up my sheets, and are now patrolling the town in all directions, with bits of 'em in their button-holes!' I needn't wind up by adding that they had gone to the wrong chamber.

"Ever heartily yours,

"MY DEAR JERROLD,-In a letter I have received from Gilpin this morning, he quotes a recent letter from you, in which you deprecate the mystery' of private hanging.

"Will you consider what punishment there is, except death, to which mystery does not attach? Will you consider whether all the improvements in prisons and punishments that have been made within the last twenty years have, or have not, been all productive of mystery'? I can remember very well when the silent system was objected to as mysterious and opposed to the genius of English society. Yet there is no question

that it has been a great benefit. The prison vans are mysterious vehicles, but surely they are better than the old system of marching prisoners through the streets chained to a long chain, like the galley slaves in Don Quixote. Is there no mystery about transportation, and our manner of sending men away to Norfolk Island or elsewhere? None in abandoning the use of a man's name, and knowing him only by a number? Is not the whole improved and altered system from beginning to end a mystery? I wish I could induce you to feel justified in leaving that word to the platform people, on the strength of your knowledge of what crime was, and what its punishments were, in the days when there was no mystery connected with these things, and all was as open as Bridewell when Ned Ward went to see the women whipped."

"HOUSEHOLD WORDS' OFFICE,
"Sixth February, 1856.

"MY DEAR JERROLD,-Buckstone has been with me to-day in a state of demi-semi-distraction, by reason of Macready's dreading his asthma so much as to excuse himself (of necessity I know) from taking the chair for the fund on the occasion of their next dinner. I have promised to back Buckstone's entreaty to you to take it, and although I know that you have an objection which you once communicated to me, I still hold (as I did then) that it is a reason for, and not against. Pray reconsider the point. Your position in connection with dramatic literature has always suggested to me that there would be a great fitness and grace in your appearing in this post-am convinced that the public would regard it in that light, and I particularly ask you to reflect that we never can do battle with the love of lords if we will not bestir ourselves to go into places which they have long monopolized. Now pray discuss this matter with yourself once more. If you can come to a favourable conclusion, I shall be really delighted, and will of course come from Dan's to be by you; if you cannot come to a favourable conclusion, I shall be really sorry, though I of course most readily defer to your right to regard such a matter from your own point of view.

"DOUGLAS JERROLD, ESQ.”

"Very faithfully yours,

"CHARLES DICKENS.

"48, DOUGHTY STREET,
"Sunday Morning.

"MY DEAR BLANCHARD,—I have booked you—one inside—for the fly to Ainsworth's, wherein all available places are now secured. As we have one Mr. Lover, of Charles Street, Middlesex Hospital, in the waybill, and the gen'l'man is to be took up at his own door, I must trouble you to have your luggage ready at the 'Currier Office' at a quarter past five.

E

"I am writing to you with a sad heart, for I have just indited a few lines to poor Chatfield. I do not like to break in upon him without notice, but I have told him you gave me reason to hope he would not be displeased to see me, and that if the changes of sickness leave him in the same mood, I will see him on Christmas morning (alas, poor fellow ! a merry time to us) at two o'clock.

"I was very much obliged to you, indeed, for the paper. I was not aware of the quotation, and was greatly amused with the 'leader.' It seemed to me exceedingly happy-terse, pointed, smart-and quite an off (hand) leader in short.

"I have been amused beyond all telling with your son's play, in which the rival kings talk a great deal more common sense than any stage kings I have ever known. I suppose its excessive length is an insuperable objection to its representation at Covent Garden-even if the character of Stephen were not an insuperable objection with 'Macweady,' who could never stand Anderson in such a part as that?

"My dear Blanchard, faithfully yours,

"CHARLES DICKENS."

"DEVONSHIRE Terrace,

"Fourth January, 1844.

"MY DEAR BLANCHARD,—I cannot thank you enough for the beautiful manner and the true spirit of friendship in which you have noticed my carol. But I must thank you, because you have filled my heart up to the brim, and it is running over.

"You meant to give me great pleasure, my dear fellow, and you have done it. The tone of your elegant and fervent praise has touched me in the tenderest place. I cannot write about it; and as to talking of it, I could no more do that than a dumb man. I have derived inexpressible gratification from what I know and feel was a labour of love on your part, and I can never forget it.

"When I think it likely that I may meet you (perhaps at Ainsworth's on Friday?) I shall slip a Carol into my pocket, and ask you to put it among your books, for my sake. You will never like it the less for having made it the means of so much happiness to me.

