discussion, and to suppress and distort the truth in reference to it in every possible way (as you may easily suppose) are those who have a strong interest in the existing system of piracy and plunder; inasmuch as, so long as it continues, they can gain a very comfortable living out of the brains of other men, while they would find it very difficult to find bread by the exercise of their own. These are the editors and proprietors of newspapers almost exclusively devoted to the republication of popular English works.* They are, for the most part, men of very low attainments, and of more than indifferent reputation, and I have frequently seen them, in the same sheet in which they boast of the rapid sale of many thousand copies of an English reprint, coarsely and insolently, attacking the author of that very book, and heaping scurrility and slander upon his head. I would therefore entreat you, in the name of the honourable pursuit with which you are so intimately connected, never to hold correspondence with any of these men, and never to negotiate with them for the sale of

Shortly after his first landing in America, Thackeray was invited to dinner by one of the Messrs. Harper, the well-known publishing firm, whose magazine, Harper's Monthly, was at one period a deliberate compilation from all the best English periodicals. On his introduction to Mr. Harper, Thackeray had joked with him on the American contempt for copyright; and when he went into the drawing-room he took a little girl whom he found playing there on his knee, and gazing at her with feigned wonder, said in solemn tones, "And this is a pirate's daughter!!

:2

early proofs, over which you have control, but to treat on all occasions with some respectable American publishing house, and with such an establishment only. Our common interest in this subject, and my advocacy of it, single-handed, on every occasion that has presented itself during my absence from Europe, forms my excuse for addressing you.

To revert to the American visit, we may state that for the "Dickens Ball," at New York, on February 14th, 1842, a committee of the citizens recommended, among many other suggestions of a similar character, the following:

ORDER OF DANCES AND TABLEAUX VIVANTS.

12. Tableau Vivant.........The book of "Nicholas Nickleby."

13. March.

14. Tableau Vivant

15. Spanish Dance.

16. Tableau Vivant..

.....

"A Sketch, by Boz."

"The Pickwick Papers."

It is, perhaps, well to remark that "Mrs. Leo Hunter's dinner party" was presented among the tableaux, as finally amended. The following report of an actual incident at the ball reads like an extract from the account of the manner in which Martin Chuzzlewit "received" the American sovereigns at the "National Hotel":

"As Boz approached, Mr. Philip Hone seized his hand, and said, 'My dear sir, here is a handful of our people-right glad-bright eyes-rejoice-heartfelt welcome can't express-overpowered-feelings '— to all which Boz most graciously bowed, and placed his hand upon his heart; and then Mr. Hone said "nine cheers," and, evidently to the astonishment of the hero of the extraordinary scene, the surrounding crowd gave utterance to nine enthusiastic cheers."

Punch jokingly said: "We learnt, while having our hair cut at Truefitt's the other day (March, 1842), that that illustrious dealer in fictitious hair had received an immense order from Boz, originating in his desire to gratify the seventeen thousand American young ladies who had honoured him with applications for locks from his caput. Two ships have been chartered to convey the sentimental cargo, and will start from the London docks on the 1st day of April.”

Soon after his return from America we find Sydney Smith again in active correspondence with our author. Dickens had asked him to dinner, and Sydney Smith replied* :

*14th May, 1842.

"I accept your obliging invitation conditionally. If I am invited by any man of greater genius than yourself, or by one in whose works I have been more completely interested, I will repudiate you, and dine with the more splendid phenomenon of the two."

At the end of the year, on the 10th December, "The Patrician's Daughter," by Dr. Westland Marston, was represented at Drury Lane, the beautiful prologue by Dickens being admirably delivered by Mr. Macready.

CHAPTER X.

"MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT."

INDETERRED by the disapprobation showered down upon him by the Americans, on 1st January, 1843, Dickens issued the first

number of "Martin Chuzzlewit."

If there had been any previous doubt as to the general feeling throughout the States, there was none now. No sooner had the new book reached America than the storm burst forth with great violence, and all classes were so touched with Dickens's satire and the fun he had made of them, that a writer some time since said that when present at the Boston Theatre-the burlesque of "Macbeth" being performed all sorts of worthless articles (Mexican rifles, Pennsylvanian bonds, &c.) were pitched into the cauldron, in the incantation scene, but nothing provoked louder cheers than when the last work by Dickens was thrown in! The American journals, both literary and political, all united against the common foe, much in the same way as they had united twelve years before against Mrs. Trollope, and her "Domestic Manners of the Americans."

In the preface to the cheap edition appearing in