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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Speeches: Literary and Social, by Charles Dickens
+(#20 in our series by Charles Dickens)
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+Title: Speeches: Literary and Social
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: February, 1997  [EBook #824]
+[This file was first posted on March 1, 1997]
+[Most recently updated: September 25, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, SPEECHES: LITERARY AND SOCIAL ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1880 Chatto and Windus edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+SPEECHES:  LITERARY AND SOCIAL BY CHARLES DICKENS
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  EDINBURGH, JUNE 25, 1841.
+
+
+
+[At a public dinner, given in honour of Mr. Dickens, and presided
+over by the late Professor Wilson, the Chairman having proposed his
+health in a long and eloquent speech, Mr. Dickens returned thanks
+as follows:-]
+
+If I felt your warm and generous welcome less, I should be better
+able to thank you.  If I could have listened as you have listened
+to the glowing language of your distinguished Chairman, and if I
+could have heard as you heard the "thoughts that breathe and words
+that burn," which he has uttered, it would have gone hard but I
+should have caught some portion of his enthusiasm, and kindled at
+his example.  But every word which fell from his lips, and every
+demonstration of sympathy and approbation with which you received
+his eloquent expressions, renders me unable to respond to his
+kindness, and leaves me at last all heart and no lips, yearning to
+respond as I would do to your cordial greeting--possessing, heaven
+knows, the will, and desiring only to find the way.
+
+The way to your good opinion, favour, and support, has been to me
+very pleasing--a path strewn with flowers and cheered with
+sunshine.  I feel as if I stood amongst old friends, whom I had
+intimately known and highly valued.  I feel as if the deaths of the
+fictitious creatures, in which you have been kind enough to express
+an interest, had endeared us to each other as real afflictions
+deepen friendships in actual life; I feel as if they had been real
+persons, whose fortunes we had pursued together in inseparable
+connexion, and that I had never known them apart from you.
+
+It is a difficult thing for a man to speak of himself or of his
+works.  But perhaps on this occasion I may, without impropriety,
+venture to say a word on the spirit in which mine were conceived.
+I felt an earnest and humble desire, and shall do till I die, to
+increase the stock of harmless cheerfulness.  I felt that the world
+was not utterly to be despised; that it was worthy of living in for
+many reasons.  I was anxious to find, as the Professor has said, if
+I could, in evil things, that soul of goodness which the Creator
+has put in them.  I was anxious to show that virtue may be found in
+the bye-ways of the world, that it is not incompatible with poverty
+and even with rags, and to keep steadily through life the motto,
+expressed in the burning words of your Northern poet -
+
+
+"The rank is but the guinea stamp,
+The man's the gowd for a' that."
+
+
+And in following this track, where could I have better assurance
+that I was right, or where could I have stronger assurance to cheer
+me on than in your kindness on this to me memorable night?
+
+I am anxious and glad to have an opportunity of saying a word in
+reference to one incident in which I am happy to know you were
+interested, and still more happy to know, though it may sound
+paradoxical, that you were disappointed--I mean the death of the
+little heroine.  When I first conceived the idea of conducting that
+simple story to its termination, I determined rigidly to adhere to
+it, and never to forsake the end I had in view.  Not untried in the
+school of affliction, in the death of those we love, I thought what
+a good thing it would be if in my little work of pleasant amusement
+I could substitute a garland of fresh flowers for the sculptured
+horrors which disgrace the tomb.  If I have put into my book
+anything which can fill the young mind with better thoughts of
+death, or soften the grief of older hearts; if I have written one
+word which can afford pleasure or consolation to old or young in
+time of trial, I shall consider it as something achieved--something
+which I shall be glad to look back upon in after life.  Therefore I
+kept to my purpose, notwithstanding that towards the conclusion of
+the story, I daily received letters of remonstrance, especially
+from the ladies.  God bless them for their tender mercies!  The
+Professor was quite right when he said that I had not reached to an
+adequate delineation of their virtues; and I fear that I must go on
+blotting their characters in endeavouring to reach the ideal in my
+mind.  These letters were, however, combined with others from the
+sterner sex, and some of them were not altogether free from
+personal invective.  But, notwithstanding, I kept to my purpose,
+and I am happy to know that many of those who at first condemned me
+are now foremost in their approbation.
+
+If I have made a mistake in detaining you with this little
+incident, I do not regret having done so; for your kindness has
+given me such a confidence in you, that the fault is yours and not
+mine.  I come once more to thank you, and here I am in a difficulty
+again.  The distinction you have conferred upon me is one which I
+never hoped for, and of which I never dared to dream.  That it is
+one which I shall never forget, and that while I live I shall be
+proud of its remembrance, you must well know.  I believe I shall
+never hear the name of this capital of Scotland without a thrill of
+gratitude and pleasure.  I shall love while I have life her people,
+her hills, and her houses, and even the very stones of her streets.
+And if in the future works which may lie before me you should
+discern--God grant you may!--a brighter spirit and a clearer wit, I
+pray you to refer it back to this night, and point to that as a
+Scottish passage for evermore.  I thank you again and again, with
+the energy of a thousand thanks in each one, and I drink to you
+with a heart as full as my glass, and far easier emptied, I do
+assure you.
+
+
+[Later in the evening, in proposing the health of Professor Wilson,
+Mr. Dickens said:-]
+
+
+I have the honour to be entrusted with a toast, the very mention of
+which will recommend itself to you, I know, as one possessing no
+ordinary claims to your sympathy and approbation, and the proposing
+of which is as congenial to my wishes and feelings as its
+acceptance must be to yours.  It is the health of our Chairman, and
+coupled with his name I have to propose the literature of Scotland-
+-a literature which he has done much to render famous through the
+world, and of which he has been for many years--as I hope and
+believe he will be for many more--a most brilliant and
+distinguished ornament.  Who can revert to the literature of the
+land of Scott and of Burns without having directly in his mind, as
+inseparable from the subject and foremost in the picture, that old
+man of might, with his lion heart and sceptred crutch--Christopher
+North.  I am glad to remember the time when I believed him to be a
+real, actual, veritable old gentleman, that might be seen any day
+hobbling along the High Street with the most brilliant eye--but
+that is no fiction--and the greyest hair in all the world--who
+wrote not because he cared to write, not because he cared for the
+wonder and admiration of his fellow-men, but who wrote because he
+could not help it, because there was always springing up in his
+mind a clear and sparkling stream of poetry which must have vent,
+and like the glittering fountain in the fairy tale, draw what you
+might, was ever at the full, and never languished even by a single
+drop or bubble.  I had so figured him in my mind, and when I saw
+the Professor two days ago, striding along the Parliament House, I
+was disposed to take it as a personal offence--I was vexed to see
+him look so hearty.  I drooped to see twenty Christophers in one.
+I began to think that Scottish life was all light and no shadows,
+and I began to doubt that beautiful book to which I have turned
+again and again, always to find new beauties and fresh sources of
+interest.
+
+
+[In proposing the memory of the late Sir David Wilkie, Mr. Dickens
+said:-]
+
+
+Less fortunate than the two gentlemen who have preceded me, it is
+confided to me to mention a name which cannot be pronounced without
+sorrow, a name in which Scotland had a great triumph, and which
+England delighted to honour.  One of the gifted of the earth has
+passed away, as it were, yesterday; one who was devoted to his art,
+and his art was nature--I mean David Wilkie. {1}  He was one who
+made the cottage hearth a graceful thing--of whom it might truly be
+said that he found "books in the running brooks," and who has left
+in all he did some breathing of the air which stirs the heather.
+But however desirous to enlarge on his genius as an artist, I would
+rather speak of him now as a friend who has gone from amongst us.
+There is his deserted studio--the empty easel lying idly by--the
+unfinished picture with its face turned to the wall, and there is
+that bereaved sister, who loved him with an affection which death
+cannot quench.  He has left a name in fame clear as the bright sky;
+he has filled our minds with memories pure as the blue waves which
+roll over him.  Let us hope that she who more than all others
+mourns his loss, may learn to reflect that he died in the fulness
+of his time, before age or sickness had dimmed his powers--and that
+she may yet associate with feelings as calm and pleasant as we do
+now the memory of Wilkie.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  JANUARY, 1842.
+
+
+
+[In presenting Captain Hewett, of the Britannia, {2} with a service
+of plate on behalf of the passengers, Mr. Dickens addressed him as
+follows:]
+
+Captain Hewett,--I am very proud and happy to have been selected as
+the instrument of conveying to you the heartfelt thanks of my
+fellow-passengers on board the ship entrusted to your charge, and
+of entreating your acceptance of this trifling present.  The
+ingenious artists who work in silver do not always, I find, keep
+their promises, even in Boston.  I regret that, instead of two
+goblets, which there should be here, there is, at present, only
+one.  The deficiency, however, will soon be supplied; and, when it
+is, our little testimonial will be, so far, complete.
+
+You are a sailor, Captain Hewett, in the truest sense of the word;
+and the devoted admiration of the ladies, God bless them, is a
+sailor's first boast.  I need not enlarge upon the honour they have
+done you, I am sure, by their presence here.  Judging of you by
+myself, I am certain that the recollection of their beautiful faces
+will cheer your lonely vigils upon the ocean for a long time to
+come.
+
+In all time to come, and in all your voyages upon the sea, I hope
+you will have a thought for those who wish to live in your memory
+by the help of these trifles.  As they will often connect you with
+the pleasure of those homes and fire sides from which they once
+wandered, and which, but for you, they might never have regained,
+so they trust that you will sometimes associate them with your
+hours of festive enjoyment; and, that, when you drink from these
+cups, you will feel that the draught is commended to your lips by
+friends whose best wishes you have; and who earnestly and truly
+hope for your success, happiness, and prosperity, in all the
+undertakings of your life.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  FEBRUARY 1842.
+
+
+
+[At dinner given to Mr. Dickens by the young men of Boston.  The
+company consisted of about two hundred, among whom were George
+Bancroft, Washington Allston, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.  The toast
+of "Health, happiness, and a hearty welcome to Charles Dickens,"
+having been proposed by the chairman, Mr. Quincy, and received with
+great applause, Mr. Dickens responded with the following address:]
+
+Gentlemen,--If you had given this splendid entertainment to anyone
+else in the whole wide world--if I were to-night to exult in the
+triumph of my dearest friend--if I stood here upon my defence, to
+repel any unjust attack--to appeal as a stranger to your generosity
+and kindness as the freest people on the earth--I could, putting
+some restraint upon myself, stand among you as self-possessed and
+unmoved as I should be alone in my own room in England.  But when I
+have the echoes of your cordial greeting ringing in my ears; when I
+see your kind faces beaming a welcome so warm and earnest as never
+man had--I feel, it is my nature, so vanquished and subdued, that I
+have hardly fortitude enough to thank you.  If your President,
+instead of pouring forth that delightful mixture of humour and
+pathos which you have just heard, had been but a caustic, ill-
+natured man--if he had only been a dull one--if I could only have
+doubted or distrusted him or you, I should have had my wits at my
+fingers' ends, and, using them, could have held you at arm's-
+length.  But you have given me no such opportunity; you take
+advantage of me in the tenderest point; you give me no chance of
+playing at company, or holding you at a distance, but flock about
+me like a host of brothers, and make this place like home.  Indeed,
+gentlemen, indeed, if it be natural and allowable for each of us,
+on his own hearth, to express his thoughts in the most homely
+fashion, and to appear in his plainest garb, I have a fair claim
+upon you to let me do so to-night, for you have made my home an
+Aladdin's Palace.  You fold so tenderly within your breasts that
+common household lamp in which my feeble fire is all enshrined, and
+at which my flickering torch is lighted up, that straight my
+household gods take wing, and are transported there.  And whereas
+it is written of that fairy structure that it never moved without
+two shocks--one when it rose, and one when it settled down--I can
+say of mine that, however sharp a tug it took to pluck it from its
+native ground, it struck at once an easy, and a deep and lasting
+root into this soil; and loved it as its own.  I can say more of
+it, and say with truth, that long before it moved, or had a chance
+of moving, its master--perhaps from some secret sympathy between
+its timbers, and a certain stately tree that has its being
+hereabout, and spreads its broad branches far and wide--dreamed by
+day and night, for years, of setting foot upon this shore, and
+breathing this pure air.  And, trust me, gentlemen, that, if I had
+wandered here, unknowing and unknown, I would--if I know my own
+heart--have come with all my sympathies clustering as richly about
+this land and people--with all my sense of justice as keenly alive
+to their high claims on every man who loves God's image--with all
+my energies as fully bent on judging for myself, and speaking out,
+and telling in my sphere the truth, as I do now, when you rain down
+your welcomes on my head.
+
+Our President has alluded to those writings which have been my
+occupation for some years past; and you have received his allusions
+in a manner which assures me--if I needed any such assurance--that
+we are old friends in the spirit, and have been in close communion
+for a long time.
+
+It is not easy for a man to speak of his own books.  I daresay that
+few persons have been more interested in mine than I, and if it be
+a general principle in nature that a lover's love is blind, and
+that a mother's love is blind, I believe it may be said of an
+author's attachment to the creatures of his own imagination, that
+it is a perfect model of constancy and devotion, and is the
+blindest of all.  But the objects and purposes I have had in view
+are very plain and simple, and may be easily told.  I have always
+had, and always shall have, an earnest and true desire to
+contribute, as far as in me lies, to the common stock of healthful
+cheerfulness and enjoyment.  I have always had, and always shall
+have, an invincible repugnance to that mole-eyed philosophy which
+loves the darkness, and winks and scowls in the light.  I believe
+that Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches, as she does in
+purple and fine linen.  I believe that she and every beautiful
+object in external nature, claims some sympathy in the breast of
+the poorest man who breaks his scanty loaf of daily bread.  I
+believe that she goes barefoot as well as shod.  I believe that she
+dwells rather oftener in alleys and by-ways than she does in courts
+and palaces, and that it is good, and pleasant, and profitable to
+track her out, and follow her.  I believe that to lay one's hand
+upon some of those rejected ones whom the world has too long
+forgotten, and too often misused, and to say to the proudest and
+most thoughtless--"These creatures have the same elements and
+capacities of goodness as yourselves, they are moulded in the same
+form, and made of the same clay; and though ten times worse than
+you, may, in having retained anything of their original nature
+amidst the trials and distresses of their condition, be really ten
+times better;" I believe that to do this is to pursue a worthy and
+not useless vocation.  Gentlemen, that you think so too, your
+fervent greeting sufficiently assures me.  That this feeling is
+alive in the Old World as well as in the New, no man should know
+better than I--I, who have found such wide and ready sympathy in my
+own dear land.  That in expressing it, we are but treading in the
+steps of those great master-spirits who have gone before, we know
+by reference to all the bright examples in our literature, from
+Shakespeare downward.
+
+There is one other point connected with the labours (if I may call
+them so) that you hold in such generous esteem, to which I cannot
+help adverting.  I cannot help expressing the delight, the more
+than happiness it was to me to find so strong an interest awakened
+on this side of the water, in favour of that little heroine of
+mine, to whom your president has made allusion, who died in her
+youth.  I had letters about that child, in England, from the
+dwellers in log-houses among the morasses, and swamps, and densest
+forests, and deep solitudes of the far west.  Many a sturdy hand,
+hard with the axe and spade, and browned by the summer's sun, has
+taken up the pen, and written to me a little history of domestic
+joy or sorrow, always coupled, I am proud to say, with something of
+interest in that little tale, or some comfort or happiness derived
+from it, and my correspondent has always addressed me, not as a
+writer of books for sale, resident some four or five thousand miles
+away, but as a friend to whom he might freely impart the joys and
+sorrows of his own fireside.  Many a mother--I could reckon them
+now by dozens, not by units--has done the like, and has told me how
+she lost such a child at such a time, and where she lay buried, and
+how good she was, and how, in this or that respect, she resembles
+Nell.  I do assure you that no circumstance of my life has given me
+one hundredth part of the gratification I have derived from this
+source.  I was wavering at the time whether or not to wind up my
+Clock, {3} and come and see this country, and this decided me.  I
+felt as if it were a positive duty, as if I were bound to pack up
+my clothes, and come and see my friends; and even now I have such
+an odd sensation in connexion with these things, that you have no
+chance of spoiling me.  I feel as though we were agreeing--as
+indeed we are, if we substitute for fictitious characters the
+classes from which they are drawn--about third parties, in whom we
+had a common interest.  At every new act of kindness on your part,
+I say to myself "That's for Oliver; I should not wonder if that was
+meant for Smike; I have no doubt that is intended for Nell;" and so
+I become a much happier, certainly, but a more sober and retiring
+man than ever I was before.
+
+Gentlemen, talking of my friends in America, brings me back,
+naturally and of course, to you.  Coming back to you, and being
+thereby reminded of the pleasure we have in store in hearing the
+gentlemen who sit about me, I arrive by the easiest, though not by
+the shortest course in the world, at the end of what I have to say.
+But before I sit down, there is one topic on which I am desirous to
+lay particular stress.  It has, or should have, a strong interest
+for us all, since to its literature every country must look for one
+great means of refining and improving its people, and one great
+source of national pride and honour.  You have in America great
+writers--great writers--who will live in all time, and are as
+familiar to our lips as household words.  Deriving (as they all do
+in a greater or less degree, in their several walks) their
+inspiration from the stupendous country that gave them birth, they
+diffuse a better knowledge of it, and a higher love for it, all
+over the civilized world.  I take leave to say, in the presence of
+some of those gentleman, that I hope the time is not far distant
+when they, in America, will receive of right some substantial
+profit and return in England from their labours; and when we, in
+England, shall receive some substantial profit and return in
+America for ours.  Pray do not misunderstand me.  Securing to
+myself from day to day the means of an honourable subsistence, I
+would rather have the affectionate regard of my fellow men, than I
+would have heaps and mines of gold.  But the two things do not seem
+to me incompatible.  They cannot be, for nothing good is
+incompatible with justice; there must be an international
+arrangement in this respect:  England has done her part, and I am
+confident that the time is not far distant when America will do
+hers.  It becomes the character of a great country; FIRSTLY,
+because it is justice; SECONDLY, because without it you never can
+have, and keep, a literature of your own.
+
+Gentlemen, I thank you with feelings of gratitude, such as are not
+often awakened, and can never be expressed.  As I understand it to
+be the pleasant custom here to finish with a toast, I would beg to
+give you:  AMERICA AND ENGLAND, and may they never have any
+division but the Atlantic between them.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  FEBRUARY 7, 1842.
+
+
+
+Gentlemen,--To say that I thank you for the earnest manner in which
+you have drunk the toast just now so eloquently proposed to you--to
+say that I give you back your kind wishes and good feelings with
+more than compound interest; and that I feel how dumb and powerless
+the best acknowledgments would be beside such genial hospitality as
+yours, is nothing.  To say that in this winter season, flowers have
+sprung up in every footstep's length of the path which has brought
+me here; that no country ever smiled more pleasantly than yours has
+smiled on me, and that I have rarely looked upon a brighter summer
+prospect than that which lies before me now, {4} is nothing.
+
+But it is something to be no stranger in a strange place--to feel,
+sitting at a board for the first time, the ease and affection of an
+old guest, and to be at once on such intimate terms with the family
+as to have a homely, genuine interest in its every member--it is, I
+say, something to be in this novel and happy frame of mind.  And,
+as it is of your creation, and owes its being to you, I have no
+reluctance in urging it as a reason why, in addressing you, I
+should not so much consult the form and fashion of my speech, as I
+should employ that universal language of the heart, which you, and
+such as you, best teach, and best can understand.  Gentlemen, in
+that universal language--common to you in America, and to us in
+England, as that younger mother-tongue, which, by the means of, and
+through the happy union of our two great countries, shall be spoken
+ages hence, by land and sea, over the wide surface of the globe--I
+thank you.
+
+I had occasion to say the other night in Boston, as I have more
+than once had occasion to remark before, that it is not easy for an
+author to speak of his own books.  If the task be a difficult one
+at any time, its difficulty, certainly, is not diminished when a
+frequent recurrence to the same theme has left one nothing new to
+say.  Still, I feel that, in a company like this, and especially
+after what has been said by the President, that I ought not to pass
+lightly over those labours of love, which, if they had no other
+merit, have been the happy means of bringing us together.
+
+It has been often observed, that you cannot judge of an author's
+personal character from his writings.  It may be that you cannot.
+I think it very likely, for many reasons, that you cannot.  But, at
+least, a reader will rise from the perusal of a book with some
+defined and tangible idea of the writer's moral creed and broad
+purposes, if he has any at all; and it is probable enough that he
+may like to have this idea confirmed from the author's lips, or
+dissipated by his explanation.  Gentlemen, my moral creed--which is
+a very wide and comprehensive one, and includes all sects and
+parties--is very easily summed up.  I have faith, and I wish to
+diffuse faith in the existence--yes, of beautiful things, even in
+those conditions of society, which are so degenerate, degraded, and
+forlorn, that, at first sight, it would seem as though they could
+not be described but by a strange and terrible reversal of the
+words of Scripture, "God said, Let there be light, and there was
+none."  I take it that we are born, and that we hold our
+sympathies, hopes, and energies, in trust for the many, and not for
+the few.  That we cannot hold in too strong a light of disgust and
+contempt, before the view of others, all meanness, falsehood,
+cruelty, and oppression, of every grade and kind.  Above all, that
+nothing is high, because it is in a high place; and that nothing is
+low, because it is in a low one.  This is the lesson taught us in
+the great book of nature.  This is the lesson which may be read,
+alike in the bright track of the stars, and in the dusty course of
+the poorest thing that drags its tiny length upon the ground.  This
+is the lesson ever uppermost in the thoughts of that inspired man,
+who tells us that there are
+
+
+"Tongues in the trees, books in the running brooks,
+Sermons in stones, and good in everything."
+
+
+Gentlemen, keeping these objects steadily before me, I am at no
+loss to refer your favour and your generous hospitality back to the
+right source.  While I know, on the one hand, that if, instead of
+being what it is, this were a land of tyranny and wrong, I should
+care very little for your smiles or frowns, so I am sure upon the
+other, that if, instead of being what I am, I were the greatest
+genius that ever trod the earth, and had diverted myself for the
+oppression and degradation of mankind, you would despise and reject
+me.  I hope you will, whenever, through such means, I give you the
+opportunity.  Trust me, that, whenever you give me the like
+occasion, I will return the compliment with interest.
