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$6500 weekly for his readings and his other labors, and have given some little time to social recreation and to cultivating some of the friendships which should have been regarded by him as a privilege to contract. He did nothing of the kind after assuring himself that his readings were going to prove a financial success. He not only declined all proffers of hospitality, which of course were showered upon him, but avoided visits of courtesy, even sometimes to rudeness, rather than allow his literary work to be interrupted. One case of this kind was a source of great mortification to me. Having met Mr. Bryant, the poet, when he was in New York in 1842, he expressed to me a desire to meet him again; and on his learning the poet's address, left a card at his door. I mentioned to Mr. Bryant the interest Mr. Dickens expressed to meet him again, and the result was that Mr. Bryant returned his call in the forenoon of the following day, having learned that it was Mr. Dickens' habit to remain at home till after lunch. Mr. Dickens' valet said to Mr. Bryant that Mr. Dickens had given orders not to be interrupted. Mr. Bryant then told the valet to take his card to Mr. Dickens himself, and say that Mr. Bryant had called to see him. The man replied rather emphatically that his orders were to take no cards to Mr. Dickens until he was sent for. When a few evenings after this, Mr. Bryant recited to me the result of his visit, he said he thought it very uncivil. Happily they afterwards met at a dinner somewhere, and established relations satisfactory to both; but I doubt if Mr. Bryant every changed his opinion that, whatever else Dickens was, he was not a thoroughbred. I think myself that his lust for money made him unconsciously a suicide. Whenever a man forgets or neglects his duties to society in order that he may consecrate all his time to the promotion of his own personal interests, he certainly ceases to belong to the class embraced in the word gentleman, in its original and legitimate This Dickens did. As a consequence he had multitudes of admirers, but few friends. It is to be said, however, in extenuation of his conduct, that he was a constant sufferer while in New York from ill health, the consequence of his incessant labor, and the abuse of stimulants required to qualify him to meet all his engagements with the public. His throat had already exhibited evidences of weakness that should have warned him against the fatigue of public readings, from which he usually retired in such a profuse perspiration as to require a complete and immediate

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change of all his underclothing. He suffered in New York from a cold on the chest which would have made any prudent man cancel all his reading engagements and abandon the platform forever. I warned him one day very earnestly of the peril he was inviting, by the abuse of his voice and the nostrums he was taking to whip his vocal machinery up to its work. He listened to my warnings as if he knew the truth of what I said as well as I did, but he never made money so easily or so fast in his life before, and I doubt if death itself had more terrors for him than the neglect of this golden harvest possessed for him.

Here is his account of his mode of living for his last ten weeks in America as communicated to his friend Forster. "I cannot eat (to anything like the necessary extent) and have established this system. At 7 in the morning, in bed, a tumbler of new cream and two tablespoonfuls of rum. At 12 a sherry cobbler and a biscuit. At 3 (dinner time) a pint of champagne. At five minutes to 8 an egg beaten up with a glass of sherry. Between the parts, the strongest beef tea that can be made, drunk hot. At a quarter past 10, soup, and any little thing to drink that I can fancy. I do not eat more than half a pound of solid food in the whole four and twenty hours, if so much."

At his farewell reading in New York given on Monday evening, April 20th, 1868, a printed notice signed by Dr. Fordyce Parker, his physician, was distributed among the audience, stating that Mr. Dickens was suffering severely from a neuralgic affection of the foot a euphemism for the gout, it was supposed - but expressing the hope that in spite of it, he might be able to read. He did read; and whether it was the effect of his complaint or the prospect of soon quitting America, he was certainly in uncommon spirits, and many who had frequented his readings said he had never read so well before. I never saw him again.

Gifted as Dickens was as a writer in his own way, he saw only with his eyes, not with his understanding. He took note of what passed before him like a photographic plate, but he saw nothing more. If he saw a group of vagabonds in the street, he would note at a glance every expression of each one's countenance, every article of dress, every rent, patch, color and missing button, and remember exactly what, if anything, each one said and how he said it. But it would never have occurred to him to inquire what social, moral or political influences had grouped these vagabonds where he found them. He would paint with marvelous fidelity

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the outward symptoms and manifestations of misgovernment, but he never looked, nor did he seem to have the faculties required to look, beyond these outward symptoms which first address the eye, to those fundamental principles of political and social economy which such a spectacle might suggest to the philosophical statesman or economist. He was in fact to the social and political philosopher what the photographer is to the artist. He copied faithfully what passed across the field of his vision, but he could not combine the charms or elements of many scenes like Claude or Salvator Rosa and produce an ideal. He began his literary career as a reporter, and a reporter he remained to the end of the chapter. He learned little from, and profited less than most men by reflection. Dickens was not a philosopher, but he was a great humorist and a marvelous painter of human life. He created many men and perhaps one girl who will be living in the memories of the English reading world long after a majority of the statesmen of the Victorian era have become but the X. Y. Z. of an algebraic formula. He was a most agreeable companion, and take him all in all, was one of the rarest combinations of talents and virtues that England produced in his century.

(FROM MY DIARY)

THE SQUIRRELS,

December 4th. Received a telegram in Boston day before yesterday informing me that two horses which I had bought a few months ago at what was for me an extravagant price, had been stolen from my stable at Highland Falls, and that my friends there had pursued the thieves and captured one, with the horses. The captive proved to be a person who had been recently in charge of my stable. I caused him a few weeks later to be sent to the state's prison for a term of years. I never heard of him again. The other man, who probably seduced him, I never heard of at all.

The progress of the war waging between a majority of Congress and President Johnson at the opening of Congress in 1867, as it appeared in the eyes of the President's cabinet, is given in the