nowhere on this earth is the battle of life sharper than in the commonwealth of America-has taken new hope, and new courage, and new force from the manly lessons of that unobtrusive teacher."

He concluded by proposing "A prosperous voyage, health, and long life to our illustrious guest and countryman, Charles Dickens ;" and, if we remember the reports given of the banquet rightly, the company rose as one man to do honour to the toast, and drank it with such expressions of enthusiasm and goodwill as are rarely to be seen in any public assembly. Again and again the cheers burst forth, and it was some minutes before silence was restored.

Mr. Dickens replied in a speech such as no one else could have delivered, and towards its conclusion he said: "The story of my going to America is very easily and briefly told. Since I was there before, a vast and entirely new generation has arisen in the United States. Since that time, too, most of the best known of my books have been written and published. The new generation and the books have come together and have kept together, until at length numbers of those who have so widely and constantly read me, naturally desiring a little variety in the relations between us, have expressed a strong wish that I should read myself. This wish, at first conveyed to me through public as well as through business channels, has gradually become enforced by an immense accumulation of letters from private individuals and associations of individuals, all express

ing in the same hearty, homely, cordial, unaffected way a kind of personal affection for me, which I am sure you will agree with me that it would be downright insensibility on my part not to prize. Little by little this pressure has become so great that, although, as Charles Lamb says, 'My household gods strike a terribly deep root,' I have driven them from their places, and this day week, at this hour, shall be upon the sea. You will readily conceive that I am inspired besides by a natural desire to see for myself the astonishing progress of a quarter of a century over there to grasp the hands of many faithful friends whom I left there-to see the faces of a multitude of new friends upon whom I have never looked—and, though last, not least, to use my best endeavours to lay down a third cable of intercommunication and alliance between the Old World and the New.

"Twelve years ago, when, Heaven knows, I little thought I should ever be bound upon the voyage which now lies before me, I wrote in that form of my writings which obtains by far the most extensive circulation, these words about the American nation :'I know full well that whatever little motes my beamy eyes may have described in theirs, that they are a kind, large-hearted, generous, and great people.' In that faith I am going to see them again. In that faith I shall, please God, return from them in the spring, in that same faith to live and to die. My lords, ladies, and gentlemen, I told you in the beginning that I could not thank you enough, and Heaven

knows I have most thoroughly kept my word. If I may quote one other short sentence from myself, let it imply all that I have left unsaid and yet deeply feel; let it, putting a girdle round the earth, comprehend both sides of the Atlantic at once in this moment. As Tiny Tim observed, 'God bless us, every one.""

The great novelist left London on the following Friday for Liverpool, being accompanied to the station by a host of friends desirous of bidding him "God speed" and au revoir. The directors of the London and North-Western Company paid Mr. Dickens and party the compliment of placing at their disposal one of the Royal saloon carriages, the appearance of which excited great interest at the various stations at which the train stopped. On Saturday morning Mr. Dickens was on board the Cunard mailsteamer Cuba, commanded by Capt. Stone. A second officer's cabin was set aside for his exclusive use, and everything done that could ensure his personal comfort. He was accompanied by his machinist, Mr. Kelly, and a man-servant; and-like a true showman-carried with him the arrangements of his own platform, with the gas apparatus required for his readings.

On Friday, the 23rd of the same month, a telegram, "Safe and well," was received in London, announcing his arrival at Boston. He arrived there on the 19th, and was received with acclamations. Mr. Dolby, his agent, who preceded him, had disposed of

an immense number of tickets. The first reading took place on December 2nd, at Tremont Temple. After a few readings in Boston, he proceeded to New York, Washington, and Philadelphia, and read to immense audiences, being everywhere received with the greatest enthusiasm.

One of the papers * there said :-" No literary man except Thackeray ever had such a welcome from Philadelphia as Charles Dickens received last night at Concert Hall. The selling of the tickets two weeks ago almost amounted to a disturbance of the peace. Five hundred people in line, standing from midnight till noon, poorly represented the general desire to hear the great novelist on his first night. Everywhere that I looked in the crowded hall I saw some one not unknown to fame-some one representing either the intelligence or the beauty, the wealth or the fashion of Philadelphia. It was an audience which, in the words of Serjeant Buzfuz, I might declare an enlightened, a high-minded, a right feeling, a dispassionate, a conscientious, a sympathizing, a contemplative, and a poetical jury, to judge Charles Dickens without fear or favour. The novelist stepped upon the stage. His book in his hand, his bouquet in his coat-but I will not describe to readers the face and form many of them know so well. Mr. Dickens was received coldly. Here was an Englishman who had pulled us to pieces and tweaked the national nose by writing 'Martin

*New York Tribune, 14th Jan. 1868.

Chuzzlewit' and 'American Notes.'

Philadelphia

held out as long as she could. The first smile came in when Bob Cratchit warmed himself with a candle, but before Scrooge had got through with the first ghost the laughter was universal and uproarious. The Christmas dinner of the Cratchits was a tremendous success, as was Scrooge's Niece by marriage. There was a young lady in white fur and blue ribbons, name unknown to the writer, upon whose sympathies Mr. Dickens played as if she had been a piano. A deaf man could have followed his story by looking at her face. The goose convulsed her. The pudding threw her into hysterics; and when the story came to the sad death of Tiny Tim, 'my little, little child,' tears were streaming down her cheeks. This young lady was as good as Mr. Dickens, and all the more attractive because she couldn't help it. Then, as a joke began to be dimly foreseen, it was great to see the faint smile dawning on long lines of faces, growing brighter and brighter till it passed from sight to sound, and thundered to the roof in vast and inextinguishable laughter."

During his visit to America, the great men of the land travelled from far and near to be present at the readings; the poet Longfellow went three nights in succession, and he afterwards declared to a friend that they were "the most delightful evenings of his life."

On Saturday, the 18th April, he was entertained at a farewell dinner at Delmonico's Hotel, New York. Two hundred gentlemen sat down to it, and Mr.