+
+Gentlemen, as I have no secrets from you, in the spirit of
+confidence you have engendered between us, and as I have made a
+kind of compact with myself that I never will, while I remain in
+America, omit an opportunity of referring to a topic in which I and
+all others of my class on both sides of the water are equally
+interested--equally interested, there is no difference between us,
+I would beg leave to whisper in your ear two words:  INTERNATIONAL
+COPYRIGHT.  I use them in no sordid sense, believe me, and those
+who know me best, best know that.  For myself, I would rather that
+my children, coming after me, trudged in the mud, and knew by the
+general feeling of society that their father was beloved, and had
+been of some use, than I would have them ride in their carriages,
+and know by their banker's books that he was rich.  But I do not
+see, I confess, why one should be obliged to make the choice, or
+why fame, besides playing that delightful REVEIL for which she is
+so justly celebrated, should not blow out of her trumpet a few
+notes of a different kind from those with which she has hitherto
+contented herself.
+
+It was well observed the other night by a beautiful speaker, whose
+words went to the heart of every man who heard him, that, if there
+had existed any law in this respect, Scott might not have sunk
+beneath the mighty pressure on his brain, but might have lived to
+add new creatures of his fancy to the crowd which swarm about you
+in your summer walks, and gather round your winter evening hearths.
+
+As I listened to his words, there came back, fresh upon me, that
+touching scene in the great man's life, when he lay upon his couch,
+surrounded by his family, and listened, for the last time, to the
+rippling of the river he had so well loved, over its stony bed.  I
+pictured him to myself, faint, wan, dying, crushed both in mind and
+body by his honourable struggle, and hovering round him the
+phantoms of his own imagination--Waverley, Ravenswood, Jeanie
+Deans, Rob Roy, Caleb Balderstone, Dominie Sampson--all the
+familiar throng--with cavaliers, and Puritans, and Highland chiefs
+innumerable overflowing the chamber, and fading away in the dim
+distance beyond.  I pictured them, fresh from traversing the world,
+and hanging down their heads in shame and sorrow, that, from all
+those lands into which they had carried gladness, instruction, and
+delight for millions, they brought him not one friendly hand to
+help to raise him from that sad, sad bed.  No, nor brought him from
+that land in which his own language was spoken, and in every house
+and hut of which his own books were read in his own tongue, one
+grateful dollar-piece to buy a garland for his grave.  Oh! if every
+man who goes from here, as many do, to look upon that tomb in
+Dryburgh Abbey, would but remember this, and bring the recollection
+home!
+
+Gentlemen, I thank you again, and once again, and many times to
+that.  You have given me a new reason for remembering this day,
+which is already one of mark in my calendar, it being my birthday;
+and you have given those who are nearest and dearest to me a new
+reason for recollecting it with pride and interest.  Heaven knows
+that, although I should grow ever so gray, I shall need nothing to
+remind me of this epoch in my life.  But I am glad to think that
+from this time you are inseparably connected with every recurrence
+of this day; and, that on its periodical return, I shall always, in
+imagination, have the unfading pleasure of entertaining you as my
+guests, in return for the gratification you have afforded me to-
+night.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 18, 1842.
+
+
+
+[At a dinner presided over by Washington Irving, when nearly eight
+hundred of the most distinguished citizens of New York were
+present, "Charles Dickens, the Literary Guest of the Nation,"
+having been "proferred as a sentiment" by the Chairman, Mr. Dickens
+rose, and spoke as follows:]
+
+Gentlemen,--I don't know how to thank you--I really don't know how.
+You would naturally suppose that my former experience would have
+given me this power, and that the difficulties in my way would have
+been diminished; but I assure you the fact is exactly the reverse,
+and I have completely baulked the ancient proverb that "a rolling
+stone gathers no moss;" and in my progress to this city I have
+collected such a weight of obligations and acknowledgment--I have
+picked up such an enormous mass of fresh moss at every point, and
+was so struck by the brilliant scenes of Monday night, that I
+thought I could never by any possibility grow any bigger.  I have
+made, continually, new accumulations to such an extent that I am
+compelled to stand still, and can roll no more!
+
+Gentlemen, we learn from the authorities, that, when fairy stories,
+or balls, or rolls of thread, stopped of their own accord--as I do
+not--it presaged some great catastrophe near at hand. The precedent
+holds good in this case.  When I have remembered the short time I
+have before me to spend in this land of mighty interests, and the
+poor opportunity I can at best have of acquiring a knowledge of,
+and forming an acquaintance with it, I have felt it almost a duty
+to decline the honours you so generously heap upon me, and pass
+more quietly among you.  For Argus himself, though he had but one
+mouth for his hundred eyes, would have found the reception of a
+public entertainment once a-week too much for his greatest
+activity; and, as I would lose no scrap of the rich instruction and
+the delightful knowledge which meet me on every hand, (and already
+I have gleaned a great deal from your hospitals and common jails),-
+-I have resolved to take up my staff, and go my way rejoicing, and
+for the future to shake hands with America, not at parties but at
+home; and, therefore, gentlemen, I say to-night, with a full heart,
+and an honest purpose, and grateful feelings, that I bear, and
+shall ever bear, a deep sense of your kind, your affectionate and
+your noble greeting, which it is utterly impossible to convey in
+words.  No European sky without, and no cheerful home or well-
+warmed room within shall ever shut out this land from my vision.  I
+shall often hear your words of welcome in my quiet room, and
+oftenest when most quiet; and shall see your faces in the blazing
+fire.  If I should live to grow old, the scenes of this and other
+evenings will shine as brightly to my dull eyes fifty years hence
+as now; and the honours you bestow upon me shall be well remembered
+and paid back in my undying love, and honest endeavours for the
+good of my race.
+
+Gentlemen, one other word with reference to this first person
+singular, and then I shall close.  I came here in an open, honest,
+and confiding spirit, if ever man did, and because I felt a deep
+sympathy in your land; had I felt otherwise, I should have kept
+away.  As I came here, and am here, without the least admixture of
+one-hundredth part of one grain of base alloy, without one feeling
+of unworthy reference to self in any respect, I claim, in regard to
+the past, for the last time, my right in reason, in truth, and in
+justice, to approach, as I have done on two former occasions, a
+question of literary interest.  I claim that justice be done; and I
+prefer this claim as one who has a right to speak and be heard.  I
+have only to add that I shall be as true to you as you have been to
+me.  I recognize in your enthusiastic approval of the creatures of
+my fancy, your enlightened care for the happiness of the many, your
+tender regard for the afflicted, your sympathy for the downcast,
+your plans for correcting and improving the bad, and for
+encouraging the good; and to advance these great objects shall be,
+to the end of my life, my earnest endeavour, to the extent of my
+humble ability.  Having said thus much with reference to myself, I
+shall have the pleasure of saying a few words with reference to
+somebody else.
+
+There is in this city a gentleman who, at the reception of one of
+my books--I well remember it was the Old Curiosity Shop--wrote to
+me in England a letter so generous, so affectionate, and so manly,
+that if I had written the book under every circumstance of
+disappointment, of discouragement, and difficulty, instead of the
+reverse, I should have found in the receipt of that letter my best
+and most happy reward.  I answered him, {5} and he answered me, and
+so we kept shaking hands autographically, as if no ocean rolled
+between us.  I came here to this city eager to see him, and [laying
+his hand it upon Irving's shoulder] here he sits!  I need not tell
+you how happy and delighted I am to see him here to-night in this
+capacity.
+
+Washington Irving!  Why, gentlemen, I don't go upstairs to bed two
+nights out of the seven--as a very creditable witness near at hand
+can testify--I say I do not go to bed two nights out of the seven
+without taking Washington Irving under my arm; and, when I don't
+take him, I take his own brother, Oliver Goldsmith.  Washington
+Irving!  Why, of whom but him was I thinking the other day when I
+came up by the Hog's Back, the Frying Pan, Hell Gate, and all these
+places?  Why, when, not long ago, I visited Shakespeare's
+birthplace, and went beneath the roof where he first saw light,
+whose name but HIS was pointed out to me upon the wall?  Washington
+Irving--Diedrich Knickerbocker--Geoffrey Crayon--why, where can you
+go that they have not been there before?  Is there an English farm-
+-is there an English stream, an English city, or an English
+country-seat, where they have not been?  Is there no Bracebridge
+Hall in existence?  Has it no ancient shades or quiet streets?
+
+In bygone times, when Irving left that Hall, he left sitting in an
+old oak chair, in a small parlour of the Boar's Head, a little man
+with a red nose, and an oilskin hat.  When I came away he was
+sitting there still!--not a man LIKE him, but the same man--with
+the nose of immortal redness and the hat of an undying glaze!
+Crayon, while there, was on terms of intimacy with a certain
+radical fellow, who used to go about, with a hatful of newspapers,
+wofully out at elbows, and with a coat of great antiquity.  Why,
+gentlemen, I know that man--Tibbles the elder, and he has not
+changed a hair; and, when I came away, he charged me to give his
+best respects to Washington Irving!
+
+Leaving the town and the rustic life of England--forgetting this
+man, if we can--putting out of mind the country church-yard and the
+broken heart--let us cross the water again, and ask who has
+associated himself most closely with the Italian peasantry and the
+bandits of the Pyrenees?  When the traveller enters his little
+chamber beyond the Alps--listening to the dim echoes of the long
+passages and spacious corridors--damp, and gloomy, and cold--as he
+hears the tempest beating with fury against his window, and gazes
+at the curtains, dark, and heavy, and covered with mould--and when
+all the ghost-stories that ever were told come up before him--amid
+all his thick-coming fancies, whom does he think of?  Washington
+Irving.
+
+Go farther still:  go to the Moorish Mountains, sparkling full in
+the moonlight--go among the water-carriers and the village gossips,
+living still as in days of old--and who has travelled among them
+before you, and peopled the Alhambra and made eloquent its shadows?
+Who awakes there a voice from every hill and in every cavern, and
+bids legends, which for centuries have slept a dreamless sleep, or
+watched unwinkingly, start up and pass before you in all their life
+and glory?
+
+But leaving this again, who embarked with Columbus upon his gallant
+ship, traversed with him the dark and mighty ocean, leaped upon the
+land and planted there the flag of Spain, but this same man, now
+sitting by my side?  And being here at home again, who is a more
+fit companion for money-diggers? and what pen but his has made Rip
+Van Winkle, playing at nine-pins on that thundering afternoon, as
+much part and parcel of the Catskill Mountains as any tree or crag
+that they can boast?
+
+But these are topics familiar from my boyhood, and which I am apt
+to pursue; and lest I should be tempted now to talk too long about
+them, I will, in conclusion, give you a sentiment, most
+appropriate, I am sure, in the presence of such writers as Bryant,
+Halleck, and--but I suppose I must not mention the ladies here -
+
+
+THE LITERATURE OF AMERICA:
+
+
+She well knows how to do honour to her own literature and to that
+of other lands, when she chooses Washington Irving for her
+representative in the country of Cervantes.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  MANCHESTER, OCTOBER 5, 1843.
+
+
+
+[This address was delivered at a soiree of the members of the
+Manchester, Athenaeum, at which Mr. Dickens presided.  Among the
+other speakers on the occasion were Mr. Cobden and Mr. Disraeli.]
+
+Ladies and gentlemen,--I am sure I need scarcely tell you that I am
+very proud and happy; and that I take it as a great distinction to
+be asked to come amongst you on an occasion such as this, when,
+even with the brilliant and beautiful spectacle which I see before
+me, I can hail it as the most brilliant and beautiful circumstance
+of all, that we assemble together here, even here, upon neutral
+ground, where we have no more knowledge of party difficulties, or
+public animosities between side and side, or between man and man,
+than if we were a public meeting in the commonwealth of Utopia.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, upon this, and upon a hundred other grounds,
+this assembly is not less interesting to me, believe me--although,
+personally, almost a stranger here--than it is interesting to you;
+and I take it, that it is not of greater importance to all of us
+than it is to every man who has learned to know that he has an
+interest in the moral and social elevation, the harmless
+relaxation, the peace, happiness, and improvement, of the community
+at large.  Not even those who saw the first foundation of your
+Athenaeum laid, and watched its progress, as I know they did,
+almost as tenderly as if it were the progress of a living creature,
+until it reared its beautiful front, an honour to the town--not
+even they, nor even you who, within its walls, have tasted its
+usefulness, and put it to the proof, have greater reason, I am
+persuaded, to exult in its establishment, or to hope that it may
+thrive and prosper, than scores of thousands at a distance, who--
+whether consciously or unconsciously, matters not--have, in the
+principle of its success and bright example, a deep and personal
+concern.
+
+It well becomes, particularly well becomes, this enterprising town,
+this little world of labour, that she should stand out foremost in
+the foremost rank in such a cause.  It well becomes her, that,
+among her numerous and noble public institutions, she should have a
+splendid temple sacred to the education and improvement of a large
+class of those who, in their various useful stations, assist in the
+production of our wealth, and in rendering her name famous through
+the world.  I think it is grand to know, that, while her factories
+re-echo with the clanking of stupendous engines, and the whirl and
+rattle of machinery, the immortal mechanism of God's own hand, the
+mind, is not forgotten in the din and uproar, but is lodged and
+tended in a palace of its own.  That it is a structure deeply fixed
+and rooted in the public spirit of this place, and built to last, I
+have no more doubt, judging from the spectacle I see before me, and
+from what I know of its brief history, than I have of the reality
+of these walls that hem us in, and the pillars that spring up about
+us.
+
+You are perfectly well aware, I have no doubt, that the Athenaeum
+was projected at a time when commerce was in a vigorous and
+flourishing condition, and when those classes of society to which
+it particularly addresses itself were fully employed, and in the
+receipt of regular incomes.  A season of depression almost without
+a parallel ensued, and large numbers of young men employed in
+warehouses and offices suddenly found their occupation gone, and
+themselves reduced to very straitened and penurious circumstances.
+This altered state of things led, as I am told, to the compulsory
+withdrawal of many of the members, to a proportionate decrease in
+the expected funds, and to the incurrence of a debt of 3,000
+pounds.  By the very great zeal and energy of all concerned, and by
+the liberality of those to whom they applied for help, that debt is
+now in rapid course of being discharged.  A little more of the same
+indefatigable exertion on the one hand, and a little more of the
+same community of feeling upon the other, and there will be no such
+thing; the figures will be blotted out for good and all, and, from
+that time, the Athenaeum may be said to belong to you, and to your
+heirs for ever.
+
+But, ladies and gentlemen, at all times, now in its most thriving,
+and in its least flourishing condition--here, with its cheerful
+rooms, its pleasant and instructive lectures, its improving library
+of 6,000 volumes, its classes for the study of the foreign
+languages, elocution, music; its opportunities of discussion and
+debate, of healthful bodily exercise, and, though last not least--
+for by this I set great store, as a very novel and excellent
+provision--its opportunities of blameless, rational enjoyment, here
+it is, open to every youth and man in this great town, accessible
+to every bee in this vast hive, who, for all these benefits, and
+the inestimable ends to which they lead, can set aside one sixpence
+weekly.  I do look upon the reduction of the subscription, and upon
+the fact that the number of members has considerably more than
+doubled within the last twelve months, as strides in the path of
+the very best civilization, and chapters of rich promise in the
+history of mankind.
+
+I do not know whether, at this time of day, and with such a
+prospect before us, we need trouble ourselves very much to rake up
+the ashes of the dead-and-gone objections that were wont to be
+urged by men of all parties against institutions such as this,
+whose interests we are met to promote; but their philosophy was
+always to be summed up in the unmeaning application of one short
+sentence.  How often have we heard from a large class of men wise
+in their generation, who would really seem to be born and bred for
+no other purpose than to pass into currency counterfeit and
+mischievous scraps of wisdom, as it is the sole pursuit of some
+other criminals to utter base coin--how often have we heard from
+them, as an all-convincing argument, that "a little learning is a
+dangerous thing?"  Why, a little hanging was considered a very
+dangerous thing, according to the same authorities, with this
+difference, that, because a little hanging was dangerous, we had a
+great deal of it; and, because a little learning was dangerous, we
+were to have none at all.  Why, when I hear such cruel absurdities
+gravely reiterated, I do sometimes begin to doubt whether the
+parrots of society are not more pernicious to its interests than
+its birds of prey.  I should be glad to hear such people's estimate
+of the comparative danger of "a little learning" and a vast amount
+of ignorance; I should be glad to know which they consider the most
+prolific parent of misery and crime.  Descending a little lower in
+the social scale, I should be glad to assist them in their
+calculations, by carrying them into certain gaols and nightly
+refuges I know of, where my own heart dies within me, when I see
+thousands of immortal creatures condemned, without alternative or
+choice, to tread, not what our great poet calls the "primrose path"
+to the everlasting bonfire, but one of jaded flints and stones,
+laid down by brutal ignorance, and held together, like the solid
+rocks, by years of this most wicked axiom.
+
+Would we know from any honourable body of merchants, upright in
+deed and thought, whether they would rather have ignorant or
+enlightened persons in their own employment?  Why, we have had
+their answer in this building; we have it in this company; we have
+it emphatically given in the munificent generosity of your own
+merchants of Manchester, of all sects and kinds, when this
+establishment was first proposed.  But are the advantages derivable
+by the people from institutions such as this, only of a negative
+character?  If a little learning be an innocent thing, has it no
+distinct, wholesome, and immediate influence upon the mind?  The
+old doggerel rhyme, so often written in the beginning of books,
+says that
+
+
+"When house and lands are gone and spent,
+Then learning is most excellent;"
+
+
+but I should be strongly disposed to reform the adage, and say that
+
+
+"Though house and lands be never got,
+Learning can give what they canNOT."
+
+
+And this I know, that the first unpurchasable blessing earned by
+every man who makes an effort to improve himself in such a place as
+the Athenaeum, is self-respect--an inward dignity of character,
+which, once acquired and righteously maintained, nothing--no, not
+the hardest drudgery, nor the direst poverty--can vanquish.  Though
+he should find it hard for a season even to keep the wolf--hunger--
+from his door, let him but once have chased the dragon--ignorance--
+from his hearth, and self-respect and hope are left him.  You could
+no more deprive him of those sustaining qualities by loss or
+destruction of his worldly goods, than you could, by plucking out
+his eyes, take from him an internal consciousness of the bright
+glory of the sun.
+
+The man who lives from day to day by the daily exercise in his
+sphere of hands or head, and seeks to improve himself in such a
+place as the Athenaeum, acquires for himself that property of soul
+which has in all times upheld struggling men of every degree, but
+self-made men especially and always.  He secures to himself that
+faithful companion which, while it has ever lent the light of its
+countenance to men of rank and eminence who have deserved it, has
+ever shed its brightest consolations on men of low estate and
+almost hopeless means.  It took its patient seat beside Sir Walter
+Raleigh in his dungeon-study in the Tower; it laid its head upon
+the block with More; but it did not disdain to watch the stars with
+Ferguson, the shepherd's boy; it walked the streets in mean attire
+with Crabbe; it was a poor barber here in Lancashire with
+Arkwright; it was a tallow-chandler's son with Franklin; it worked
+at shoemaking with Bloomfield in his garret; it followed the plough
+with Burns; and, high above the noise of loom and hammer, it
+whispers courage even at this day in ears I could name in Sheffield
+and in Manchester.
+
+The more the man who improves his leisure in such a place learns,
+the better, gentler, kinder man he must become.  When he knows how
+much great minds have suffered for the truth in every age and time,
+and to what dismal persecutions opinion has been exposed, he will
+become more tolerant of other men's belief in all matters, and will
+incline more leniently to their sentiments when they chance to
+differ from his own.  Understanding that the relations between
+himself and his employers involve a mutual duty and responsibility,
+he will discharge his part of the implied contract cheerfully,
+satisfactorily, and honourably; for the history of every useful
+life warns him to shape his course in that direction.
+
+The benefits he acquires in such a place are not of a selfish kind,
+but extend themselves to his home, and to those whom it contains.
+Something of what he hears or reads within such walls can scarcely
+fail to become at times a topic of discourse by his own fireside,
+nor can it ever fail to lead to larger sympathies with man, and to
+a higher veneration for the great Creator of all the wonders of
+this universe.  It appears to his home and his homely feeling in
+other ways; for at certain times he carries there his wife and
+daughter, or his sister, or, possibly, some bright-eyed
+acquaintance of a more tender description.  Judging from what I see
+before me, I think it is very likely; I am sure I would if I could.
+He takes her there to enjoy a pleasant evening, to be gay and
+happy.  Sometimes it may possibly happen that he dates his
+tenderness from the Athenaeum.  I think that is a very excellent
+thing, too, and not the least among the advantages of the
+institution.  In any case, I am sure the number of bright eyes and
+beaming faces which grace this meeting to-night by their presence,
+will never be among the least of its excellences in my
+recollection.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, I shall not easily forget this scene, the
+pleasing task your favour has devolved upon me, or the strong and
+inspiring confirmation I have to-night, of all the hopes and
+reliances I have ever placed upon institutions of this nature.  In
+the latter point of view--in their bearing upon this latter point--
+I regard them as of great importance, deeming that the more
+intelligent and reflective society in the mass becomes, and the
+more readers there are, the more distinctly writers of all kinds
+will be able to throw themselves upon the truthful feeling of the
+people and the more honoured and the more useful literature must
+be.  At the same time, I must confess that, if there had been an
+Athenaeum, and if the people had been readers, years ago, some
+leaves of dedication in your library, of praise of patrons which
+was very cheaply bought, very dearly sold, and very marketably
+haggled for by the groat, would be blank leaves, and posterity
+might probably have lacked the information that certain monsters of
+virtue ever had existence.  But it is upon a much better and wider
+scale, let me say it once again--it is in the effect of such
+institutions upon the great social system, and the peace and
+happiness of mankind, that I delight to contemplate them; and, in
+my heart, I am quite certain that long after your institution, and
+others of the same nature, have crumbled into dust, the noble
+harvest of the seed sown in them will shine out brightly in the
+wisdom, the mercy, and the forbearance of another race.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LIVERPOOL, FEBRUARY 26, 1844.
+
+
+
+[The following address was delivered at a soiree of the Liverpool
+Mechanics' Institution, at which Mr. Dickens presided.]
+
+Ladies and gentlemen,--It was rather hard of you to take away my
+breath before I spoke a word; but I would not thank you, even if I
+could, for the favour which has set me in this place, or for the
+generous kindness which has greeted me so warmly,--because my first
+strong impulse still would be, although I had that power, to lose
+sight of all personal considerations in the high intent and meaning
+of this numerous assemblage, in the contemplation of the noble
+objects to which this building is devoted, of its brilliant and
+inspiring history, of that rough, upward track, so bravely trodden,
+which it leaves behind, and that bright path of steadily-increasing
+usefulness which lies stretched out before it.  My first strong
+impulse still would be to exchange congratulations with you, as the
+members of one united family, on the thriving vigour of this
+strongest child of a strong race.  My first strong impulse still
+would be, though everybody here had twice as many hundreds of hands
+as there are hundreds of persons present, to shake them in the
+spirit, everyone, always, allow me to say, excepting those hands
+(and there are a few such here), which, with the constitutional
+infirmity of human nature, I would rather salute in some more
+tender fashion.