Always, my dear Blanchard, faithfully your friend,
"CHARLES DICKENS.

LAMAN BLANCHARD, ESQ."

LET the reader now mark the various expressions of the national-the universal-sorrow, with which the news of the death of the great speaker to the human heart was received. The Times said :

"The mere announcement that Charles Dickens is dead repeats the common sentence passed on all humanity. Death has once again demanded its own, and made a claim which all men must sooner or later meet. We forget how many mortals breath their last in every minute according to the calculations of statistical authorities. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, and yesterday, the 9th day of June, 1870, will be an evil day in the memories of all who can appreciate true genius and admire its matchless works. We have had greater writers both in poetry and prose, but they were not of our day and generation. For us just now this last is our greatest. It would have been great at any time-from the moment when he turned with aversion from the drudgery of a solicitor's office, amid the forebodings of his friends, and thenceforward rose in the clear light of literature, until he soared in the sunshine of success far above all of his fellows. There are minds of such jealous fibre that the very merits of an author, his mightiest gifts and his most special talents, only serve as food on which to nourish their prejudices. Such are they who, while forced to admit the wit, humour, and power of Charles Dickens, always added, 'But he was vulgar.' Yes, in one sense he was vulgar; he delighted in sketching the characters not of dukes and duchesses, but of the poor and lowly. He had listened to their wants and sorrows, seen them in their alleys and garrets, had learnt their accents and dialect by heart, and then, with a truth and liveliness all his own, he photographed them in his immortal works. In that sense alone was Charles Dickens vulgar.' He was of the people, and lived among them. He was not the close atmosphere of a saloon or of a forcinghouse. In the open air of the streets, and woods, and fields, he lived and had his being, and so he came into closer union with common men, and caught with an intuitive force and fulness of feature every detail of their daily life. His creations have become naturalized, so to speak,

among all classes of the community, and are familiar to every man, high or low. How many fine gentlemen and ladies, who never saw Pickwick or Sam Weller in the flesh, have laughed at their portraits by Charles Dickens! How many have been heart broken at the sufferings of Oliver, been indignant at the brutality of Bill Sykes, wept over the fallen Nancy's cruel fate, and even sympathized with the terrible agony of Fagin in the condemned cell, who, but for Charles Dickens, would never have known that such sorrows and crimes, such cruel wrongs, and such intensity of feeling existed in those lower depths of London life, far above which, like the golden gods of Epicurus, they lived in careless ease, till this great apostle of the people touched their hearts, and taught them that those inferior beings had hearts and souls of their own, and could be objects of sympathy as well as victims of neglect !

“We have heard it objected also by gentlemen that Charles Dickens could never describe a 'lady,' and by ladies that he could never sketch the character of a 'gentleman;' but we have always observed that when put to the proof, these male and female critics failed lamentably to establish their case. We are not sure that Charles Dickens' gentlemen were all as well dressed as those who resort to Poole's Temple of Fashion, or that his ladies were always attired in the very last fancy of Worth. Dress is no doubt what may be called in the catechism of gentility the ' outward and visible sign' of a gentleman, just as the outward fashion of a lady is shown by her dress; but even these are nothing if that 'inward and spiritual grace' which is characteristic of the true gentleman and real lady be wanting; and in that grace, however negligent they may be in their attire, the ladies and gentlemen in Charles Dickens' works are never deficient.

"We are not denying that the true type of gentle life is to be found in the upper classes. Far from it. We only insist, when we are told that Charles Dickens could not describe either a lady or a gentleman, that there are ladies and gentlemen in all ranks and classes of life, and that the inward delicacy and gentle feeling which we acknowledge as the only true criterion of the class may be found under the smock-frock of the ploughboy as well as beneath the mantle of an earl.

"When a great writer, on his death-bed, was with his last breath instructing his children in the secret of his success, he said, 'Be natural, my children, for the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of art.' And this was pre-eminently the case with Charles Dickens. His great characters have stuck fast root in the hearts of his countrymen, for this above all other reasons, that they are natural-natural both respectively to the writer who created them, and to the station in life in which they are supposed to live. Like the giant who revived as soon as he touched his mother earth, Charles Dickens was never so strong as when he threw himself back on the native soil of the social class among which he had been born and bred, whose virtues, faults, and foibles he could portray with a truth and vigour denied to any other man. That he was eminently successful may be proved by his works. He is gone, indeed,