+
+When I first had the honour of communicating with your Committee
+with reference to this celebration, I had some selfish hopes that
+the visit proposed to me might turn out to be one of
+congratulation, or, at least, of solicitous inquiry; for they who
+receive a visitor in any season of distress are easily touched and
+moved by what he says, and I entertained some confident expectation
+of making a mighty strong impression on you.  But, when I came to
+look over the printed documents which were forwarded to me at the
+same time, and with which you are all tolerably familiar, these
+anticipations very speedily vanished, and left me bereft of all
+consolation, but the triumphant feeling to which I have referred.
+For what do I find, on looking over those brief chronicles of this
+swift conquest over ignorance and prejudice, in which no blood has
+been poured out, and no treaty signed but that one sacred compact
+which recognises the just right of every man, whatever his belief,
+or however humble his degree, to aspire, and to have some means of
+aspiring, to be a better and a wiser man?  I find that, in 1825,
+certain misguided and turbulent persons proposed to erect in
+Liverpool an unpopular, dangerous, irreligious, and revolutionary
+establishment, called a Mechanics' Institution; that, in 1835,
+Liverpool having, somehow or other, got on pretty comfortably in
+the meantime, in spite of it, the first stone of a new and spacious
+edifice was laid; that, in 1837, it was opened; that, it was
+afterwards, at different periods, considerably enlarged; that, in
+1844, conspicuous amongst the public beauties of a beautiful town,
+here it stands triumphant, its enemies lived down, its former
+students attesting, in their various useful callings and pursuits,
+the sound, practical information it afforded them; its members
+numbering considerably more than 3,000, and setting in rapidly for
+6,000 at least; its library comprehending 11,000 volumes, and daily
+sending forth its hundreds of books into private homes; its staff
+of masters and officers, amounting to half-a-hundred in themselves;
+its schools, conveying every sort of instruction, high and low,
+adapted to the labour, means, exigencies, and convenience of nearly
+every class and grade of persons.  I was here this morning, and in
+its spacious halls I found stores of the wonders worked by nature
+in the air, in the forest, in the cavern, and in the sea--stores of
+the surpassing engines devised by science for the better knowledge
+of other worlds, and the greater happiness of this--stores of those
+gentler works of art, which, though achieved in perishable stone,
+by yet more perishable hands of dust, are in their influence
+immortal.  With such means at their command, so well-directed, so
+cheaply shared, and so extensively diffused, well may your
+Committee say, as they have done in one of their Reports, that the
+success of this establishment has far exceeded their most sanguine
+expectations.
+
+But, ladies and gentlemen, as that same philosopher whose words
+they quote, as Bacon tells us, instancing the wonderful effects of
+little things and small beginnings, that the influence of the
+loadstone was first discovered in particles of iron, and not in
+iron bars, so they may lay it to their hearts, that when they
+combined together to form the institution which has risen to this
+majestic height, they issued on a field of enterprise, the glorious
+end of which they cannot even now discern.  Every man who has felt
+the advantages of, or has received improvement in this place,
+carries its benefits into the society in which he moves, and puts
+them out at compound interest; and what the blessed sum may be at
+last, no man can tell.  Ladies and gentlemen, with that Christian
+prelate whose name appears on your list of honorary Members; that
+good and liberal man who once addressed you within these walls, in
+a spirit worthy of his calling, and of his High Master--I look
+forward from this place, as from a tower, to the time when high and
+low, and rich and poor, shall mutually assist, improve, and educate
+each other.
+
+I feel, ladies and gentlemen, that this is not a place, with its
+3,200 members, and at least 3,200 arguments in every one, to enter
+on any advocacy of the principle of Mechanics' Institutions, or to
+discuss the subject with those who do or ever did object to them.
+I should as soon think of arguing the point with those untutored
+savages whose mode of life you last year had the opportunity of
+witnessing; indeed, I am strongly inclined to believe them by far
+the more rational class of the two.  Moreover, if the institution
+itself be not a sufficient answer to all such objections, then
+there is no such thing in fact or reason, human or divine.  Neither
+will I venture to enter into those details of the management of
+this place which struck me most on the perusal of its papers; but I
+cannot help saying how much impressed and gratified I was, as
+everybody must be who comes to their perusal for the first time, by
+the extraordinary munificence with which this institution has been
+endowed by certain gentlemen.
+
+Amongst the peculiar features of management which made the greatest
+impression on me, I may observe that that regulation which empowers
+fathers, being annual subscribers of one guinea, to introduce their
+sons who are minors; and masters, on payment of the astoundingly
+small sum of five shillings annually, in like manner their
+apprentices, is not the least valuable of its privileges; and,
+certainly not the one least valuable to society.  And, ladies and
+gentlemen, I cannot say to you what pleasure I derived from the
+perusal of an apparently excellent report in your local papers of a
+meeting held here some short time since, in aid of the formation of
+a girls' school in connexion with this institution.  This is a new
+and striking chapter in the history of these institutions; it does
+equal credit to the gallantry and policy of this, and disposes one
+to say of it with a slight parody on the words of Burns, that
+
+
+"Its 'prentice han' it tried on man,
+And then it TAUGHT the lasses, O."
+
+
+That those who are our best teachers, and whose lessons are
+oftenest heeded in after life, should be well taught themselves, is
+a proposition few reasonable men will gainsay; and, certainly, to
+breed up good husbands on the one hand, and good wives on the
+other, does appear as reasonable and straightforward a plan as
+could well be devised for the improvement of the next generation.
+
+This, and what I see before me, naturally brings me to our fairer
+members, in respect of whom I have no doubt you will agree with me,
+that they ought to be admitted to the widest possible extent, and
+on the lowest possible terms; and, ladies, let me venture to say to
+you, that you never did a wiser thing in all your lives than when
+you turned your favourable regard on such an establishment as this-
+-for wherever the light of knowledge is diffused, wherever the
+humanizing influence of the arts and sciences extends itself,
+wherever there is the clearest perception of what is beautiful, and
+good, and most redeeming, amid all the faults and vices of mankind,
+there your character, your virtues, your graces, your better
+nature, will be the best appreciated, and there the truest homage
+will be proudly paid to you.  You show best, trust me, in the
+clearest light; and every ray that falls upon you at your own
+firesides, from any book or thought communicated within these
+walls, will raise you nearer to the angels in the eyes you care for
+most.
+
+I will not longer interpose myself, ladies and gentlemen, between
+you and the pleasure we all anticipate in hearing other gentlemen,
+and in enjoying those social pleasures with which it is a main part
+of the wisdom of this society to adorn and relieve its graver
+pursuits.  We all feel, I am sure, being here, that we are truly
+interested in the cause of human improvement and rational
+education, and that we pledge ourselves, everyone as far as in him
+lies, to extend the knowledge of the benefits afforded in this
+place, and to bear honest witness in its favour.  To those who yet
+remain without its walls, but have the means of purchasing its
+advantages, we make appeal, and in a friendly and forbearing spirit
+say, "Come in, and be convinced -
+
+
+'Who enters here, leaves DOUBT behind.'"
+
+
+If you, happily, have been well taught yourself, and are superior
+to its advantages, so much the more should you make one in sympathy
+with those who are below you.  Beneath this roof we breed the men
+who, in the time to come, must be found working for good or evil,
+in every quarter of society.  If mutual respect and forbearance
+among various classes be not found here, where so many men are
+trained up in so many grades, to enter on so many roads of life,
+dating their entry from one common starting-point, as they are all
+approaching, by various paths, one common end, where else can that
+great lesson be imbibed?  Differences of wealth, of rank, of
+intellect, we know there must be, and we respect them; but we would
+give to all the means of taking out one patent of nobility, and we
+define it, in the words of a great living poet, who is one of us,
+and who uses his great gifts, as he holds them in trust, for the
+general welfare -
+
+
+"Howe'er it be, it seems to me
+'Tis only noble to be good:
+True hearts are more than coronets,
+And simple faith than Norman blood." {6}
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  BIRMINGHAM, FEBRUARY 28, 1844.
+
+
+
+[The following speech was delivered at a Conversazione, in aid of
+the funds of the Birmingham Polytechnic Institution, at which Mr
+Dickens presided.]
+
+You will think it very unwise, or very self-denying in me, in such
+an assembly, in such a splendid scene, and after such a welcome, to
+congratulate myself on having nothing new to say to you:  but I do
+so, notwithstanding.  To say nothing of places nearer home, I had
+the honour of attending at Manchester, shortly before Christmas,
+and at Liverpool, only the night before last, for a purpose similar
+to that which brings you together this evening; and looking down a
+short perspective of similar engagements, I feel gratification at
+the thought that I shall very soon have nothing at all to say; in
+which case, I shall be content to stake my reputation, like the
+Spectator of Addison, and that other great periodical speaker, the
+Speaker of the House of Commons, on my powers of listening.
+
+This feeling, and the earnest reception I have met with, are not
+the only reasons why I feel a genuine, cordial, and peculiar
+interest in this night's proceedings.  The Polytechnic Institution
+of Birmingham is in its infancy--struggling into life under all
+those adverse and disadvantageous circumstances which, to a greater
+or less extent, naturally beset all infancy; but I would much
+rather connect myself with it now, however humble, in its days of
+difficulty and of danger, than look back on its origin when it may
+have become strong, and rich, and powerful.  I should prefer an
+intimate association with it now, in its early days and apparent
+struggles, to becoming its advocate and acquaintance, its fair-
+weather friend, in its high and palmy days.  I would rather be able
+to say I knew it in its swaddling-clothes, than in maturer age.
+Its two elder brothers have grown old and died:  their chests were
+weak--about their cradles nurses shook their heads, and gossips
+groaned; but the present institution shot up, amidst the ruin of
+those which have fallen, with an indomitable constitution, with
+vigorous and with steady pulse; temperate, wise, and of good
+repute; and by perseverance it has become a very giant.  Birmingham
+is, in my mind and in the minds of most men, associated with many
+giants; and I no more believe that this young institution will turn
+out sickly, dwarfish, or of stunted growth, than I do that when the
+glass-slipper of my chairmanship shall fall off, and the clock
+strike twelve to-night, this hall will be turned into a pumpkin.  I
+found that strong belief upon the splendid array of grace and
+beauty by which I am surrounded, and which, if it only had one-
+hundredth part of the effect upon others it has upon me, could do
+anything it pleased with anything and anybody.  I found my strong
+conviction, in the second place, upon the public spirit of the town
+of Birmingham--upon the name and fame of its capitalists and
+working men; upon the greatness and importance of its merchants and
+manufacturers; upon its inventions, which are constantly in
+progress; upon the skill and intelligence of its artisans, which
+are daily developed; and the increasing knowledge of all portions
+of the community.  All these reasons lead me to the conclusion that
+your institution will advance--that it will and must progress, and
+that you will not be content with lingering leagues behind.
+
+I have another peculiar ground of satisfaction in connexion with
+the object of this assembly; and it is, that the resolutions about
+to be proposed do not contain in themselves anything of a sectarian
+or class nature; that they do not confine themselves to any one
+single institution, but assert the great and omnipotent principles
+of comprehensive education everywhere and under every circumstance.
+I beg leave to say that I concur, heart and hand, in those
+principles, and will do all in my power for their advancement; for
+I hold, in accordance with the imperfect knowledge which I possess,
+that it is impossible for any fabric of society to go on day after
+day, and year after year, from father to son, and from grandfather
+to grandson, punishing men for not engaging in the pursuit of
+virtue and for the practice of crime, without showing them what
+virtue is, and where it best can be found--in justice, religion,
+and truth.  The only reason that can possibly be adduced against it
+is one founded on fiction--namely, the case where an obdurate old
+geni, in the "Arabian Nights," was bound upon taking the life of a
+merchant, because he had struck out the eye of his invisible son.
+I recollect, likewise, a tale in the same book of charming fancies,
+which I consider not inappropriate:  it is a case where a powerful
+spirit has been imprisoned at the bottom of the sea, in a casket
+with a leaden cover, and the seal of Solomon upon it; there he had
+lain neglected for many centuries, and during that period had made
+many different vows:  at first, that he would reward magnificently
+those who should release him; and at last, that he would destroy
+them.  Now, there is a spirit of great power--the Spirit of
+Ignorance--which is shut up in a vessel of leaden composition, and
+sealed with the seal of many, many Solomons, and which is
+effectually in the same position:  release it in time, and it will
+bless, restore, and reanimate society; but let it lie under the
+rolling waves of years, and its blind revenge is sure to lead to
+certain destruction.  That there are classes which, if rightly
+treated, constitute strength, and if wrongly, weakness, I hold it
+impossible to deny--by these classes I mean industrious,
+intelligent, and honourably independent men, in whom the higher
+classes of Birmingham are especially interested, and bound to
+afford them the means of instruction and improvement, and to
+ameliorate their mental and moral condition.  Far be it from me
+(and I wish to be most particularly understood) to attempt to
+depreciate the excellent Church Instruction Societies, or the
+worthy, sincere, and temperate zeal of those reverend gentlemen by
+whom they are usually conducted; on the contrary, I believe that
+they have done, and are doing, much good, and are deserving of high
+praise; but I hope that, without offence, in a community such as
+Birmingham, there are other objects not unworthy in the sight of
+heaven, and objects of recognised utility which are worthy of
+support--principles which are practised in word and deed in
+Polytechnic Institutions--principles for the diffusion of which
+honest men of all degrees and of every creed might associate
+together, on an independent footing and on neutral ground, and at a
+small expense, for the better understanding and the greater
+consideration of each other, and for the better cultivation of the
+happiness of all:  for it surely cannot be allowed that those who
+labour day by day, surrounded by machinery, shall be permitted to
+degenerate into machines themselves, but, on the contrary, they
+should assert their common origin from their Creator, at the hands
+of those who are responsible and thinking men.  There is, indeed,
+no difference in the main with respect to the dangers of ignorance
+and the advantages of knowledge between those who hold different
+opinions--for it is to be observed, that those who are most
+distrustful of the advantages of education, are always the first to
+exclaim against the results of ignorance.  This fact was pleasantly
+illustrated on the railway, as I came here.  In the same carriage
+with me there sat an ancient gentleman (I feel no delicacy in
+alluding to him, for I know that he is not in the room, having got
+out far short of Birmingham), who expressed himself most mournfully
+as to the ruinous effects and rapid spread of railways, and was
+most pathetic upon the virtues of the slow-going old stage coaches.
+Now I, entertaining some little lingering kindness for the road,
+made shift to express my concurrence with the old gentleman's
+opinion, without any great compromise of principle.  Well, we got
+on tolerably comfortably together, and when the engine, with a
+frightful screech, dived into some dark abyss, like some strange
+aquatic monster, the old gentleman said it would never do, and I
+agreed with him.  When it parted from each successive station, with
+a shock and a shriek as if it had had a double-tooth drawn, the old
+gentleman shook his head, and I shook mine.  When he burst forth
+against such new-fangled notions, and said no good could come of
+them, I did not contest the point.  But I found that when the speed
+of the engine was abated, or there was a prolonged stay at any
+station, up the old gentleman was at arms, and his watch was
+instantly out of his pocket, denouncing the slowness of our
+progress.  Now I could not help comparing this old gentleman to
+that ingenious class of persons who are in the constant habit of
+declaiming against the vices and crimes of society, and at the same
+time are the first and foremost to assert that vice and crime have
+not their common origin in ignorance and discontent.
+
+The good work, however, in spite of all political and party
+differences, has been well begun; we are all interested in it; it
+is advancing, and cannot be stopped by any opposition, although it
+may be retarded in this place or in that, by the indifference of
+the middle classes, with whom its successful progress chiefly
+rests.  Of this success I cannot entertain a doubt; for whenever
+the working classes have enjoyed an opportunity of effectually
+rebutting accusations which falsehood or thoughtlessness have
+brought against them, they always avail themselves of it, and show
+themselves in their true characters; and it was this which made the
+damage done to a single picture in the National Gallery of London,
+by some poor lunatic or cripple, a mere matter of newspaper
+notoriety and wonder for some few days.  This, then, establishes a
+fact evident to the meanest comprehension--that any given number of
+thousands of individuals, in the humblest walks of life in this
+country, can pass through the national galleries or museums in
+seasons of holiday-making, without damaging, in the slightest
+degree, those choice and valuable collections.  I do not myself
+believe that the working classes ever were the wanton or
+mischievous persons they were so often and so long represented to
+be; but I rather incline to the opinion that some men take it into
+their heads to lay it down as a matter of fact, without being
+particular about the premises; and that the idle and the
+prejudiced, not wishing to have the trouble of forming opinions for
+themselves, take it for granted--until the people have an
+opportunity of disproving the stigma and vindicating themselves
+before the world.
+
+Now this assertion is well illustrated by what occurred respecting
+an equestrian statue in the metropolis, with respect to which a
+legend existed that the sculptor hanged himself, because he had
+neglected to put a girth to the horse.  This story was currently
+believed for many years, until it was inspected for altogether a
+different purpose, and it was found to have had a girth all the
+time.
+
+But surely if, as is stated, the people are ill-disposed and
+mischievous, that is the best reason that can be offered for
+teaching them better; and if they are not, surely that is a reason
+for giving them every opportunity of vindicating their injured
+reputation; and no better opportunity could possibly be afforded
+than that of associating together voluntarily for such high
+purposes as it is proposed to carry out by the establishment of the
+Birmingham Polytechnic Institution.  In any case--nay, in every
+case--if we would reward honesty, if we would hold out
+encouragement to good, if we would eradicate that which is evil or
+correct that which is bad, education--comprehensive, liberal
+education--is the one thing needful, and the only effective end.
+If I might apply to my purpose, and turn into plain prose some
+words of Hamlet--not with reference to any government or party (for
+party being, for the most part, an irrational sort of thing, has no
+connexion with the object we have in view)--if I might apply those
+words to education as Hamlet applied them to the skull of Yorick, I
+would say--"Now hie thee to the council-chamber, and tell them,
+though they lay it on in sounding thoughts and learned words an
+inch thick, to this complexion they must come at last."
+
+
+In answer to a vote of thanks, {7} Mr. Dickens said, at the close
+of the meeting -
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen, we are now quite even--for every effect
+which I may have made upon you, the compliment has been amply
+returned to me; but at the same time I am as little disposed to say
+to you, 'go and sin no more,' as I am to promise for myself that 'I
+will never do so again.'  So long as I can make you laugh and cry,
+I will; and you will readily believe me, when I tell you, you
+cannot do too much on your parts to show that we are still cordial
+and loving friends.  To you, ladies of the Institution, I am deeply
+and especially indebted.  I sometimes [pointing to the word 'Boz'
+in front of the great gallery] think there is some small quantity
+of magic in that very short name, and that it must consist in its
+containing as many letters as the three graces, and they, every one
+of them, being of your fair sisterhood.
+
+A story is told of an eastern potentate of modern times, who, for
+an eastern potentate, was a tolerably good man, sometimes
+bowstringing his dependants indiscriminately in his moments of
+anger, but burying them in great splendour in his moments of
+penitence, that whenever intelligence was brought him of a new plot
+or turbulent conspiracy, his first inquiry was, 'Who is she?'
+meaning that a woman was at the bottom.  Now, in my small way, I
+differ from that potentate; for when there is any good to be
+attained, the services of any ministering angel required, my first
+inquiry is, 'Where is she?' and the answer invariably is, 'Here.'
+Proud and happy am I indeed to thank you for your generosity -
+
+'A thousand times, good night;
+A thousand times the worse to want your light.'
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  GARDENERS AND GARDENING.  LONDON, JUNE 14, 1852.
+
+
+
+[The Ninth Anniversary Dinner of the Gardeners' Benevolent
+Institution was held on the above date at the London Tavern.  The
+company numbered more than 150.  The dessert was worthy of the
+occasion, and an admirable effect was produced by a profuse display
+of natural flowers upon the tables and in the decoration of the
+room.  The chair was taken by Mr. Charles Dickens, who, in
+proposing the toast of the evening, spoke as follows:-]
+
+For three times three years the Gardeners' Benevolent Institution
+has been stimulated and encouraged by meetings such as this, and by
+three times three cheers we will urge it onward in its prosperous
+career.  [The cheers were warmly given.]
+
+Occupying the post I now do, I feel something like a counsel for
+the plaintiff with nobody on the other side; but even if I had been
+placed in that position ninety times nine, it would still be my
+duty to state a few facts from the very short brief with which I
+have been provided.
+
+This Institution was founded in the year 1838.  During the first
+five years of its existence, it was not particularly robust, and
+seemed to have been placed in rather a shaded position, receiving
+somewhat more than its needful allowance of cold water.  In 1843 it
+was removed into a more favourable position, and grafted on a
+nobler stock, and it has now borne fruit, and become such a
+vigorous tree that at present thirty-five old people daily sit
+within the shelter of its branches, and all the pensioners upon the
+list have been veritable gardeners, or the wives of gardeners.  It
+is managed by gardeners, and it has upon its books the excellent
+rule that any gardener who has subscribed to it for fifteen years,
+and conformed to the rules, may, if he will, be placed upon the
+pensioners' list without election, without canvass, without
+solicitation, and as his independent right.  I lay very great
+stress upon that honourable characteristic of the charity, because
+the main principle of any such institution should be to help those
+who help themselves.  That the Society's pensioners do not become
+such so long as they are able to support themselves, is evinced by
+the significant fact that the average age of those now upon the
+list is seventy-seven; that they are not wasteful is proved by the
+fact that the whole sum expended on their relief is but 500 pounds
+a-year; that the Institution does not restrict itself to any narrow
+confines, is shown by the circumstance, that the pensioners come
+from all parts of England, whilst all the expenses are paid from
+the annual income and interest on stock, and therefore are not
+disproportionate to its means.
+
+Such is the Institution which appeals to you through me, as a most
+unworthy advocate, for sympathy and support, an Institution which
+has for its President a nobleman {8} whose whole possessions are
+remarkable for taste and beauty, and whose gardener's laurels are
+famous throughout the world.  In the list of its vice-presidents
+there are the names of many noblemen and gentlemen of great
+influence and station, and I have been struck in glancing through
+the list of its supporters, with the sums written against the names
+of the numerous nurserymen and seedsmen therein comprised.  I hope
+the day will come when every gardener in England will be a member
+of the charity.
+
+The gardener particularly needs such a provision as this
+Institution affords.  His gains are not great; he knows gold and
+silver more as being of the colour of fruits and flowers than by
+its presence in his pockets; he is subjected to that kind of labour
+which renders him peculiarly liable to infirmity; and when old age
+comes upon him, the gardener is of all men perhaps best able to
+appreciate the merits of such an institution.
+
+To all indeed, present and absent, who are descended from the first
+
+
+"gardener Adam and his wife,"
+
+
+the benefits of such a society are obvious.  In the culture of
+flowers there cannot, by their very nature, be anything, solitary
+or exclusive.  The wind that blows over the cottager's porch,
+sweeps also over the grounds of the nobleman; and as the rain
+descends on the just and on the unjust, so it communicates to all
+gardeners, both rich and poor, an interchange of pleasure and
+enjoyment; and the gardener of the rich man, in developing and
+enhancing a fruitful flavour or a delightful scent, is, in some
+sort, the gardener of everybody else.
+
+The love of gardening is associated with all conditions of men, and
+all periods of time.  The scholar and the statesman, men of peace
+and men of war, have agreed in all ages to delight in gardens.  The
+most ancient people of the earth had gardens where there is now
+nothing but solitary heaps of earth.  The poor man in crowded
+cities gardens still in jugs and basins and bottles:  in factories
+and workshops people garden; and even the prisoner is found
+gardening in his lonely cell, after years and years of solitary
+confinement.  Surely, then, the gardener who produces shapes and
+objects so lovely and so comforting, should have some hold upon the
+world's remembrance when he himself becomes in need of comfort.
+
+I will call upon you to drink "Prosperity to the Gardeners'
+Benevolent Institution," and I beg to couple with that toast the
+name of its noble President, the Duke of Devonshire, whose worth is
+written in all his deeds, and who has communicated to his title and
+his riches a lustre which no title and no riches could confer.
+
+[Later in the evening, Mr. Dickens said:-]
+
+My office has compelled me to burst into bloom so often that I
+could wish there were a closer parallel between myself and the
+American aloe.  It is particularly agreeable and appropriate to
+know that the parents of this Institution are to be found in the
+seed and nursery trade; and the seed having yielded such good
+fruit, and the nursery having produced such a healthy child, I have
+the greatest pleasure in proposing the health of the parents of the
+Institution.
+
+[In proposing the health of the Treasurers, Mr. Dickens said:-]
+
+My observation of the signboards of this country has taught me that
+its conventional gardeners are always jolly, and always three in
+number.  Whether that conventionality has reference to the Three
+Graces, or to those very significant letters, L., S., D., I do not
+know.  Those mystic letters are, however, most important, and no
+society can have officers of more importance than its Treasurers,
+nor can it possibly give them too much to do.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  BIRMINGHAM, JANUARY 6, 1853.
+
+
+
+[On Thursday, January 6, 1853, at the rooms of the Society of
+Artists, in Temple Row, Birmingham, a large company assembled to
+witness the presentation of a testimonial to Mr. Charles Dickens,
+consisting of a silver-gilt salver and a diamond ring.  Mr. Dickens
+acknowledged the tribute, and the address which accompanied it, in
+the following words:-]
+
+Gentlemen, I feel it very difficult, I assure you, to tender my
+acknowledgments to you, and through you, to those many friends of
+mine whom you represent, for this honour and distinction which you
+have conferred upon me.  I can most honestly assure you, that it is
+in the power of no great representative of numbers of people to
+awaken such happiness in me as is inspired by this token of
+goodwill and remembrance, coming to me direct and fresh from the
+numbers themselves.  I am truly sensible, gentlemen, that my
+friends who have united in this address are partial in their
+kindness, and regard what I have done with too great favour.  But I
+may say, with reference to one class--some members of which, I
+presume, are included there--that I should in my own eyes be very
+unworthy both of the generous gift and the generous feeling which
+has been evinced, and this occasion, instead of pleasure, would
+give me nothing but pain, if I was unable to assure them, and those
+who are in front of this assembly, that what the working people
+have found me towards them in my books, I am throughout my life.
+Gentlemen, whenever I have tried to hold up to admiration their
+fortitude, patience, gentleness, the reasonableness of their
+nature, so accessible to persuasion, and their extraordinary
+goodness one towards another, I have done so because I have first
+genuinely felt that admiration myself, and have been thoroughly
+imbued with the sentiment which I sought to communicate to others.
+
+Gentlemen, I accept this salver and this ring as far above all
+price to me, as very valuable in themselves, and as beautiful
+specimens of the workmanship of this town, with great emotion, I
+assure you, and with the liveliest gratitude.  You remember
+something, I daresay, of the old romantic stories of those charmed
+rings which would lose their brilliance when their wearer was in
+danger, or would press his finger reproachfully when he was going
+to do wrong.  In the very improbable event of my being in the least
+danger of deserting the principles which have won me these tokens,
+I am sure the diamond in that ring would assume a clouded aspect to
+my faithless eye, and would, I know, squeeze a throb of pain out of
+my treacherous heart.  But I have not the least misgiving on that
+point; and, in this confident expectation, I shall remove my own
+old diamond ring from my left hand, and in future wear the
+Birmingham ring on my right, where its grasp will keep me in mind
+of the good friends I have here, and in vivid remembrance of this
+happy hour.
+
+Gentlemen, in conclusion, allow me to thank you and the Society to
+whom these rooms belong, that the presentation has taken place in
+an atmosphere so congenial to me, and in an apartment decorated
+with so many beautiful works of art, among which I recognize before
+me the productions of friends of mine, whose labours and triumphs
+will never be subjects of indifference to me.  I thank those
+gentlemen for giving me the opportunity of meeting them here on an
+occasion which has some connexion with their own proceedings; and,
+though last not least, I tender my acknowledgments to that charming
+presence, without which nothing beautiful can be complete, and
+which is endearingly associated with rings of a plainer
+description, and which, I must confess, awakens in my mind at the
+present moment a feeling of regret that I am not in a condition to
+make an offer of these testimonials.  I beg you, gentlemen, to
+commend me very earnestly and gratefully to our absent friends, and
+to assure them of my affectionate and heartfelt respect.
+
+
+The company then adjourned to Dee's Hotel, where a banquet took
+place, at which about 220 persons were present, among whom were
+some of the most distinguished of the Royal Academicians.  To the
+toast of "The Literature of England," Mr. Dickens responded as
+follows:-
+
+Mr. Mayor and Gentlemen, I am happy, on behalf of many labourers in
+that great field of literature to which you have pledged the toast,
+to thank you for the tribute you have paid to it.  Such an honour,
+rendered by acclamation in such a place as this, seems to me, if I
+may follow on the same side as the venerable Archdeacon (Sandford)
+who lately addressed you, and who has inspired me with a
+gratification I can never forget--such an honour, gentlemen,
+rendered here, seems to me a two-sided illustration of the position
+that literature holds in these latter and, of course, "degenerate"
+days.  To the great compact phalanx of the people, by whose
+industry, perseverance, and intelligence, and their result in
+money-wealth, such places as Birmingham, and many others like it,
+have arisen--to that great centre of support, that comprehensive
+experience, and that beating heart, literature has turned happily
+from individual patrons--sometimes munificent, often sordid, always
+few--and has there found at once its highest purpose, its natural
+range of action, and its best reward.  Therefore it is right also,
+as it seems to me, not only that literature should receive honour
+here, but that it should render honour, too, remembering that if it
+has undoubtedly done good to Birmingham, Birmingham has undoubtedly
+done good to it.  From the shame of the purchased dedication, from
+the scurrilous and dirty work of Grub Street, from the dependent
+seat on sufferance at my Lord Duke's table to-day, and from the
+sponging-house or Marshalsea to-morrow--from that venality which,
+by a fine moral retribution, has degraded statesmen even to a
+greater extent than authors, because the statesman entertained a
+low belief in the universality of corruption, while the author
+yielded only to the dire necessity of his calling--from all such
+evils the people have set literature free.  And my creed in the
+exercise of that profession is, that literature cannot be too
+faithful to the people in return--cannot too ardently advocate the
+cause of their advancement, happiness, and prosperity.  I have
+heard it sometimes said--and what is worse, as expressing something
+more cold-blooded, I have sometimes seen it written--that
+literature has suffered by this change, that it has degenerated by
+being made cheaper.  I have not found that to be the case:  nor do
+I believe that you have made the discovery either.  But let a good
+book in these "bad" times be made accessible,--even upon an
+abstruse and difficult subject, so that it be one of legitimate
+interest to mankind,--and my life on it, it shall be extensively
+bought, read, and well considered.
+
+Why do I say this?  Because I believe there are in Birmingham at
+this moment many working men infinitely better versed in
+Shakespeare and in Milton than the average of fine gentlemen in the
+days of bought-and-sold dedications and dear books.  I ask anyone
+to consider for himself who, at this time, gives the greatest
+relative encouragement to the dissemination of such useful
+publications as "Macaulay's History," "Layard's Researches,"
+"Tennyson's Poems," "The Duke of Wellington's published
+Despatches," or the minutest truths (if any truth can be called
+minute) discovered by the genius of a Herschel or a Faraday?  It is
+with all these things as with the great music of Mendelssohn, or a
+lecture upon art--if we had the good fortune to listen to one to-
+morrow--by my distinguished friend the President of the Royal
+Academy.  However small the audience, however contracted the circle
+in the water, in the first instance, the people are nearer the
+wider range outside, and the Sister Arts, while they instruct them,
+derive a wholesome advantage and improvement from their ready
+sympathy and cordial response.  I may instance the case of my
+friend Mr. Ward's magnificent picture; {9} and the reception of
+that picture here is an example that it is not now the province of
+art in painting to hold itself in monastic seclusion, that it
+cannot hope to rest on a single foundation for its great temple,--
+on the mere classic pose of a figure, or the folds of a drapery--
+but that it must be imbued with human passions and action, informed
+with human right and wrong, and, being so informed, it may
+fearlessly put itself upon its trial, like the criminal of old, to
+be judged by God and its country.
+
+Gentlemen, to return and conclude, as I shall have occasion to
+trouble you again.  For this time I have only once again to repeat
+what I have already said.  As I begun with literature, I shall end
+with it.  I would simply say that I believe no true man, with
+anything to tell, need have the least misgiving, either for himself
+or his message, before a large number of hearers--always supposing
+that he be not afflicted with the coxcombical idea of writing down
+to the popular intelligence, instead of writing the popular
+intelligence up to himself, if, perchance, he be above it;--and,
+provided always that he deliver himself plainly of what is in him,
+which seems to be no unreasonable stipulation, it being supposed
+that he has some dim design of making himself understood.  On
+behalf of that literature to which you have done so much honour, I
+beg to thank you most cordially, and on my own behalf, for the most
+flattering reception you have given to one whose claim is, that he
+has the distinction of making it his profession.
+
+
+[Later in the evening, Mr. Dickens gave as a toast, "The
+Educational Institutions of Birmingham," in the following speech:]
+
+
+I am requested to propose--or, according to the hypothesis of my
+friend, Mr. Owen, I am in the temporary character of a walking
+advertisement to advertise to you--the Educational Institutions of
+Birmingham; an advertisement to which I have the greatest pleasure
+in calling your attention, Gentlemen, it is right that I should, in
+so many words, mention the more prominent of these institutions,
+not because your local memories require any prompting, but because
+the enumeration implies what has been done here, what you are
+doing, and what you will yet do.  I believe the first is the King
+Edward's Grammar School, with its various branches, and prominent
+among them is that most admirable means of training the wives of
+working men to be good wives and working wives, the prime ornament
+of their homes, and the cause of happiness to others--I mean those
+excellent girls' schools in various parts of the town, which, under
+the excellent superintendence of the principal, I should most
+sincerely desire to see in every town in England.  Next, I believe,
+is the Spring Hill College, a learned institution belonging to the
+body of Independents, foremost among whose professors literature is
+proud to hail Mr. Henry Rogers as one of the soundest and ablest
+contributors to the Edinburgh Review.  The next is the Queen's
+College, which, I may say, is only a newly-born child; but, in the
+hands of such an admirable Doctor, we may hope to see it arrive at
+a vigorous maturity.  The next is the School of Design, which, as
+has been well observed by my friend Sir Charles Eastlake, is
+invaluable in such a place as this; and, lastly, there is the
+Polytechnic Institution, with regard to which I had long ago
+occasion to express my profound conviction that it was of
+unspeakable importance to such a community as this, when I had the
+honour to be present, under the auspices of your excellent
+representative, Mr. Scholefield.  This is the last of what has been
+done in an educational way.  They are all admirable in their kind;
+but I am glad to find that more is yet doing.  A few days ago I
+received a Birmingham newspaper, containing a most interesting
+account of a preliminary meeting for the formation of a Reformatory
+School for juvenile delinquents.  You are not exempt here from the
+honour of saving these poor, neglected, and wretched outcasts.  I
+read of one infant, six years old, who has been twice as many times
+in the hands of the police as years have passed over his devoted
+head.  These are the eggs from which gaol-birds are hatched; if you
+wish to check that dreadful brood, you must take the young and
+innocent, and have them reared by Christian hands.
+
+Lastly, I am rejoiced to find that there is on foot a scheme for a
+new Literary and Scientific Institution, which would be worthy even
+of this place, if there was nothing of the kind in it--an
+institution, as I understand it, where the words "exclusion" and
+"exclusiveness" shall be quite unknown--where all classes may
+assemble in common trust, respect, and confidence--where there
+shall be a great gallery of painting and statuary open to the
+inspection and admiration of all comers--where there shall be a
+museum of models in which industry may observe its various sources
+of manufacture, and the mechanic may work out new combinations, and
+arrive at new results--where the very mines under the earth and
+under the sea shall not be forgotten, but presented in little to
+the inquiring eye--an institution, in short, where many and many of
+the obstacles which now inevitably stand in the rugged way of the
+poor inventor shall be smoothed away, and where, if he have
+anything in him, he will find encouragement and hope.
+
+I observe with unusual interest and gratification, that a body of
+gentlemen are going for a time to lay aside their individual
+prepossessions on other subjects, and, as good citizens, are to be
+engaged in a design as patriotic as well can be.  They have the
+intention of meeting in a few days to advance this great object,
+and I call upon you, in drinking this toast, to drink success to
+their endeavour, and to make it the pledge by all good means to
+promote it.
+
+If I strictly followed out the list of educational institutions in
+Birmingham, I should not have done here, but I intend to stop,
+merely observing that I have seen within a short walk of this place
+one of the most interesting and practical Institutions for the Deaf
+and Dumb that has ever come under my observation.  I have seen in
+the factories and workshops of Birmingham such beautiful order and
+regularity, and such great consideration for the workpeople
+provided, that they might justly be entitled to be considered
+educational too.  I have seen in your splendid Town Hall, when the
+cheap concerts are going on there, also an admirable educational
+institution.  I have seen their results in the demeanour of your
+working people, excellently balanced by a nice instinct, as free
+from servility on the one hand, as from self-conceit on the other.
+It is a perfect delight to have need to ask a question, if only
+from the manner of the reply--a manner I never knew to pass
+unnoticed by an observant stranger.  Gather up those threads, and a
+great marry more I have not touched upon, and weaving all into one
+good fabric, remember how much is included under the general head
+of the Educational Institutions of your town.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, APRIL 30, 1853.
+
+
+
+[At the annual Dinner of the Royal Academy, the President, Sir
+Charles Eastlake, proposed as a toast, "The Interests of
+Literature," and selected for the representatives of the world of
+letters, the Dean of St. Paul's and Mr. Charles Dickens.  Dean
+Milman having returned thanks.]
+
+Mr Dickens then addressed the President, who, it should be
+mentioned, occupied a large and handsome chair, the back covered
+with crimson velvet, placed just before Stanfield's picture of The
+Victory.
+
+Mr. Dickens, after tendering his acknowledgments of the toast, and
+the honour done him in associating his name with it, said that
+those acknowledgments were not the less heartfelt because he was
+unable to recognize in this toast the President's usual
+disinterestedness; since English literature could scarcely be
+remembered in any place, and, certainly, not in a school of art,
+without a very distinct remembrance of his own tasteful writings,
+to say nothing of that other and better part of himself, which,
+unfortunately, was not visible upon these occasions.
+
+If, like the noble Lord, the Commander-in-Chief (Viscount
+Hardinge), he (Mr. Dickens) might venture to illustrate his brief
+thanks with one word of reference to the noble picture painted by a
+very dear friend of his, which was a little eclipsed that evening
+by the radiant and rubicund chair which the President now so
+happily toned down, he would beg leave to say that, as literature
+could nowhere be more appropriately honoured than in that place, so
+he thought she could nowhere feel a higher gratification in the
+ties that bound her to the sister arts.  He ever felt in that place
+that literature found, through their instrumentality, always a new
+expression, and in a universal language.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, MAY 1, 1853
+
+
+
+[At a dinner given by the Lord Mayor at the Mansion House, on the
+above date, Mr. Justice Talfourd proposed as a toast "Anglo-Saxon
+Literature," and alluded to Mr. Dickens as having employed fiction
+as a means of awakening attention to the condition of the oppressed
+and suffering classes:-]
+
+"Mr. Dickens replied to this toast in a graceful and playful
+strain.  In the former part of the evening, in reply to a toast on
+the chancery department, Vice-Chancellor Wood, who spoke in the
+absence of the Lord Chancellor, made a sort of defence of the Court
+of Chancery, not distinctly alluding to Bleak House, but evidently
+not without reference to it.  The amount of what he said was, that
+the Court had received a great many more hard opinions than it
+merited; that they had been parsimoniously obliged to perform a
+great amount of business by a very inadequate number of judges; but
+that more recently the number of judges had been increased to
+seven, and there was reason to hope that all business brought
+before it would now be performed without unnecessary delay.
+
+"Mr. Dickens alluded playfully to this item of intelligence; said
+he was exceedingly happy to hear it, as he trusted now that a suit,
+in which he was greatly interested, would speedily come to an end.
+I heard a little by-conversation between Mr. Dickens and a
+gentleman of the bar, who sat opposite me, in which the latter
+seemed to be reiterating the same assertions, and I understood him
+to say, that a case not extraordinarily complicated might be got
+through with in three months.  Mr. Dickens said he was very happy
+to hear it; but I fancied there was a little shade of incredulity
+in his manner; however, the incident showed one thing, that is,
+that the chancery were not insensible to the representations of
+Dickens; but the whole tone of the thing was quite good-natured and
+agreeable." {10}
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  BIRMINGHAM, DECEMBER 30, 1853.
+
+
+
+[The first of the Readings generously given by Mr. Charles Dickens
+on behalf of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, took place on
+Tuesday evening, December 27, 1853, at the Birmingham Town Hall,
+where, notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, nearly two
+thousand persons had assembled.  The work selected was the
+Christmas Carol.  The high mimetic powers possessed by Mr. Dickens
+enabled him to personate with remarkable force the various
+characters of the story, and with admirable skill to pass rapidly
+from the hard, unbelieving Scrooge, to trusting and thankful Bob
+Cratchit, and from the genial fulness of Scrooge's nephew, to the
+hideous mirth of the party assembled in Old Joe the Ragshop-
+keeper's parlour.  The reading occupied more than three hours, but
+so interested were the audience, that only one or two left the Hall
+previously to its termination, and the loud and frequent bursts of
+applause attested the successful discharge of the reader's arduous
+task.  On Thursday evening Mr. Dickens read The Cricket on the
+Hearth.  The Hall was again well ruled, and the tale, though
+deficient in the dramatic interest of the Carol, was listened to
+with attention, and rewarded with repeated applause.  On Friday
+evening, the Christmas Carol was read a second time to a large
+assemblage of work-people, for whom, at Mr. Dickens's special
+request, the major part of the vast edifice was reserved.  Before
+commencing the tale, Mr. Dickens delivered the following brief
+address, almost every sentence of which was received with loudly
+expressed applause.]
+
+My Good Friends,--When I first imparted to the committee of the
+projected Institute my particular wish that on one of the evenings
+of my readings here the main body of my audience should be composed
+of working men and their families, I was animated by two desires;
+first, by the wish to have the great pleasure of meeting you face
+to face at this Christmas time, and accompany you myself through
+one of my little Christmas books; and second, by the wish to have
+an opportunity of stating publicly in your presence, and in the
+presence of the committee, my earnest hope that the Institute will,
+from the beginning, recognise one great principle--strong in reason
+and justice--which I believe to be essential to the very life of
+such an Institution.  It is, that the working man shall, from the
+first unto the last, have a share in the management of an
+Institution which is designed for his benefit, and which calls
+itself by his name.
+
+I have no fear here of being misunderstood--of being supposed to
+mean too much in this.  If there ever was a time when any one class
+could of itself do much for its own good, and for the welfare of
+society--which I greatly doubt--that time is unquestionably past.
+It is in the fusion of different classes, without confusion; in the
+bringing together of employers and employed; in the creating of a
+better common understanding among those whose interests are
+identical, who depend upon each other, who are vitally essential to
+each other, and who never can be in unnatural antagonism without
+deplorable results, that one of the chief principles of a
+Mechanics' Institution should consist.  In this world a great deal
+of the bitterness among us arises from an imperfect understanding
+of one another.  Erect in Birmingham a great Educational
+Institution, properly educational; educational of the feelings as
+well as of the reason; to which all orders of Birmingham men
+contribute; in which all orders of Birmingham men meet; wherein all
+orders of Birmingham men are faithfully represented--and you will
+erect a Temple of Concord here which will be a model edifice to the
+whole of England.
+
+Contemplating as I do the existence of the Artisans' Committee,
+which not long ago considered the establishment of the Institute so
+sensibly, and supported it so heartily, I earnestly entreat the
+gentlemen--earnest I know in the good work, and who are now among
+us,--by all means to avoid the great shortcoming of similar
+institutions; and in asking the working man for his confidence, to
+set him the great example and give him theirs in return.  You will
+judge for yourselves if I promise too much for the working man,
+when I say that he will stand by such an enterprise with the utmost
+of his patience, his perseverance, sense, and support; that I am
+sure he will need no charitable aid or condescending patronage; but
+will readily and cheerfully pay for the advantages which it
+confers; that he will prepare himself in individual cases where he
+feels that the adverse circumstances around him have rendered it
+necessary; in a word, that he will feel his responsibility like an
+honest man, and will most honestly and manfully discharge it.  I
+now proceed to the pleasant task to which I assure you I have
+looked forward for a long time.
+
+
+[At the close of the reading Mr. Dickens received a vote of thanks,
+and "three cheers, with three times three."  As soon as the
+enthusiasm of the audience would allow him to speak, Mr. Dickens
+said:-]
+
+
+You have heard so much of my voice since we met to-night, that I
+will only say, in acknowledgment of this affecting mark of your
+regard, that I am truly and sincerely interested in you; that any
+little service I have rendered to you I have freely rendered from
+my heart; that I hope to become an honorary member of your great
+Institution, and will meet you often there when it becomes
+practically useful; that I thank you most affectionately for this
+new mark of your sympathy and approval; and that I wish you many
+happy returns of this great birthday-time, and many prosperous
+years.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  COMMERCIAL TRAVELLERS.  LONDON, DECEMBER 30, 1854.
+
+
+
+[The following speech was made by Mr. Dickens at the Anniversary
+Dinner in commemoration of the foundation of the Commercial
+Travellers' Schools, held at the London Tavern on the above date.
+Mr. Dickens presided on this occasion, and proposed the toasts.]
+
+I think it may be assumed that most of us here present know
+something about travelling.  I do not mean in distant regions or
+foreign countries, although I dare say some of us have had
+experience in that way, but at home, and within the limits of the
+United Kingdom.  I dare say most of us have had experience of the
+extinct "fast coaches," the "Wonders," "Taglionis," and "Tallyhos,"
+of other days.  I daresay most of us remember certain modest
+postchaises, dragging us down interminable roads, through slush and
+mud, to little country towns with no visible population, except
+half-a-dozen men in smock-frocks, half-a-dozen women with umbrellas
+and pattens, and a washed-out dog or so shivering under the gables,
+to complete the desolate picture.  We can all discourse, I dare
+say, if so minded, about our recollections of the "Talbot," the
+"Queen's Head," or the "Lion" of those days.  We have all been to
+that room on the ground floor on one side of the old inn yard, not
+quite free from a certain fragrant smell of tobacco, where the
+cruets on the sideboard were usually absorbed by the skirts of the
+box-coats that hung from the wall; where awkward servants waylaid
+us at every turn, like so many human man-traps; where county
+members, framed and glazed, were eternally presenting that petition
+which, somehow or other, had made their glory in the county,
+although nothing else had ever come of it.  Where the books in the
+windows always wanted the first, last, and middle leaves, and where
+the one man was always arriving at some unusual hour in the night,
+and requiring his breakfast at a similarly singular period of the
+day.  I have no doubt we could all be very eloquent on the comforts
+of our favourite hotel, wherever it was--its beds, its stables, its
+vast amount of posting, its excellent cheese, its head waiter, its
+capital dishes, its pigeon-pies, or its 1820 port.  Or possibly we
+could recal our chaste and innocent admiration of its landlady, or
+our fraternal regard for its handsome chambermaid.  A celebrated
+domestic critic once writing of a famous actress, renowned for her
+virtue and beauty, gave her the character of being an "eminently
+gatherable-to-one's-arms sort of person."  Perhaps some one amongst
+us has borne a somewhat similar tribute to the mental charms of the
+fair deities who presided at our hotels.
+
+With the travelling characteristics of later times, we are all, no
+doubt, equally familiar.  We know all about that station to which
+we must take our ticket, although we never get there; and the other
+one at which we arrive after dark, certain to find it half a mile
+from the town, where the old road is sure to have been abolished,
+and the new road is going to be made--where the old neighbourhood
+has been tumbled down, and the new one is not half built up.  We
+know all about that party on the platform who, with the best
+intentions, can do nothing for our luggage except pitch it into all
+sorts of unattainable places.  We know all about that short
+omnibus, in which one is to be doubled up, to the imminent danger
+of the crown of one's hat; and about that fly, whose leading
+peculiarity is never to be there when it is wanted.  We know, too,
+how instantaneously the lights of the station disappear when the
+train starts, and about that grope to the new Railway Hotel, which
+will be an excellent house when the customers come, but which at
+present has nothing to offer but a liberal allowance of damp mortar
+and new lime.
+
+I record these little incidents of home travel mainly with the
+object of increasing your interest in the purpose of this night's
+assemblage.  Every traveller has a home of his own, and he learns
+to appreciate it the more from his wandering.  If he has no home,
+he learns the same lesson unselfishly by turning to the homes of
+other men.  He may have his experiences of cheerful and exciting
+pleasures abroad; but home is the best, after all, and its
+pleasures are the most heartily and enduringly prized.  Therefore,
+ladies and gentlemen, every one must be prepared to learn that
+commercial travellers, as a body, know how to prize those domestic
+relations from which their pursuits so frequently sever them; for
+no one could possibly invent a more delightful or more convincing
+testimony to the fact than they themselves have offered in founding
+and maintaining a school for the children of deceased or
+unfortunate members of their own body; those children who now
+appeal to you in mute but eloquent terms from the gallery.
+
+It is to support that school, founded with such high and friendly
+objects, so very honourable to your calling, and so useful in its
+solid and practical results, that we are here to-night.  It is to
+roof that building which is to shelter the children of your
+deceased friends with one crowning ornament, the best that any
+building can have, namely, a receipt stamp for the full amount of
+the cost.  It is for this that your active sympathy is appealed to,
+for the completion of your own good work.  You know how to put your
+hands to the plough in earnest as well as any men in existence, for
+this little book informs me that you raised last year no less a sum
+than 8000 pounds, and while fully half of that sum consisted of new
+donations to the building fund, I find that the regular revenue of
+the charity has only suffered to the extent of 30 pounds.  After
+this, I most earnestly and sincerely say that were we all authors
+together, I might boast, if in my profession were exhibited the
+same unity and steadfastness I find in yours.
+
+I will not urge on you the casualties of a life of travel, or the
+vicissitudes of business, or the claims fostered by that bond of
+brotherhood which ought always to exist amongst men who are united
+in a common pursuit.  You have already recognized those claims so
+nobly, that I will not presume to lay them before you in any
+further detail.  Suffice it to say that I do not think it is in
+your nature to do things by halves.  I do not think you could do so
+if you tried, and I have a moral certainty that you never will try.
+To those gentlemen present who are not members of the travellers'
+body, I will say in the words of the French proverb, "Heaven helps
+those who help themselves."  The Commercial Travellers having
+helped themselves so gallantly, it is clear that the visitors who
+come as a sort of celestial representatives ought to bring that aid
+in their pockets which the precept teaches us to expect from them.
+With these few remarks, I beg to give you as a toast, "Success to
+the Commercial Travellers' School."
+
+[In proposing the health of the Army in the Crimea, Mr. Dickens
+said:-]
+
+IT does not require any extraordinary sagacity in a commercial
+assembly to appreciate the dire evils of war.  The great interests
+of trade enfeebled by it, the enterprise of better times paralysed
+by it, all the peaceful arts bent down before it, too palpably
+indicate its character and results, so that far less practical
+intelligence than that by which I am surrounded would be sufficient
+to appreciate the horrors of war.  But there are seasons when the
+evils of peace, though not so acutely felt, are immeasurably
+greater, and when a powerful nation, by admitting the right of any
+autocrat to do wrong, sows by such complicity the seeds of its own
+ruin, and overshadows itself in time to come with that fatal
+influence which great and ambitious powers are sure to exercise
+over their weaker neighbours.
+
+Therefore it is, ladies and gentlemen, that the tree has not its
+root in English ground from which the yard wand can be made that
+will measure--the mine has not its place in English soil that will
+supply the material of a pair of scales to weigh the influence that
+may be at stake in the war in which we are now straining all our
+energies.  That war is, at any time and in any shape, a most
+dreadful and deplorable calamity, we need no proverb to tell us;
+but it is just because it is such a calamity, and because that
+calamity must not for ever be impending over us at the fancy of one
+man against all mankind, that we must not allow that man to darken
+from our view the figures of peace and justice between whom and us
+he now interposes.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, if ever there were a time when the true
+spirits of two countries were really fighting in the cause of human
+advancement and freedom--no matter what diplomatic notes or other
+nameless botherations, from number one to one hundred thousand and
+one, may have preceded their taking the field--if ever there were a
+time when noble hearts were deserving well of mankind by exposing
+themselves to the obedient bayonets of a rash and barbarian tyrant,
+it is now, when the faithful children of England and France are
+fighting so bravely in the Crimea.  Those faithful children are the
+admiration and wonder of the world, so gallantly are they
+discharging their duty; and therefore I propose to an assembly,
+emphatically representing the interests and arts of peace, to drink
+the health of the Allied Armies of England and France, with all
+possible honours.
+
+
+[In proposing the health of the Treasurer, Mr. Dickens said:-]
+
+
+If the President of this Institution had been here, I should
+possibly have made one of the best speeches you ever heard; but as
+he is not here, I shall turn to the next toast on my list:- "The
+health of your worthy Treasurer, Mr. George Moore," a name which is
+a synonym for integrity, enterprise, public spirit, and
+benevolence.  He is one of the most zealous officers I ever saw in
+my life; he appears to me to have been doing nothing during the
+last week but rushing into and out of railway-carriages, and making
+eloquent speeches at all sorts of public dinners in favour of this
+charity.  Last evening he was at Manchester, and this evening he
+comes here, sacrificing his time and convenience, and exhausting in
+the meantime the contents of two vast leaden inkstands and no end
+of pens, with the energy of fifty bankers' clerks rolled into one.
+But I clearly foresee that the Treasurer will have so much to do
+to-night, such gratifying sums to acknowledge and such large lines
+of figures to write in his books, that I feel the greatest
+consideration I can show him is to propose his health without
+further observation, leaving him to address you in his own behalf.
+I propose to you, therefore, the health of Mr. George Moore, the
+Treasurer of this charity, and I need hardly add that it is one
+which is to be drunk with all the honours.
+
+
+[Later in the evening, Mr. Dickens rose and said:-]
+
+
+So many travellers have been going up Mont Blanc lately, both in
+fact and in fiction, that I have heard recently of a proposal for
+the establishment of a Company to employ Sir Joseph Paxton to take
+it down.  Only one of those travellers, however, has been enabled
+to bring Mont Blanc to Piccadilly, and, by his own ability and good
+humour, so to thaw its eternal ice and snow, as that the most timid
+lady may ascend it twice a-day, "during the holidays," without the
+smallest danger or fatigue.  Mr. Albert Smith, who is present
+amongst us to-night, is undoubtedly "a traveller."  I do not know
+whether he takes many orders, but this I can testify, on behalf of
+the children of his friends, that he gives them in the most liberal
+manner.
+
+We have also amongst us my friend Mr. Peter Cunningham, who is also
+a traveller, not only in right of his able edition of Goldsmith's
+"Traveller," but in right of his admirable Handbook, which proves
+him to be a traveller in the right spirit through all the
+labyrinths of London.  We have also amongst us my friend Horace
+Mayhew, very well known also for his books, but especially for his
+genuine admiration of the company at that end of the room [Mr.
+Dickens here pointed to the ladies gallery], and who, whenever the
+fair sex is mentioned, will be found to have the liveliest personal
+interest in the conversation.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, I am about to propose to you the health of
+these three distinguished visitors.  They are all admirable
+speakers, but Mr. Albert Smith has confessed to me, that on fairly
+balancing his own merits as a speaker and a singer, he rather
+thinks he excels in the latter art.  I have, therefore, yielded to
+his estimate of himself, and I have now the pleasure of informing
+you that he will lead off the speeches of the other two gentlemen
+with a song.  Mr. Albert Smith has just said to me in an earnest
+tone of voice, "What song would you recommend?" and I replied,
+"Galignani's Messenger."  Ladies and gentlemen, I therefore beg to
+propose the health of Messrs.  Albert Smith, Peter Cunningham, and
+Horace Mayhew, and call on the first-named gentleman for a song.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM.  THEATRE ROYAL, DRURY LANE,
+WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27, 1855.
+
+
+
+I cannot, I am sure, better express my sense of the kind reception
+accorded to me by this great assembly, than by promising to
+compress what I shall address to it within the closest possible
+limits.  It is more than eighteen hundred years ago, since there
+was a set of men who "thought they should be heard for their much
+speaking."  As they have propagated exceedingly since that time,
+and as I observe that they flourish just now to a surprising extent
+about Westminster, I will do my best to avoid adding to the numbers
+of that prolific race.  The noble lord at the head of the
+Government, when he wondered in Parliament about a week ago, that
+my friend, Mr. Layard, did not blush for having stated in this
+place what the whole country knows perfectly well to be true, and
+what no man in it can by possibility better know to be true than
+those disinterested supporters of that noble lord, who had the
+advantage of hearing him and cheering him night after night, when
+he first became premier--I mean that he did officially and
+habitually joke, at a time when this country was plunged in deep
+disgrace and distress--I say, that noble lord, when he wondered so
+much that the man of this age, who has, by his earnest and
+adventurous spirit, done the most to distinguish himself and it,
+did not blush for the tremendous audacity of having so come between
+the wind and his nobility, turned an airy period with reference to
+the private theatricals at Drury Lane Theatre.  Now, I have some
+slight acquaintance with theatricals, private and public, and I
+will accept that figure of the noble lord.  I will not say that if
+I wanted to form a company of Her Majesty's servants, I think I
+should know where to put my hand on "the comic old gentleman;" nor,
+that if I wanted to get up a pantomime, I fancy I should know what
+establishment to go to for the tricks and changes; also, for a very
+considerable host of supernumeraries, to trip one another up in
+that contention with which many of us are familiar, both on these
+and on other boards, in which the principal objects thrown about
+are loaves and fishes.  But I will try to give the noble lord the
+reason for these private theatricals, and the reason why, however
+ardently he may desire to ring the curtain down upon them, there is
+not the faintest present hope of their coming to a conclusion.  It
+is this:- The public theatricals which the noble lord is so
+condescending as to manage are so intolerably bad, the machinery is
+so cumbrous, the parts so ill-distributed, the company so full of
+"walking gentlemen," the managers have such large families, and are
+so bent upon putting those families into what is theatrically
+called "first business"--not because of their aptitude for it, but
+because they ARE their families, that we find ourselves obliged to
+organize an opposition.  We have seen the Comedy of Errors played
+so dismally like a tragedy that we really cannot bear it.  We are,
+therefore, making bold to get up the School of Reform, and we hope,
+before the play is out, to improve that noble lord by our
+performance very considerably.  If he object that we have no right
+to improve him without his license, we venture to claim that right
+in virtue of his orchestra, consisting of a very powerful piper,
+whom we always pay.
+
+Sir, as this is the first political meeting I have ever attended,
+and as my trade and calling is not associated with politics,
+perhaps it may be useful for me to show how I came to be here,
+because reasons similar to those which have influenced me may still
+be trembling in the balance in the minds of others.  I want at all
+times, in full sincerity, to do my duty by my countrymen.  If _I_
+feel an attachment towards them, there is nothing disinterested or
+meritorious in that, for I can never too affectionately remember
+the confidence and friendship that they have long reposed in me.
+My sphere of action--which I shall never change--I shall never
+overstep, further than this, or for a longer period than I do to-
+night.  By literature I have lived, and through literature I have
+been content to serve my country; and I am perfectly well aware
+that I cannot serve two masters.  In my sphere of action I have
+tried to understand the heavier social grievances, and to help to
+set them right.  When the Times newspaper proved its then almost
+incredible case, in reference to the ghastly absurdity of that vast
+labyrinth of misplaced men and misdirected things, which had made
+England unable to find on the face of the earth, an enemy one-
+twentieth part so potent to effect the misery and ruin of her noble
+defenders as she has been herself, I believe that the gloomy
+silence into which the country fell was by far the darkest aspect
+in which a great people had been exhibited for many years.  With
+shame and indignation lowering among all classes of society, and
+this new element of discord piled on the heaving basis of
+ignorance, poverty and crime, which is always below us--with little
+adequate expression of the general mind, or apparent understanding
+of the general mind, in Parliament--with the machinery of
+Government and the legislature going round and round, and the
+people fallen from it and standing aloof, as if they left it to its
+last remaining function of destroying itself, when it had achieved
+the destruction of so much that was dear to them--I did and do
+believe that the only wholesome turn affairs so menacing could
+possibly take, was, the awaking of the people, the outspeaking of
+the people, the uniting of the people in all patriotism and loyalty
+to effect a great peaceful constitutional change in the
+administration of their own affairs.  At such a crisis this
+association arose; at such a crisis I joined it:  considering its
+further case to be--if further case could possibly be needed--that
+what is everybody's business is nobody's business, that men must be
+gregarious in good citizenship as well as in other things, and that
+it is a law in nature that there must be a centre of attraction for
+particles to fly to, before any serviceable body with recognised
+functions can come into existence.  This association has arisen,
+and we belong to it.  What are the objections to it?  I have heard
+in the main but three, which I will now briefly notice.  It is said
+that it is proposed by this association to exercise an influence,
+through the constituencies, on the House of Commons.  I have not
+the least hesitation in saying that I have the smallest amount of
+faith in the House of Commons at present existing and that I
+consider the exercise of such influence highly necessary to the
+welfare and honour of this country.  I was reading no later than
+yesterday the book of Mr. Pepys, which is rather a favourite of
+mine, in which he, two hundred years ago, writing of the House of
+Commons, says:
+
+
+"My cousin Roger Pepys tells me that it is matter of the greatest
+grief to him in the world that he should be put upon this trust of
+being a Parliament man; because he says nothing is done, that he
+can see, out of any truth and sincerity, but mere envy and design."
+
+
+Now, how it comes to pass that after two hundred years, and many
+years after a Reform Bill, the house of Commons is so little
+changed, I will not stop to inquire.  I will not ask how it happens
+that bills which cramp and worry the people, and restrict their
+scant enjoyments, are so easily passed, and how it happens that
+measures for their real interests are so very difficult to be got
+through Parliament.  I will not analyse the confined air of the
+lobby, or reduce to their primitive gases its deadening influences
+on the memory of that Honourable Member who was once a candidate
+for the honour of your--and my--independent vote and interest.  I
+will not ask what is that Secretarian figure, full of
+blandishments, standing on the threshold, with its finger on its
+lips.  I will not ask how it comes that those personal
+altercations, involving all the removes and definitions of
+Shakespeare's Touchstone--the retort courteous--the quip modest--
+the reply churlish--the reproof valiant--the countercheck
+quarrelsome--the lie circumstantial and the lie direct--are of
+immeasurably greater interest in the House of Commons than the
+health, the taxation, and the education, of a whole people.  I will
+not penetrate into the mysteries of that secret chamber in which
+the Bluebeard of Party keeps his strangled public questions, and
+with regard to which, when he gives the key to his wife, the new
+comer, he strictly charges her on no account to open the door.  I
+will merely put it to the experience of everybody here, whether the
+House of Commons is not occasionally a little hard of hearing, a
+little dim of sight, a little slow of understanding, and whether,
+in short, it is not in a sufficiency invalided state to require
+close watching, and the occasional application of sharp stimulants;
+and whether it is not capable of considerable improvement?  I
+believe that, in order to preserve it in a state of real usefulness
+and independence, the people must be very watchful and very jealous
+of it; and it must have its memory jogged; and be kept awake when
+it happens to have taken too much Ministerial narcotic; it must be
+trotted about, and must be bustled and pinched in a friendly way,
+as is the usage in such cases.  I hold that no power can deprive us
+of the right to administer our functions as a body comprising
+electors from all parts of the country, associated together because
+their country is dearer to them than drowsy twaddle, unmeaning
+routine, or worn-out conventionalities.
+
+This brings me to objection number two.  It is stated that this
+Association sets class against class.  Is this so?  (Cries of
+"No.")  No, it finds class set against class, and seeks to
+reconcile them.  I wish to avoid placing in opposition those two
+words--Aristocracy and People.  I am one who can believe in the
+virtues and uses of both, and would not on any account deprive
+either of a single just right belonging to it.  I will use, instead
+of these words, the terms, the governors and the governed.  These
+two bodies the Association finds with a gulf between them, in which
+are lying, newly-buried, thousands on thousands of the bravest and
+most devoted men that even England ever bred.  It is to prevent the
+recurrence of innumerable smaller evils, of which, unchecked, that
+great calamity was the crowning height and the necessary
+consummation, and to bring together those two fronts looking now so
+strangely at each other, that this Association seeks to help to
+bridge over that abyss, with a structure founded on common justice
+and supported by common sense.  Setting class against class!  That
+is the very parrot prattle that we have so long heard.  Try its
+justice by the following example:- A respectable gentleman had a
+large establishment, and a great number of servants, who were good
+for nothing, who, when he asked them to give his children bread,
+gave them stones; who, when they were told to give those children
+fish, gave them serpents.  When they were ordered to send to the
+East, they sent to the West; when they ought to have been serving
+dinner in the North, they were consulting exploded cookery books in
+the South; who wasted, destroyed, tumbled over one another when
+required to do anything, and were bringing everything to ruin.  At
+last the respectable gentleman calls his house steward, and says,
+even then more in sorrow than in anger, "This is a terrible
+business; no fortune can stand it--no mortal equanimity can bear
+it!  I must change my system; I must obtain servants who will do
+their duty."  The house steward throws up his eyes in pious horror,
+ejaculates "Good God, master, you are setting class against class!"
+and then rushes off into the servants' hall, and delivers a long
+and melting oration on that wicked feeling.
+
+I now come to the third objection, which is common among young
+gentlemen who are not particularly fit for anything but spending
+money which they have not got.  It is usually comprised in the
+observation, "How very extraordinary it is that these
+Administrative Reform fellows can't mind their own business."  I
+think it will occur to all that a very sufficient mode of disposing
+of this objection is to say, that it is our own business we mind
+when we come forward in this way, and it is to prevent it from
+being mismanaged by them.  I observe from the Parliamentary
+debates--which have of late, by-the-bye, frequently suggested to me
+that there is this difference between the bull of Spain the bull of
+Nineveh, that, whereas, in the Spanish case, the bull rushes at the
+scarlet, in the Ninevite case, the scarlet rushes at the bull--I
+have observed from the Parliamentary debates that, by a curious
+fatality, there has been a great deal of the reproof valiant and
+the counter-check quarrelsome, in reference to every case, showing
+the necessity of Administrative Reform, by whomsoever produced,
+whensoever, and wheresoever.  I daresay I should have no difficulty
+in adding two or three cases to the list, which I know to be true,
+and which I have no doubt would be contradicted, but I consider it
+a work of supererogation; for, if the people at large be not
+already convinced that a sufficient general case has been made out
+for Administrative Reform, I think they never can be, and they
+never will be.  There is, however, an old indisputable, very well
+known story, which has so pointed a moral at the end of it that I
+will substitute it for a new case:  by doing of which I may avoid,
+I hope, the sacred wrath of St. Stephen's.  Ages ago a savage mode
+of keeping accounts on notched sticks was introduced into the Court
+of Exchequer, and the accounts were kept, much as Robinson Crusoe
+kept his calendar on the desert island.  In the course of
+considerable revolutions of time, the celebrated Cocker was born,
+and died; Walkinghame, of the Tutor's Assistant, and well versed in
+figures, was also born, and died; a multitude of accountants, book-
+keepers, and actuaries, were born, and died.  Still official
+routine inclined to these notched sticks, as if they were pillars
+of the constitution, and still the Exchequer accounts continued to
+be kept on certain splints of elm wood called "tallies."  In the
+reign of George III. an inquiry was made by some revolutionary
+spirit, whether pens, ink, and paper, slates and pencils, being in
+existence, this obstinate adherence to an obsolete custom ought to
+be continued, and whether a change ought not to be effected.
+
+All the red tape in the country grew redder at the bare mention of
+this bold and original conception, and it took till 1826 to get
+these sticks abolished.  In 1834 it was found that there was a
+considerable accumulation of them; and the question then arose,
+what was to be done with such worn-out, worm-eaten, rotten old bits
+of wood?  I dare say there was a vast amount of minuting,
+memoranduming, and despatch-boxing, on this mighty subject.  The
+sticks were housed at Westminster, and it would naturally occur to
+any intelligent person that nothing could be easier than to allow
+them to be carried away for fire-wood by the miserable people who
+live in that neighbourhood.  However, they never had been useful,
+and official routine required that they never should be, and so the
+order went forth that they were to be privately and confidentially
+burnt.  It came to pass that they were burnt in a stove in the
+House of Lords.  The stove, overgorged with these preposterous
+sticks, set fire to the panelling; the panelling set fire to the
+House of Lords; the House of Lords set fire to the House of
+Commons; the two houses were reduced to ashes; architects were
+called in to build others; we are now in the second million of the
+cost thereof; the national pig is not nearly over the stile yet;
+and the little old woman, Britannia, hasn't got home to-night.
+
+Now, I think we may reasonably remark, in conclusion, that all
+obstinate adherence to rubbish which the time has long outlived, is
+certain to have in the soul of it more or less that is pernicious
+and destructive; and that will some day set fire to something or
+other; which, if given boldly to the winds would have been
+harmless; but which, obstinately retained, is ruinous.  I believe
+myself that when Administrative Reform goes up it will be idle to
+hope to put it down, on this or that particular instance.  The
+great, broad, and true cause that our public progress is far behind
+our private progress, and that we are not more remarkable for our
+private wisdom and success in matters of business than we are for
+our public folly and failure, I take to be as clearly established
+as the sun, moon, and stars.  To set this right, and to clear the
+way in the country for merit everywhere:  accepting it equally
+whether it be aristocratic or democratic, only asking whether it be
+honest or true, is, I take it, the true object of this Association.
+This object it seeks to promote by uniting together large numbers
+of the people, I hope, of all conditions, to the end that they may
+better comprehend, bear in mind, understand themselves, and impress
+upon others, the common public duty.  Also, of which there is great
+need, that by keeping a vigilant eye on the skirmishers thrown out
+from time to time by the Party of Generals, they may see that their
+feints and manoeuvres do not oppress the small defaulters and
+release the great, and that they do not gull the public with a mere
+field-day Review of Reform, instead of an earnest, hard-fought
+Battle.  I have had no consultation with any one upon the subject,
+but I particularly wish that the directors may devise some means of
+enabling intelligent working men to join this body, on easier terms
+than subscribers who have larger resources.  I could wish to see
+great numbers of them belong to us, because I sincerely believe
+that it would be good for the common weal.
+
+Said the noble Lord at the head of the Government, when Mr. Layard
+asked him for a day for his motion, "Let the hon. gentleman find a
+day for himself."
+
+
+"Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
+Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed
+That he is grown so great?"
+
+
+If our Caesar will excuse me, I would take the liberty of reversing
+that cool and lofty sentiment, and I would say, "First Lord, your
+duty it is to see that no man is left to find a day for himself.
+See you, who take the responsibility of government, who aspire to
+it, live for it, intrigue for it, scramble for it, who hold to it
+tooth-and-nail when you can get it, see you that no man is left to
+find a day for himself.  In this old country, with its seething
+hard-worked millions, its heavy taxes, its swarms of ignorant, its
+crowds of poor, and its crowds of wicked, woe the day when the
+dangerous man shall find a day for himself, because the head of the
+Government failed in his duty in not anticipating it by a brighter
+and a better one!  Name you the day, First Lord; make a day; work
+for a day beyond your little time, Lord Palmerston, and History in
+return may then--not otherwise--find a day for you; a day equally
+associated with the contentment of the loyal, patient, willing-
+hearted English people, and with the happiness of your Royal
+Mistress and her fair line of children."
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  SHEFFIELD, DECEMBER 22, 1855.
+
+
+
+[On Saturday Evening Mr. Charles Dickens read his Christmas Carol
+in the Mechanics' Hall in behalf of the funds of the Institute.
+
+After the reading the Mayor said, he had been charged by a few
+gentlemen in Sheffield to present to Mr. Dickens for his acceptance
+a very handsome service of table cutlery, a pair of razors, and a
+pair of fish carvers, as some substantial manifestation of their
+gratitude to Mr. Dickens for his kindness in coming to Sheffield.
+Henceforth the Christmas of 1855 would be associated in his mind
+with the name of that gentleman.]
+
+Mr. Charles Dickens, in receiving the presentation, said, he
+accepted with heartfelt delight and cordial gratitude such
+beautiful specimens of Sheffield-workmanship; and he begged to
+assure them that the kind observations which had been made by the
+Mayor, and the way in which they had been responded to by that
+assembly, would never be obliterated from his remembrance.  The
+present testified not only to the work of Sheffield hands, but to
+the warmth and generosity of Sheffield hearts.  It was his earnest
+desire to do right by his readers, and to leave imaginative and
+popular literature associated with the private homes and public
+rights of the people of England.  The case of cutlery with which he
+had been so kindly presented, should be retained as an heirloom in
+his family; and he assured them that he should ever be faithful to
+his death to the principles which had earned for him their
+approval.  In taking his reluctant leave of them, he wished them
+many merry Christmases, and many happy new years.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, FEBRUARY 9, 1858.
+
+
+
+[At the Anniversary Festival of the Hospital for Sick Children, on
+Tuesday, February the 9th, 1858, about one hundred and fifty
+gentlemen sat down to dinner, in the Freemasons' Hall.  Later in
+the evening all the seats in the gallery were filled with ladies
+interested in the success of the Hospital.  After the usual loyal
+and other toasts, the Chairman, Mr. Dickens, proposed "Prosperity
+to the Hospital for Sick Children," and said:-]
+
+Ladies and gentlemen,--It is one of my rules in life not to believe
+a man who may happen to tell me that he feels no interest in
+children.  I hold myself bound to this principle by all kind
+consideration, because I know, as we all must, that any heart which
+could really toughen its affections and sympathies against those
+dear little people must be wanting in so many humanising
+experiences of innocence and tenderness, as to be quite an unsafe
+monstrosity among men.  Therefore I set the assertion down,
+whenever I happen to meet with it--which is sometimes, though not
+often--as an idle word, originating possibly in the genteel languor
+of the hour, and meaning about as much as that knowing social
+lassitude, which has used up the cardinal virtues and quite found
+out things in general, usually does mean.  I suppose it may be
+taken for granted that we, who come together in the name of
+children and for the sake of children, acknowledge that we have an
+interest in them; indeed, I have observed since I sit down here
+that we are quite in a childlike state altogether, representing an
+infant institution, and not even yet a grown-up company.  A few
+years are necessary to the increase of our strength and the
+expansion of our figure; and then these tables, which now have a
+few tucks in them, will be let out, and then this hall, which now
+sits so easily upon us, will be too tight and small for us.
+Nevertheless, it is likely that even we are not without our
+experience now and then of spoilt children.  I do not mean of our
+own spoilt children, because nobody's own children ever were
+spoilt, but I mean the disagreeable children of our particular
+friends.  We know by experience what it is to have them down after
+dinner, and, across the rich perspective of a miscellaneous dessert
+to see, as in a black dose darkly, the family doctor looming in the
+distance.  We know, I have no doubt we all know, what it is to
+assist at those little maternal anecdotes and table entertainments
+illustrated with imitations and descriptive dialogue which might
+not be inaptly called, after the manner of my friend Mr. Albert
+Smith, the toilsome ascent of Miss Mary and the eruption
+(cutaneous) of Master Alexander.  We know what it is when those
+children won't go to bed; we know how they prop their eyelids open
+with their forefingers when they will sit up; how, when they become
+fractious, they say aloud that they don't like us, and our nose is
+too long, and why don't we go?  And we are perfectly acquainted
+with those kicking bundles which are carried off at last
+protesting.  An eminent eye-witness told me that he was one of a
+company of learned pundits who assembled at the house of a very
+distinguished philosopher of the last generation to hear him
+expound his stringent views concerning infant education and early
+mental development, and he told me that while the philosopher did
+this in very beautiful and lucid language, the philosopher's little
+boy, for his part, edified the assembled sages by dabbling up to
+the elbows in an apple pie which had been provided for their
+entertainment, having previously anointed his hair with the syrup,
+combed it with his fork, and brushed it with his spoon.  It is
+probable that we also have our similar experiences sometimes, of
+principles that are not quite practice, and that we know people
+claiming to be very wise and profound about nations of men who show
+themselves to be rather weak and shallow about units of babies.
+
+But, ladies and gentlemen, the spoilt children whom I have to
+present to you after this dinner of to-day are not of this class.
+I have glanced at these for the easier and lighter introduction of
+another, a very different, a far more numerous, and a far more
+serious class.  The spoilt children whom I must show you are the
+spoilt children of the poor in this great city, the children who
+are, every year, for ever and ever irrevocably spoilt out of this
+breathing life of ours by tens of thousands, but who may in vast
+numbers be preserved if you, assisting and not contravening the
+ways of Providence, will help to save them.  The two grim nurses,
+Poverty and Sickness, who bring these children before you, preside
+over their births, rock their wretched cradles, nail down their
+little coffins, pile up the earth above their graves.  Of the
+annual deaths in this great town, their unnatural deaths form more
+than one-third.  I shall not ask you, according to the custom as to
+the other class--I shall not ask you on behalf of these children to
+observe how good they are, how pretty they are, how clever they
+are, how promising they are, whose beauty they most resemble--I
+shall only ask you to observe how weak they are, and how like death
+they are!  And I shall ask you, by the remembrance of everything
+that lies between your own infancy and that so miscalled second
+childhood when the child's graces are gone and nothing but its
+helplessness remains; I shall ask you to turn your thoughts to
+THESE spoilt children in the sacred names of Pity and Compassion.
+
+Some years ago, being in Scotland, I went with one of the most
+humane members of the humane medical profession, on a morning tour
+among some of the worst lodged inhabitants of the old town of
+Edinburgh.  In the closes and wynds of that picturesque place--I am
+sorry to remind you what fast friends picturesqueness and typhus
+often are--we saw more poverty and sickness in an hour than many
+people would believe in a life.  Our way lay from one to another of
+the most wretched dwellings, reeking with horrible odours; shut out
+from the sky, shut out from the air, mere pits and dens.  In a room
+in one of these places, where there was an empty porridge-pot on
+the cold hearth, with a ragged woman and some ragged children
+crouching on the bare ground near it--where, I remember as I speak,
+that the very light, refracted from a high damp-stained and time-
+stained house-wall, came trembling in, as if the fever which had
+shaken everything else there had shaken even it--there lay, in an
+old egg-box which the mother had begged from a shop, a little
+feeble, wasted, wan, sick child.  With his little wasted face, and
+his little hot, worn hands folded over his breast, and his little
+bright, attentive eyes, I can see him now, as I have seen him for
+several years, look in steadily at us.  There he lay in his little
+frail box, which was not at all a bad emblem of the little body
+from which he was slowly parting--there he lay, quite quiet, quite
+patient, saying never a word.  He seldom cried, the mother said; he
+seldom complained; "he lay there, seemin' to woonder what it was a'
+aboot."  God knows, I thought, as I stood looking at him, he had
+his reasons for wondering--reasons for wondering how it could
+possibly come to be that he lay there, left alone, feeble and full
+of pain, when he ought to have been as bright and as brisk as the
+birds that never got near him--reasons for wondering how he came to
+be left there, a little decrepid old man pining to death, quite a
+thing of course, as if there were no crowds of healthy and happy
+children playing on the grass under the summer's sun within a
+stone's throw of him, as if there were no bright, moving sea on the
+other side of the great hill overhanging the city; as if there were
+no great clouds rushing over it; as if there were no life, and
+movement, and vigour anywhere in the world--nothing but stoppage
+and decay.  There he lay looking at us, saying, in his silence,
+more pathetically than I have ever heard anything said by any
+orator in my life, "Will you please to tell me what this means,
+strange man? and if you can give me any good reason why I should be
+so soon, so far advanced on my way to Him who said that children
+were to come into His presence and were not to be forbidden, but
+who scarcely meant, I think, that they should come by this hard
+road by which I am travelling; pray give that reason to me, for I
+seek it very earnestly and wonder about it very much;" and to my
+mind he has been wondering about it ever since.  Many a poor child,
+sick and neglected, I have seen since that time in this London;
+many a poor sick child I have seen most affectionately and kindly
+tended by poor people, in an unwholesome house and under untoward
+circumstances, wherein its recovery was quite impossible; but at
+all such times I have seen my poor little drooping friend in his
+egg-box, and he has always addressed his dumb speech to me, and I
+have always found him wondering what it meant, and why, in the name
+of a gracious God, such things should be!
+
+Now, ladies and gentlemen, such things need not be, and will not
+be, if this company, which is a drop of the life-blood of the great
+compassionate public heart, will only accept the means of rescue
+and prevention which it is mine to offer.  Within a quarter of a
+mile of this place where I speak, stands a courtly old house, where
+once, no doubt, blooming children were born, and grew up to be men
+and women, and married, and brought their own blooming children
+back to patter up the old oak staircase which stood but the other
+day, and to wonder at the old oak carvings on the chimney-pieces.
+In the airy wards into which the old state drawing-rooms and family
+bedchambers of that house are now converted are such little
+patients that the attendant nurses look like reclaimed giantesses,
+and the kind medical practitioner like an amiable Christian ogre.
+Grouped about the little low tables in the centre of the rooms are
+such tiny convalescents that they seem to be playing at having been
+ill.  On the doll's beds are such diminutive creatures that each
+poor sufferer is supplied with its tray of toys; and, looking
+round, you may see how the little tired, flushed cheek has toppled
+over half the brute creation on its way into the ark; or how one
+little dimpled arm has mowed down (as I saw myself) the whole tin
+soldiery of Europe.  On the walls of these rooms are graceful,
+pleasant, bright, childish pictures.  At the bed's heads, are
+pictures of the figure which is the universal embodiment of all
+mercy and compassion, the figure of Him who was once a child
+himself, and a poor one.  Besides these little creatures on the
+beds, you may learn in that place that the number of small Out-
+patients brought to that house for relief is no fewer than ten
+thousand in the compass of one single year.  In the room in which
+these are received, you may see against the wall a box, on which it
+is written, that it has been calculated, that if every grateful
+mother who brings a child there will drop a penny into it, the
+Hospital funds may possibly be increased in a year by so large a
+sum as forty pounds.  And you may read in the Hospital Report, with
+a glow of pleasure, that these poor women are so respondent as to
+have made, even in a toiling year of difficulty and high prices,
+this estimated forty, fifty pounds.  In the printed papers of this
+same Hospital, you may read with what a generous earnestness the
+highest and wisest members of the medical profession testify to the
+great need of it; to the immense difficulty of treating children in
+the same hospitals with grown-up people, by reason of their
+different ailments and requirements, to the vast amount of pain
+that will be assuaged, and of life that will be saved, through this
+Hospital; not only among the poor, observe, but among the
+prosperous too, by reason of the increased knowledge of children's
+illnesses, which cannot fail to arise from a more systematic mode
+of studying them.  Lastly, gentlemen, and I am sorry to say, worst
+of all--(for I must present no rose-coloured picture of this place
+to you--I must not deceive you;) lastly, the visitor to this
+Children's Hospital, reckoning up the number of its beds, will find
+himself perforce obliged to stop at very little over thirty; and
+will learn, with sorrow and surprise, that even that small number,
+so forlornly, so miserably diminutive, compared with this vast
+London, cannot possibly be maintained, unless the Hospital be made
+better known; I limit myself to saying better known, because I will
+not believe that in a Christian community of fathers and mothers,
+and brothers and sisters, it can fail, being better known, to be
+well and richly endowed.
+
+Now, ladies and gentlemen, this, without a word of adornment--which
+I resolved when I got up not to allow myself--this is the simple
+case.  This is the pathetic case which I have to put to you; not
+only on behalf of the thousands of children who annually die in
+this great city, but also on behalf of the thousands of children
+who live half developed, racked with preventible pain, shorn of
+their natural capacity for health and enjoyment.  If these innocent
+creatures cannot move you for themselves, how can I possibly hope
+to move you in their name?  The most delightful paper, the most
+charming essay, which the tender imagination of Charles Lamb
+conceived, represents him as sitting by his fireside on a winter
+night telling stories to his own dear children, and delighting in
+their society, until he suddenly comes to his old, solitary,
+bachelor self, and finds that they were but dream-children who
+might have been, but never were.  "We are nothing," they say to
+him; "less than nothing, and dreams.  We are only what might have
+been, and we must wait upon the tedious shore of Lethe, millions of
+ages, before we have existence and a name."  "And immediately
+awaking," he says, "I found myself in my arm chair."  The dream-
+children whom I would now raise, if I could, before every one of
+you, according to your various circumstances, should be the dear
+child you love, the dearer child you have lost, the child you might
+have had, the child you certainly have been.  Each of these dream-
+children should hold in its powerful hand one of the little
+children now lying in the Child's Hospital, or now shut out of it
+to perish.  Each of these dream-children should say to you, "O,
+help this little suppliant in my name; O, help it for my sake!"
+Well!--And immediately awaking, you should find yourselves in the
+Freemasons' Hall, happily arrived at the end of a rather long
+speech, drinking "Prosperity to the Hospital for Sick Children,"
+and thoroughly resolved that it shall flourish.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  EDINBURGH, MARCH, 26, 1858.
+
+
+
+[On the above date Mr. Dickens gave a reading of his Christmas
+Carol in the Music Hall, before the members and subscribers of the
+Philosophical Institution.  At the conclusion of the reading the
+Lord Provost of Edinburgh presented him with a massive silver
+wassail cup.  Mr. Dickens acknowledged the tribute as follows:]
+
+My Lord Provost, ladies, and gentlemen, I beg to assure you I am
+deeply sensible of your kind welcome, and of this beautiful and
+great surprise; and that I thank you cordially with all my heart.
+I never have forgotten, and I never can forget, that I have the
+honour to be a burgess and guild-brother of the Corporation of
+Edinburgh.  As long as sixteen or seventeen years ago, the first
+great public recognition and encouragement I ever received was
+bestowed on me in this generous and magnificent city--in this city
+so distinguished in literature and so distinguished in the arts.
+You will readily believe that I have carried into the various
+countries I have since traversed, and through all my subsequent
+career, the proud and affectionate remembrance of that eventful
+epoch in my life; and that coming back to Edinburgh is to me like
+coming home.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, you have heard so much of my voice to-night,
+that I will not inflict on you the additional task of hearing any
+more.  I am better reconciled to limiting myself to these very few
+words, because I know and feel full well that no amount of speech
+to which I could give utterance could possibly express my sense of
+the honour and distinction you have conferred on me, or the
+heartfelt gratification I derive from this reception.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, MARCH 29, 1858.
+
+
+
+[At the thirteenth anniversary festival of the General Theatrical
+Fund, held at the Freemasons' Tavern, at which Thackeray presided,
+Mr. Dickens made the following speech:]
+
+In our theatrical experience as playgoers we are all equally
+accustomed to predict by certain little signs and portents on the
+stage what is going to happen there.  When the young lady, an
+admiral's daughter, is left alone to indulge in a short soliloquy,
+and certain smart spirit-rappings are heard to proceed immediately
+from beneath her feet, we foretell that a song is impending.  When
+two gentlemen enter, for whom, by a happy coincidence, two chairs,
+and no more, are in waiting, we augur a conversation, and that it
+will assume a retrospective biographical character.  When any of
+the performers who belong to the sea-faring or marauding
+professions are observed to arm themselves with very small swords
+to which are attached very large hilts, we predict that the affair
+will end in a combat.  Carrying out the association of ideas, it
+may have occurred to some that when I asked my old friend in the
+chair to allow me to propose a toast I had him in my eye; and I
+have him now on my lips.
+
+The duties of a trustee of the Theatrical Fund, an office which I
+hold, are not so frequent or so great as its privileges.  He is in
+fact a mere walking gentleman, with the melancholy difference that
+he has no one to love.  If this advantage could be added to his
+character it would be one of a more agreeable nature than it is,
+and his forlorn position would be greatly improved.  His duty is to
+call every half year at the bankers', when he signs his name in a
+large greasy inconvenient book, to certain documents of which he
+knows nothing, and then he delivers it to the property man and
+exits anywhere.
+
+He, however, has many privileges.  It is one of his privileges to
+watch the steady growth of an institution in which he takes great
+interest; it is one of his privileges to bear his testimony to the
+prudence, the goodness, the self-denial, and the excellence of a
+class of persons who have been too long depreciated, and whose
+virtues are too much denied, out of the depths of an ignorant and
+stupid superstition.  And lastly, it is one of his privileges
+sometimes to be called on to propose the health of the chairman at
+the annual dinners of the institution, when that chairman is one
+for whose genius he entertains the warmest admiration, and whom he
+respects as a friend, and as one who does honour to literature, and
+in whom literature is honoured.  I say when that is the case, he
+feels that this last privilege is a great and high one.  From the
+earliest days of this institution I have ventured to impress on its
+managers, that they would consult its credit and success by
+choosing its chairmen as often as possible within the circle of
+literature and the arts; and I will venture to say that no similar
+institution has been presided over by so many remarkable and
+distinguished men.  I am sure, however, that it never has had, and
+that it never will have, simply because it cannot have, a greater
+lustre cast upon it than by the presence of the noble English
+writer who fills the chair to-night.
+
+It is not for me at this time, and in this place, to take on myself
+to flutter before you the well-thumbed pages of Mr. Thackeray's
+books, and to tell you to observe how full they are of wit and
+wisdom, how out-speaking, and how devoid of fear or favour; but I
+will take leave to remark, in paying my due homage and respect to
+them, that it is fitting that such a writer and such an institution
+should be brought together.  Every writer of fiction, although he
+may not adopt the dramatic form, writes in effect for the stage.
+He may never write plays; but the truth and passion which are in
+him must be more or less reflected in the great mirror which he
+holds up to nature.  Actors, managers, and authors are all
+represented in this company, and it maybe supposed that they all
+have studied the deep wants of the human heart in many theatres;
+but none of them could have studied its mysterious workings in any
+theatre to greater advantage than in the bright and airy pages of
+Vanity Fair.  To this skilful showman, who has so often delighted
+us, and who has charmed us again to-night, we have now to wish God
+speed, and that he may continue for many years {11} to exercise his
+potent art.  To him fill a bumper toast, and fervently utter, God
+bless him!
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, APRIL 29, 1858.
+
+
+
+[The reader will already have observed that in the Christmas week
+of 1853, and on several subsequent occasions, Mr. Dickens had read
+the Christmas Carol and the Chimes before public audiences, but
+always in aid of the funds of some institution, or for other
+benevolent purposes.  The first reading he ever gave for his own
+benefit took place on the above date, in St. Martin's Hall, (now
+converted into the Queen's Theatre).  This reading Mr. Dickens
+prefaced with the following speech:-]
+
+Ladies and gentlemen,--It may perhaps be in known to you that, for
+a few years past, I have been accustomed occasionally to read some
+of my shorter books, to various audiences, in aid of a variety of
+good objects, and at some charge to myself, both in time and money.
+It having at length become impossible in any reason to comply with
+these always accumulating demands, I have had definitively to
+choose between now and then reading on my own account, as one of my
+recognised occupations, or not reading at all.  I have had little
+or no difficulty in deciding on the former course.  The reasons
+that have led me to it--besides the consideration that it
+necessitates no departure whatever from the chosen pursuits of my
+life--are threefold:  firstly, I have satisfied myself that it can
+involve no possible compromise of the credit and independence of
+literature; secondly, I have long held the opinion, and have long
+acted on the opinion, that in these times whatever brings a public
+man and his public face to face, on terms of mutual confidence and
+respect, is a good thing; thirdly, I have had a pretty large
+experience of the interest my hearers are so generous as to take in
+these occasions, and of the delight they give to me, as a tried
+means of strengthening those relations--I may almost say of
+personal friendship--which it is my great privilege and pride, as
+it is my great responsibility, to hold with a multitude of persons
+who will never hear my voice nor see my face.  Thus it is that I
+come, quite naturally, to be here among you at this time; and thus
+it is that I proceed to read this little book, quite as composedly
+as I might proceed to write it, or to publish it in any other way.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, MAY 1, 1858.
+
+
+
+[The following short speech was made at the Banquet of the Royal
+Academy, after the health of Mr. Dickens and Mr. Thackeray had been
+proposed by the President, Sir Charles Eastlake:-]
+
+Following the order of your toast, I have to take the first part in
+the duet to be performed in acknowledgment of the compliment you
+have paid to literature.  In this home of art I feel it to be too
+much an interchange of compliments, as it were, between near
+relations, to enter into any lengthened expression of our thanks
+for the honour you have done us.  I feel that it would be changing
+this splendid assembly into a sort of family party.  I may,
+however, take leave to say that your sister, whom I represent, is
+strong and healthy; that she has a very great affection for, and an
+undying interest in you, and that it is always a very great
+gratification to her to see herself so well remembered within these
+walls, and to know that she is an honoured guest at your hospitable
+board.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, JULY 21, 1858.
+
+
+
+[On the above date, a public meeting was held at the Princess's
+Theatre, for the purpose of establishing the now famous Royal
+Dramatic College.  Mr. Charles Kean was the chairman, and Mr.
+Dickens delivered the following speech:]
+
+Ladies and gentlemen,--I think I may venture to congratulate you
+beforehand on the pleasant circumstance that the movers and
+seconders of the resolutions which will be submitted to you will,
+probably, have very little to say.  Through the Report which you
+have heard read, and through the comprehensive address of the
+chairman, the cause which brings us together has been so very
+clearly stated to you, that it can stand in need of very little, if
+of any further exposition.  But, as I have the honour to move the
+first resolution which this handsome gift, and the vigorous action
+that must be taken upon it, necessitate, I think I shall only give
+expression to what is uppermost in the general mind here, if I
+venture to remark that, many as the parts are in which Mr. Kean has
+distinguished himself on these boards, he has never appeared in one
+in which the large spirit of an artist, the feeling of a man, and
+the grace of a gentleman, have been more admirably blended than in
+this day's faithful adherence to the calling of which he is a
+prosperous ornament, and in this day's manly advocacy of its cause.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, the resolution entrusted to me is:
+
+"That the Report of the provisional committee be adopted, and that
+this meeting joyfully accepts, and gratefully acknowledges, the
+gift of five acres of land referred to in the said Report." {12}
+
+It is manifest, I take it, that we are all agreed upon this
+acceptance and acknowledgment, and that we all know very well that
+this generous gift can inspire but one sentiment in the breast of
+every lover of the dramatic art.  As it is far too often forgotten
+by those who are indebted to it for many a restorative flight out
+of this working-day world, that the silks, and velvets, and elegant
+costumes of its professors must be every night exchanged for the
+hideous coats and waistcoats of the present day, in which we have
+now the honour and the misfortune of appearing before you, so when
+we do meet with a nature so considerably generous as this donor's,
+and do find an interest in the real life and struggles of the
+people who have delighted it, so very spontaneous and so very
+liberal, we have nothing to do but to accept and to admire, we have
+no duty left but to "take the goods the gods provide us," and to
+make the best and the most of them.  Ladies and gentlemen, allow me
+to remark, that in this mode of turning a good gift to the highest
+account, lies the truest gratitude.
+
+In reference to this, I could not but reflect, whilst Mr. Kean was
+speaking, that in an hour or two from this time, the spot upon
+which we are now assembled will be transformed into the scene of a
+crafty and a cruel bond.  I know that, a few hours hence, the Grand
+Canal of Venice will flow, with picturesque fidelity, on the very
+spot where I now stand dryshod, and that "the quality of mercy"
+will be beautifully stated to the Venetian Council by a learned
+young doctor from Padua, on these very boards on which we now
+enlarge upon the quality of charity and sympathy.  Knowing this, it
+came into my mind to consider how different the real bond of to-day
+from the ideal bond of to-night.  Now, all generosity, all
+forbearance, all forgetfulness of little jealousies and unworthy
+divisions, all united action for the general good.  Then, all
+selfishness, all malignity, all cruelty, all revenge, and all
+evil,--now all good.  Then, a bond to be broken within the compass
+of a few--three or four--swiftly passing hours,--now, a bond to be
+valid and of good effect generations hence.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, of the execution and delivery of this bond,
+between this generous gentleman on the one hand, and the united
+members of a too often and too long disunited art upon the other,
+be you the witnesses.  Do you attest of everything that is liberal
+and free in spirit, that is "so nominated in the bond;" and of
+everything that is grudging, self-seeking, unjust, or unfair, that
+it is by no sophistry ever to be found there.  I beg to move the
+resolution which I have already had the pleasure of reading.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  MANCHESTER, DECEMBER 3, 1858.
+
+
+
+[The following speech was delivered at the annual meeting of the
+Institutional Association of Lancashire and Cheshire, held in the
+Free-trade Hall on the evening of the above day, at which Mr.
+Dickens presided.]
+
+It has of late years become noticeable in England that the autumn
+season produces an immense amount of public speaking.  I notice
+that no sooner do the leaves begin to fall from the trees, than
+pearls of great price begin to fall from the lips of the wise men
+of the east, and north, and west, and south; and anybody may have
+them by the bushel, for the picking up.  Now, whether the comet has
+this year had a quickening influence on this crop, as it is by some
+supposed to have had upon the corn-harvest and the vintage, I do
+not know; but I do know that I have never observed the columns of
+the newspapers to groan so heavily under a pressure of orations,
+each vying with the other in the two qualities of having little or
+nothing to do with the matter in hand, and of being always
+addressed to any audience in the wide world rather than the
+audience to which it was delivered.
+
+The autumn having gone, and the winter come, I am so sanguine as to
+hope that we in our proceedings may break through this enchanted
+circle and deviate from this precedent; the rather as we have
+something real to do, and are come together, I am sure, in all
+plain fellowship and straightforwardness, to do it.  We have no
+little straws of our own to throw up to show us which way any wind
+blows, and we have no oblique biddings of our own to make for
+anything outside this hall.
+
+At the top of the public announcement of this meeting are the
+words, "Institutional Association of Lancashire and Cheshire."
+Will you allow me, in reference to the meaning of those words, to
+present myself before you as the embodied spirit of ignorance
+recently enlightened, and to put myself through a short, voluntary
+examination as to the results of my studies.  To begin with:  the
+title did not suggest to me anything in the least like the truth.
+I have been for some years pretty familiar with the terms,
+"Mechanics' Institutions," and "Literary Societies," but they have,
+unfortunately, become too often associated in my mind with a body
+of great pretensions, lame as to some important member or other,
+which generally inhabits a new house much too large for it, which
+is seldom paid for, and which takes the name of the mechanics most
+grievously in vain, for I have usually seen a mechanic and a dodo
+in that place together.
+
+I, therefore, began my education, in respect of the meaning of this
+title, very coldly indeed, saying to myself, "Here's the old
+story."  But the perusal of a very few lines of my book soon gave
+me to understand that it was not by any means the old story; in
+short, that this association is expressly designed to correct the
+old story, and to prevent its defects from becoming perpetuated.  I
+learnt that this Institutional Association is the union, in one
+central head, of one hundred and fourteen local Mechanics'
+Institutions and Mutual Improvement Societies, at an expense of no
+more than five shillings to each society; suggesting to all how
+they can best communicate with and profit by the fountain-head and
+one another; keeping their best aims steadily before them; advising
+them how those aims can be best attained; giving a direct end and
+object to what might otherwise easily become waste forces; and
+sending among them not only oral teachers, but, better still, boxes
+of excellent books, called "Free Itinerating Libraries."  I learned
+that these books are constantly making the circuit of hundreds upon
+hundreds of miles, and are constantly being read with inexpressible
+relish by thousands upon thousands of toiling people, but that they
+are never damaged or defaced by one rude hand.  These and other
+like facts lead me to consider the immense importance of the fact,
+that no little cluster of working men's cottages can arise in any
+Lancashire or Cheshire valley, at the foot of any running stream
+which enterprise hunts out for water-power, but it has its
+educational friend and companion ready for it, willing for it,
+acquainted with its thoughts and ways and turns of speech even
+before it has come into existence.
+
+Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is the main consideration that has
+brought me here.  No central association at a distance could
+possibly do for those working men what this local association does.
+No central association at a distance could possibly understand them
+as this local association does.  No central association at a
+distance could possibly put them in that familiar and easy
+communication one with another, as that I, man or boy, eager for
+knowledge, in that valley seven miles off, should know of you, man
+or boy, eager for knowledge, in that valley twelve miles off, and
+should occasionally trudge to meet you, that you may impart your
+learning in one branch of acquisition to me, whilst I impart mine
+in another to you.  Yet this is distinctly a feature, and a most
+important feature, of this society.
+
+On the other hand, it is not to be supposed that these honest men,
+however zealous, could, as a rule, succeed in establishing and
+maintaining their own institutions of themselves.  It is obvious
+that combination must materially diminish their cost, which is in
+time a vital consideration; and it is equally obvious that
+experience, essential to the success of all combination, is
+especially so when its object is to diffuse the results of
+experience and of reflection.
+
+Well, ladies and gentlemen, the student of the present profitable
+history of this society does not stop here in his learning; when he
+has got so far, he finds with interest and pleasure that the parent
+society at certain stated periods invites the more eager and
+enterprising members of the local society to submit themselves to
+voluntary examination in various branches of useful knowledge, of
+which examination it takes the charge and arranges the details, and
+invites the successful candidates to come to Manchester to receive
+the prizes and certificates of merit which it impartially awards.
+The most successful of the competitors in the list of these
+examinations are now among us, and these little marks of
+recognition and encouragement I shall have the honour presently of
+giving them, as they come before you, one by one, for that purpose.
+
+I have looked over a few of those examination papers, which have
+comprised history, geography, grammar, arithmetic, book-keeping,
+decimal coinage, mensuration, mathematics, social economy, the
+French language--in fact, they comprise all the keys that open all
+the locks of knowledge.  I felt most devoutly gratified, as to many
+of them, that they had not been submitted to me to answer, for I am
+perfectly sure that if they had been, I should have had mighty
+little to bestow upon myself to-night.  And yet it is always to be
+observed and seriously remembered that these examinations are
+undergone by people whose lives have been passed in a continual
+fight for bread, and whose whole existence, has been a constant
+wrestle with
+
+
+"Those twin gaolers of the daring heart -
+Low birth and iron fortune." {13}
+
+
+I could not but consider, with extraordinary admiration, that these
+questions have been replied to, not by men like myself, the
+business of whose life is with writing and with books, but by men,
+the business of whose life is with tools and with machinery.
+
+Let me endeavour to recall, as well as my memory will serve me,
+from among the most interesting cases of prize-holders and
+certificate-gainers who will appear before you, some two or three
+of the most conspicuous examples.  There are two poor brothers from
+near Chorley, who work from morning to night in a coal-pit, and
+who, in all weathers, have walked eight miles a-night, three nights
+a-week, to attend the classes in which they have gained
+distinction.  There are two poor boys from Bollington, who begin
+life as piecers at one shilling or eighteen-pence a-week, and the
+father of one of whom was cut to pieces by the machinery at which
+he worked, but not before he had himself founded the institution in
+which this son has since come to be taught.  These two poor boys
+will appear before you to-night, to take the second-class prize in
+chemistry.  There is a plasterer from Bury, sixteen years of age,
+who took a third-class certificate last year at the hands of Lord
+Brougham; he is this year again successful in a competition three
+times as severe.  There is a wagon-maker from the same place, who
+knew little or absolutely nothing until he was a grown man, and who
+has learned all he knows, which is a great deal, in the local
+institution.  There is a chain-maker, in very humble circumstances,
+and working hard all day, who walks six miles a-night, three nights
+a-week, to attend the classes in which he has won so famous a
+place.  There is a moulder in an iron foundry, who, whilst he was
+working twelve hours a day before the furnace, got up at four
+o'clock in the morning to learn drawing.  "The thought of my lads,"
+he writes in his modest account of himself, "in their peaceful
+slumbers above me, gave me fresh courage, and I used to think that
+if I should never receive any personal benefit, I might instruct
+them when they came to be of an age to understand the mighty
+machines and engines which have made our country, England, pre-
+eminent in the world's history."  There is a piecer at mule-frames,
+who could not read at eighteen, who is now a man of little more
+than thirty, who is the sole support of an aged mother, who is
+arithmetical teacher in the institution in which he himself was
+taught, who writes of himself that he made the resolution never to
+take up a subject without keeping to it, and who has kept to it
+with such an astonishing will, that he is now well versed in Euclid
+and Algebra, and is the best French scholar in Stockport.  The
+drawing-classes in that same Stockport are taught by a working
+blacksmith; and the pupils of that working blacksmith will receive
+the highest honours of to-night.  Well may it be said of that good
+blacksmith, as it was written of another of his trade, by the
+American poet:
+
+
+"Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing,
+Onward through life he goes;
+Each morning sees some task begun,
+Each evening sees its clause.
+Something attempted, something done,
+Has earn'd a night's repose."
+
+
+To pass from the successful candidates to the delegates from local
+societies now before me, and to content myself with one instance
+from amongst them.  There is among their number a most remarkable
+man, whose history I have read with feelings that I could not
+adequately express under any circumstances, and least of all when I
+know he hears me, who worked when he was a mere baby at hand-loom
+weaving until he dropped from fatigue:  who began to teach himself
+as soon as he could earn five shillings a-week:  who is now a
+botanist, acquainted with every production of the Lancashire
+valley:  who is a naturalist, and has made and preserved a
+collection of the eggs of British birds, and stuffed the birds:
+who is now a conchologist, with a very curious, and in some
+respects an original collection of fresh-water shells, and has also
+preserved and collected the mosses of fresh water and of the sea:
+who is worthily the president of his own local Literary
+Institution, and who was at his work this time last night as
+foreman in a mill.
+
+So stimulating has been the influence of these bright examples, and
+many more, that I notice among the applications from Blackburn for
+preliminary test examination papers, one from an applicant who
+gravely fills up the printed form by describing himself as ten
+years of age, and who, with equal gravity, describes his occupation
+as "nursing a little child."  Nor are these things confined to the
+men.  The women employed in factories, milliners' work, and
+domestic service, have begun to show, as it is fitting they should,
+a most decided determination not to be outdone by the men; and the
+women of Preston in particular, have so honourably distinguished
+themselves, and shown in their examination papers such an admirable
+knowledge of the science of household management and household
+economy, that if I were a working bachelor of Lancashire or
+Cheshire, and if I had not cast my eye or set my heart upon any
+lass in particular, I should positively get up at four o'clock in
+the morning with the determination of the iron-moulder himself, and
+should go to Preston in search of a wife.
+
+Now, ladies and gentlemen, these instances, and many more, daily
+occurring, always accumulating, are surely better testimony to the
+working of this Association, than any number of speakers could
+possibly present to you.  Surely the presence among us of these
+indefatigable people is the Association's best and most effective
+triumph in the present and the past, and is its noblest stimulus to
+effort in the future.  As its temporary mouth-piece, I would beg to
+say to that portion of the company who attend to receive the
+prizes, that the institution can never hold itself apart from
+them;--can never set itself above them; that their distinction and
+success must be its distinction and success; and that there can be
+but one heart beating between them and it.  In particular, I would
+most especially entreat them to observe that nothing will ever be
+further from this Association's mind than the impertinence of
+patronage.  The prizes that it gives, and the certificates that it
+gives, are mere admiring assurances of sympathy with so many
+striving brothers and sisters, and are only valuable for the spirit
+in which they are given, and in which they are received.  The
+prizes are money prizes, simply because the Institution does not
+presume to doubt that persons who have so well governed themselves,
+know best how to make a little money serviceable--because it would
+be a shame to treat them like grown-up babies by laying it out for
+them, and because it knows it is given, and knows it is taken, in
+perfect clearness of purpose, perfect trustfulness, and, above all,
+perfect independence.
+
+Ladies and Gentlemen, reverting once more to the whole collective
+audience before me, I will, in another two minutes, release the
+hold which your favour has given me on your attention.  Of the
+advantages of knowledge I have said, and I shall say, nothing.  Of
+the certainty with which the man who grasps it under difficulties
+rises in his own respect and in usefulness to the community, I have
+said, and I shall say, nothing.  In the city of Manchester, in the
+county of Lancaster, both of them remarkable for self-taught men,
+that were superfluous indeed.  For the same reason I rigidly
+abstain from putting together any of the shattered fragments of
+that poor clay image of a parrot, which was once always saying,
+without knowing why, or what it meant, that knowledge was a
+dangerous thing.  I should as soon think of piecing together the
+mutilated remains of any wretched Hindoo who has been blown from an
+English gun.  Both, creatures of the past, have been--as my friend
+Mr. Carlyle vigorously has it--"blasted into space;" and there, as
+to this world, is an end of them.
+
+So I desire, in conclusion, only to sound two strings.  In the
+first place, let me congratulate you upon the progress which real
+mutual improvement societies are making at this time in your
+neighbourhood, through the noble agency of individual employers and
+their families, whom you can never too much delight to honour.
+Elsewhere, through the agency of the great railway companies, some
+of which are bestirring themselves in this matter with a gallantry
+and generosity deserving of all praise.  Secondly and lastly, let
+me say one word out of my own personal heart, which is always very
+near to it in this connexion.  Do not let us, in the midst of the
+visible objects of nature, whose workings we can tell of in
+figures, surrounded by machines that can be made to the thousandth
+part of an inch, acquiring every day knowledge which can be proved
+upon a slate or demonstrated by a microscope--do not let us, in the
+laudable pursuit of the facts that surround us, neglect the fancy
+and the imagination which equally surround us as a part of the
+great scheme.  Let the child have its fables; let the man or woman
+into which it changes, always remember those fables tenderly.  Let
+numerous graces and ornaments that cannot be weighed and measured,
+and that seem at first sight idle enough, continue to have their
+places about us, be we never so wise.  The hardest head may co-
+exist with the softest heart.  The union and just balance of those
+two is always a blessing to the possessor, and always a blessing to
+mankind.  The Divine Teacher was as gentle and considerate as He
+was powerful and wise.  You all know how He could still the raging
+of the sea, and could hush a little child.  As the utmost results
+of the wisdom of men can only be at last to help to raise this
+earth to that condition to which His doctrine, untainted by the
+blindnesses and passions of men, would have exalted it long ago; so
+let us always remember that He set us the example of blending the
+understanding and the imagination, and that, following it
+ourselves, we tread in His steps, and help our race on to its
+better and best days.  Knowledge, as all followers of it must know,
+has a very limited power indeed, when it informs the head alone;
+but when it informs the head and the heart too, it has a power over
+life and death, the body and the soul, and dominates the universe.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  COVENTRY, DECEMBER 4, 1858.
+
+
+
+[On the above evening, a public dinner was held at the Castle
+Hotel, on the occasion of the presentation to Mr. Charles Dickens
+of a gold watch, as a mark of gratitude for the reading of his
+Christmas Carol, given in December of the previous year, in aid of
+the funds of the Coventry Institute.  The chair was taken by C. W.
+Hoskyns, Esq.  Mr. Dickens ackowledged the testimonial in the
+following words:]
+
+Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice-chairman, and Gentlemen,--I hope your minds
+will be greatly relieved by my assuring you that it is one of the
+rules of my life never to make a speech about myself.  If I
+knowingly did so, under any circumstances, it would be least of all
+under such circumstances as these, when its effect on my
+acknowledgment of your kind regard, and this pleasant proof of it,
+would be to give me a certain constrained air, which I fear would
+contrast badly with your greeting, so cordial, so unaffected, so
+earnest, and so true.  Furthermore, your Chairman has decorated the
+occasion with a little garland of good sense, good feeling, and
+good taste; so that I am sure that any attempt at additional
+ornament would be almost an impertinence.
+
+Therefore I will at once say how earnestly, how fervently, and how
+deeply I feel your kindness.  This watch, with which you have
+presented me, shall be my companion in my hours of sedentary
+working at home, and in my wanderings abroad.  It shall never be
+absent from my side, and it shall reckon off the labours of my
+future days; and I can assure you that after this night the object
+of those labours will not less than before be to uphold the right
+and to do good.  And when I have done with time and its
+measurement, this watch shall belong to my children; and as I have
+seven boys, and as they have all begun to serve their country in
+various ways, or to elect into what distant regions they shall
+roam, it is not only possible, but probable, that this little voice
+will be heard scores of years hence, who knows? in some yet
+unfounded city in the wilds of Australia, or communicating
+Greenwich time to Coventry Street, Japan.
+
+Once again, and finally, I thank you; and from my heart of hearts,
+I can assure you that the memory of to-night, and of your
+picturesque and interesting city, will never be absent from my
+mind, and I can never more hear the lightest mention of the name of
+Coventry without having inspired in my breast sentiments of unusual
+emotion and unusual attachment.
+
+
+[Later in the evening, in proposing the health of the Chairman, Mr.
+Dickens said:]
+
+
+There may be a great variety of conflicting opinions with regard to
+farming, and especially with reference to the management of a clay
+farm; but, however various opinions as to the merits of a clay farm
+may be, there can be but one opinion as to the merits of a clay
+farmer,--and it is the health of that distinguished agriculturist
+which I have to propose.
+
+In my ignorance of the subject, I am bound to say that it may be,
+for anything I know, indeed I am ready to admit that it IS,
+exceedingly important that a clay farm should go for a number of
+years to waste; but I claim some knowledge as to the management of
+a clay farmer, and I positively object to his ever lying fallow.
+In the hope that this very rich and teeming individual may speedily
+be ploughed up, and that, we shall gather into our barns and store-
+houses the admirable crop of wisdom, which must spring up when ever
+he is sown, I take leave to propose his health, begging to assure
+him that the kind manner in which he offered to me your very
+valuable present, I can never forget.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, MARCH 29, 1862.
+
+
+
+[At a Dinner of the Artists' General Benevolent Institution, the
+following Address was delivered by Mr. Charles Dickens from the
+chair.-]
+
+Seven or eight years ago, without the smallest expectation of ever
+being called upon to fill the chair at an anniversary festival of
+the Artists' General Benevolent Institution, and without the
+remotest reference to such an occasion, I selected the
+administration of that Charity as the model on which I desired that
+another should be reformed, both as regarded the mode in which the
+relief was afforded, and the singular economy with which its funds
+were administered.  As a proof of the latter quality during the
+past year, the cost of distributing 1,126 pounds among the
+recipients of the bounty of the Charity amounted to little more
+than 100 pounds, inclusive of all office charges and expenses.  The
+experience and knowledge of those entrusted with the management of
+the funds are a guarantee that the last available farthing of the
+funds will be distributed among proper and deserving recipients.
+Claiming, on my part, to be related in some degree to the
+profession of an artist, I disdain to stoop to ask for charity, in
+the ordinary acceptation of the term, on behalf of the Artists.  In
+its broader and higher signification of generous confidence,
+lasting trustfulness, love and confiding belief, I very readily
+associate that cardinal virtue with art.  I decline to present the
+artist to the notice of the public as a grown-up child, or as a
+strange, unaccountable, moon-stricken person, waiting helplessly in
+the street of life to be helped over the road by the crossing-
+sweeper; on the contrary, I present the artist as a reasonable
+creature, a sensible gentleman, and as one well acquainted with the
+value of his time, and that of other people, as if he were in the
+habit of going on high 'Change every day.  The Artist whom I wish
+to present to the notice of the Meeting is one to whom the perfect
+enjoyment of the five senses is essential to every achievement of
+his life.  He can gain no wealth nor fame by buying something which
+he never touched, and selling it to another who would also never
+touch or see it, but was compelled to strike out for himself every
+spark of fire which lighted, burned, and perhaps consumed him.  He
+must win the battle of life with his own hand, and with his own
+eyes, and was obliged to act as general, captain, ensign, non-
+commissioned officer, private, drummer, great arms, small arms,
+infantry, cavalry, all in his own unaided self.  When, therefore, I
+ask help for the artist, I do not make my appeal for one who was a
+cripple from his birth, but I ask it as part payment of a great
+debt which all sensible and civilised creatures owe to art, as a
+mark of respect to art, as a decoration--not as a badge--as a
+remembrance of what this land, or any land, would be without art,
+and as the token of an appreciation of the works of the most
+successful artists of this country.  With respect to the society of
+which I am the advocate, I am gratified that it is so liberally
+supported by the most distinguished artists, and that it has the
+confidence of men who occupy the highest rank as artists, above the
+reach of reverses, and the most distinguished in success and fame,
+and whose support is above all price.  Artists who have obtained
+wide-world reputation know well that many deserving and persevering
+men, or their widows and orphans, have received help from this
+fund, and some of the artists who have received this help are now
+enrolled among the subscribers to the Institution.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, MAY 20, 1862.
+
+
+
+[The following speech was made by Mr. Dickens, in his capacity as
+chairman, at the annual Festival of the Newsvendors' and Provident
+Institution, held at the Freemasons' Tavern on the above date.]
+
+When I had the honour of being asked to preside last year, I was
+prevented by indisposition, and I besought my friend, Mr. Wilkie
+Collins, to reign in my stead.  He very kindly complied, and made
+an excellent speech.  Now I tell you the truth, that I read that
+speech with considerable uneasiness, for it inspired me with a
+strong misgiving that I had better have presided last year with
+neuralgia in my face and my subject in my head, rather than preside
+this year with my neuralgia all gone and my subject anticipated.
+Therefore, I wish to preface the toast this evening by making the
+managers of this Institution one very solemn and repentant promise,
+and it is, if ever I find myself obliged to provide a substitute
+again, they may rely upon my sending the most speechless man of my
+acquaintance.
+
+The Chairman last year presented you with an amiable view of the
+universality of the newsman's calling.  Nothing, I think, is left
+for me but to imagine the newsman's burden itself, to unfold one of
+those wonderful sheets which he every day disseminates, and to take
+a bird's-eye view of its general character and contents.  So, if
+you please, choosing my own time--though the newsman cannot choose
+his time, for he must be equally active in winter or summer, in
+sunshine or sleet, in light or darkness, early or late--but,
+choosing my own time, I shall for two or three moments start off
+with the newsman on a fine May morning, and take a view of the
+wonderful broadsheets which every day he scatters broadcast over
+the country.  Well, the first thing that occurs to me following the
+newsman is, that every day we are born, that every day we are
+married--some of us--and that every day we are dead; consequently,
+the first thing the newsvendor's column informs me is, that Atkins
+has been born, that Catkins has been married, and that Datkins is
+dead.  But the most remarkable thing I immediately discover in the
+next column, is that Atkins has grown to be seventeen years old,
+and that he has run away; for, at last, my eye lights on the fact
+that William A., who is seventeen years old, is adjured immediately
+to return to his disconsolate parents, and everything will be
+arranged to the satisfaction of everyone.  I am afraid he will
+never return, simply because, if he had meant to come back, he
+would never have gone away.  Immediately below, I find a mysterious
+character in such a mysterious difficulty that it is only to be
+expressed by several disjointed letters, by several figures, and
+several stars; and then I find the explanation in the intimation
+that the writer has given his property over to his uncle, and that
+the elephant is on the wing.  Then, still glancing over the
+shoulder of my industrious friend, the newsman, I find there are
+great fleets of ships bound to all parts of the earth, that they
+all want a little more stowage, a little more cargo, that they have
+a few more berths to let, that they have all the most spacious
+decks, that they are all built of teak, and copper-bottomed, that
+they all carry surgeons of experience, and that they are all A1 at
+Lloyds', and anywhere else.  Still glancing over the shoulder of my
+friend the newsman, I find I am offered all kinds of house-lodging,
+clerks, servants, and situations, which I can possibly or
+impossibly want.  I learn, to my intense gratification, that I need
+never grow old, that I may always preserve the juvenile bloom of my
+complexion; that if ever I turn ill it is entirely my own fault;
+that if I have any complaint, and want brown cod-liver oil or
+Turkish baths, I am told where to get them, and that, if I want an
+income of seven pounds a-week, I may have it by sending half-a-
+crown in postage-stamps.  Then I look to the police intelligence,
+and I can discover that I may bite off a human living nose cheaply,
+but if I take off the dead nose of a pig or a calf from a shop-
+window, it will cost me exceedingly dear.  I also find that if I
+allow myself to be betrayed into the folly of killing an
+inoffensive tradesman on his own door-step, that little incident
+will not affect the testimonials to my character, but that I shall
+be described as a most amiable young man, and as, above all things,
+remarkable for the singular inoffensiveness of my character and
+disposition.  Then I turn my eye to the Fine Arts, and, under that
+head, I see that a certain "J. O." has most triumphantly exposed a
+certain "J. O. B.," which "J. O. B." was remarkable for this
+particular ugly feature, that I was requested to deprive myself of
+the best of my pictures for six months; that for that time it was
+to be hung on a wet wall, and that I was to be requited for my
+courtesy in having my picture most impertinently covered with a wet
+blanket.  To sum up the results of a glance over my newsman's
+shoulder, it gives a comprehensive knowledge of what is going on
+over the continent of Europe, and also of what is going on over the
+continent of America, to say nothing of such little geographical
+regions as India and China.
+
+Now, my friends, this is the glance over the newsman's shoulders
+from the whimsical point of view, which is the point, I believe,
+that most promotes digestion.  The newsman is to be met with on
+steamboats, railway stations, and at every turn.  His profits are
+small, he has a great amount of anxiety and care, and no little
+amount of personal wear and tear.  He is indispensable to
+civilization and freedom, and he is looked for with pleasurable
+excitement every day, except when he lends the paper for an hour,
+and when he is punctual in calling for it, which is sometimes very
+painful.  I think the lesson we can learn from our newsman is some
+new illustration of the uncertainty of life, some illustration of
+its vicissitudes and fluctuations.  Mindful of this permanent
+lesson, some members of the trade originated this society, which
+affords them assistance in time of sickness and indigence.  The
+subscription is infinitesimal.  It amounts annually to five
+shillings.  Looking at the returns before me, the progress of the
+society would seem to be slow, but it has only been slow for the
+best of all reasons, that it has been sure.  The pensions granted
+are all obtained from the interest on the funded capital, and,
+therefore, the Institution is literally as safe as the Bank.  It is
+stated that there are several newsvendors who are not members of
+this society; but that is true in all institutions which have come
+under my experience.  The persons who are most likely to stand in
+need of the benefits which an institution confers, are usually the
+persons to keep away until bitter experience comes to them too
+late.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, MAY 11, 1864.
+
+
+
+[On the above date Mr. Dickens presided at the Adelphi Theatre, at
+a public meeting, for the purpose of founding the Shakespeare
+Schools, in connexion with the Royal Dramatic College, and
+delivered the following address:]
+
+Ladies and gentlemen--Fortunately for me, and fortunately for you,
+it is the duty of the Chairman on an occasion of this nature, to be
+very careful that he does not anticipate those speakers who come
+after him.  Like Falstaff, with a considerable difference, he has
+to be the cause of speaking in others.  It is rather his duty to
+sit and hear speeches with exemplary attention than to stand up to
+make them; so I shall confine myself, in opening these proceedings
+as your business official, to as plain and as short an exposition
+as I can possibly give you of the reasons why we come together.
+
+First of all I will take leave to remark that we do not come
+together in commemoration of Shakespeare.  We have nothing to do
+with any commemoration, except that we are of course humble
+worshippers of that mighty genius, and that we propose by-and-by to
+take his name, but by no means to take it in vain.  If, however,
+the Tercentenary celebration were a hundred years hence, or a
+hundred years past, we should still be pursuing precisely the same
+object, though we should not pursue it under precisely the same
+circumstances.  The facts are these:  There is, as you know, in
+existence an admirable institution called the Royal Dramatic
+College, which is a place of honourable rest and repose for
+veterans in the dramatic art.  The charter of this college, which
+dates some five or six years back, expressly provides for the
+establishment of schools in connexion with it; and I may venture to
+add that this feature of the scheme, when it was explained to him,
+was specially interesting to his Royal Highness the late Prince
+Consort, who hailed it as evidence of the desire of the promoters
+to look forward as well as to look back; to found educational
+institutions for the rising generation, as well as to establish a
+harbour of refuge for the generation going out, or at least having
+their faces turned towards the setting sun.  The leading members of
+the dramatic art, applying themselves first to the more pressing
+necessity of the two, set themselves to work on the construction of
+their harbour of refuge, and this they did with the zeal, energy,
+good-will, and good faith that always honourably distinguish them
+in their efforts to help one another.  Those efforts were very
+powerfully aided by the respected gentleman {14} under whose roof
+we are assembled, and who, I hope, may be only half as glad of
+seeing me on these boards as I always am to see him here.  With
+such energy and determination did Mr. Webster and his brothers and
+sisters in art proceed with their work, that at this present time
+all the dwelling-houses of the Royal Dramatic College are built,
+completely furnished, fitted with every appliance, and many of them
+inhabited.  The central hall of the College is built, the grounds
+are beautifully planned and laid out, and the estate has become the
+nucleus of a prosperous neighbourhood.  This much achieved, Mr.
+Webster was revolving in his mind how he should next proceed
+towards the establishment of the schools, when, this Tercentenary
+celebration being in hand, it occurred to him to represent to the
+National Shakespeare Committee their just and reasonable claim to
+participate in the results of any subscription for a monument to
+Shakespeare.  He represented to the committee that the social
+recognition and elevation of the followers of Shakespeare's own
+art, through the education of their children, was surely a monument
+worthy even of that great name.  He urged upon the committee that
+it was certainly a sensible, tangible project, which the public
+good sense would immediately appreciate and approve.  This claim
+the committee at once acknowledged; but I wish you distinctly to
+understand that if the committee had never been in existence, if
+the Tercentenary celebration had never been attempted, those
+schools, as a design anterior to both, would still have solicited
+public support.
+
+Now, ladies and gentlemen, what it is proposed to do is, in fact,
+to find a new self-supporting public school; with this additional
+feature, that it is to be available for both sexes.  This, of
+course, presupposes two separate distinct schools.  As these
+schools are to be built on land belonging to the Dramatic College,
+there will be from the first no charge, no debt, no incumbrance of
+any kind under that important head.  It is, in short, proposed
+simply to establish a new self-supporting public school, in a
+rapidly increasing neighbourhood, where there is a large and fast
+accumulating middle-class population, and where property in land is
+fast rising in value.  But, inasmuch as the project is a project of
+the Royal Dramatic College, and inasmuch as the schools are to be
+built on their estate, it is proposed evermore to give their
+schools the great name of Shakespeare, and evermore to give the
+followers of Shakespeare's art a prominent place in them.  With
+this view, it is confidently believed that the public will endow a
+foundation, say, for forty foundation scholars--say, twenty girls
+and twenty boys--who shall always receive their education
+gratuitously, and who shall always be the children of actors,
+actresses, or dramatic writers.  This school, you will understand,
+is to be equal to the best existing public school.  It is to be
+made to impart a sound, liberal, comprehensive education, and it is
+to address the whole great middle class at least as freely, as
+widely, and as cheaply as any existing public school.
+
+Broadly, ladies and gentlemen, this is the whole design.  There are
+foundation scholars at Eton, foundation scholars at nearly all our
+old schools, and if the public, in remembrance of a noble part of
+our standard national literature, and in remembrance of a great
+humanising art, will do this thing for these children, it will at
+the same time be doing a wise and good thing for itself, and will
+unquestionably find its account in it.  Taking this view of the
+case--and I cannot be satisfied to take any lower one--I cannot
+make a sorry face about "the poor player."  I think it is a term
+very much misused and very little understood--being, I venture to
+say, appropriated in a wrong sense by players themselves.
+Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, I can only present the player to
+you exceptionally in this wise--that he follows a peculiar and
+precarious vocation, a vocation very rarely affording the means of
+accumulating money--that that vocation must, from the nature of
+things, have in it many undistinguished men and women to one
+distinguished one--that it is not a vocation the exerciser of which
+can profit by the labours of others, but in which he must earn
+every loaf of his bread in his own person, with the aid of his own
+face, his own limbs, his own voice, his own memory, and his own
+life and spirits; and these failing, he fails.  Surely this is
+reason enough to render him some little help in opening for his
+children their paths through life.  I say their paths advisedly,
+because it is not often found, except under the pressure of
+necessity, or where there is strong hereditary talent--which is
+always an exceptional case--that the children of actors and
+actresses take to the stage.  Persons therefore need not in the
+least fear that by helping to endow these schools they would help
+to overstock the dramatic market.  They would do directly the
+reverse, for they would divert into channels of public distinction
+and usefulness those good qualities which would otherwise languish
+in that market's over-rich superabundance.
+
+This project has received the support of the head of the most
+popular of our English public schools.  On the committee stands the
+name of that eminent scholar and gentleman, the Provost of Eton.
+You justly admire this liberal spirit, and your admiration--which I
+cordially share--brings me naturally to what I wish to say, that I
+believe there is not in England any institution so socially liberal
+as a public school.  It has been called a little cosmos of life
+outside, and I think it is so, with the exception of one of life's
+worst foibles--for, as far as I know, nowhere in this country is
+there so complete an absence of servility to mere rank, to mere
+position, to mere riches as in a public school.  A boy there is
+always what his abilities or his personal qualities make him.  We
+may differ about the curriculum and other matters, but of the
+frank, free, manly, independent spirit preserved in our public
+schools, I apprehend there can be no kind of question.  It has
+happened in these later times that objection has been made to
+children of dramatic artists in certain little snivelling private
+schools--but in public schools never.  Therefore, I hold that the
+actors are wise, and gratefully wise, in recognizing the capacious
+liberality of a public school, in seeking not a little hole-and-
+corner place of education for their children exclusively, but in
+addressing the whole of the great middle class, and proposing to
+them to come and join them, the actors, on their own property, in a
+public school, in a part of the country where no such advantage is
+now to be found.
+
+I have now done.  The attempt has been a very timid one.  I have
+endeavoured to confine myself within my means, or, rather, like the
+possessor of an extended estate, to hand it down in an
+unembarrassed condition.  I have laid a trifle of timber here and
+there, and grubbed up a little brushwood, but merely to open the
+view, and I think I can descry in the eye of the gentleman who is
+to move the first resolution that he distinctly sees his way.
+Thanking you for the courtesy with which you have heard me, and not
+at all doubting that we shall lay a strong foundation of these
+schools to-day, I will call, as the mover of the first resolution,
+on Mr. Robert Bell.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, MAY 9, 1865.
+
+
+
+[On the above date Mr. Dickens presided at the Annual Festival of
+the Newsvendors' Benevolent and Provident Association, and, in
+proposing the toast of the evening, delivered the following
+speech.]
+
+Ladies and gentlemen,--Dr. Johnson's experience of that club, the
+members of which have travelled over one another's minds in every
+direction, is not to be compared with the experience of the
+perpetual president of a society like this.  Having on previous
+occasions said everything about it that he could possibly find to
+say, he is again produced, with the same awful formalities, to say
+everything about it that he cannot possibly find to say.  It struck
+me, when Dr. F. Jones was referring just now to Easter Monday, that
+the case of such an ill-starred president is very like that of the
+stag at Epping Forest on Easter Monday.  That unfortunate animal
+when he is uncarted at the spot where the meet takes place,
+generally makes a point, I am told, of making away at a cool trot,
+venturesomely followed by the whole field, to the yard where he
+lives, and there subsides into a quiet and inoffensive existence,
+until he is again brought out to be again followed by exactly the
+same field, under exactly the same circumstances, next Easter
+Monday.
+
+The difficulties of the situation--and here I mean the president
+and not the stag--are greatly increased in such an instance as this
+by the peculiar nature of the institution.  In its unpretending
+solidity, reality, and usefulness, believe me--for I have carefully
+considered the point--it presents no opening whatever of an
+oratorical nature.  If it were one of those costly charities, so
+called, whose yield of wool bears no sort of proportion to their
+cry for cash, I very likely might have a word or two to say on the
+subject.  If its funds were lavished in patronage and show, instead
+of being honestly expended in providing small annuities for hard-
+working people who have themselves contributed to its funds--if its
+management were intrusted to people who could by no possibility
+know anything about it, instead of being invested in plain,
+business, practical hands--if it hoarded when it ought to spend--if
+it got by cringing and fawning what it never deserved, I might
+possibly impress you very much by my indignation.  If its managers
+could tell me that it was insolvent, that it was in a hopeless
+condition, that its accounts had been kept by Mr. Edmunds--or by
+"Tom,"--if its treasurer had run away with the money-box, then I
+might have made a pathetic appeal to your feelings.  But I have no
+such chance.  Just as a nation is happy whose records are barren,
+so is a society fortunate that has no history--and its president
+unfortunate.  I can only assure you that this society continues its
+plain, unobtrusive, useful career.  I can only assure you that it
+does a great deal of good at a very small cost, and that the
+objects of its care and the bulk of its members are faithful
+working servants of the public--sole ministers of their wants at
+untimely hours, in all seasons, and in all weathers; at their own
+doors, at the street-corners, at every railway train, at every
+steam-boat; through the agency of every establishment and the
+tiniest little shops; and that, whether regarded as master or as
+man, their profits are very modest and their risks numerous, while
+their trouble and responsibility are very great.
+
+The newsvendors and newsmen are a very subordinate part of that
+wonderful engine--the newspaper press.  Still I think we all know
+very well that they are to the fountain-head what a good service of
+water pipes is to a good water supply.  Just as a goodly store of
+water at Watford would be a tantalization to thirsty London if it
+were not brought into town for its use, so any amount of news
+accumulated at Printing-house Square, or Fleet Street, or the
+Strand, would be if there were no skill and enterprise engaged in
+its dissemination.
+
+We are all of us in the habit of saying in our every-day life, that
+"We never know the value of anything until we lose it."  Let us try
+the newsvendors by the test.  A few years ago we discovered one
+morning that there was a strike among the cab-drivers.  Now, let us
+imagine a strike of newsmen.  Imagine the trains waiting in vain
+for the newspapers.  Imagine all sorts and conditions of men dying
+to know the shipping news, the commercial news, the foreign news,
+the legal news, the criminal news, the dramatic news.  Imagine the
+paralysis on all the provincial exchanges; the silence and
+desertion of all the newsmen's exchanges in London.  Imagine the
+circulation of the blood of the nation and of the country standing
+still,--the clock of the world.  Why, even Mr. Reuter, the great
+Reuter--whom I am always glad to imagine slumbering at night by the
+side of Mrs. Reuter, with a galvanic battery under his bolster,
+bell and wires to the head of his bed, and bells at each ear--think
+how even he would click and flash those wondrous dispatches of his,
+and how they would become mere nothing without the activity and
+honesty which catch up the threads and stitches of the electric
+needle, and scatter them over the land.
+
+It is curious to consider--and the thought occurred to me this day,
+when I was out for a stroll pondering over the duties of this
+evening, which even then were looming in the distance, but not
+quite so far off as I could wish--I found it very curious to
+consider that though the newsman must be allowed to be a very
+unpicturesque rendering of Mercury, or Fame, or what-not
+conventional messenger from the clouds, and although we must allow
+that he is of this earth, and has a good deal of it on his boots,
+still that he has two very remarkable characteristics, to which
+none of his celestial predecessors can lay the slightest claim.
+One is that he is always the messenger of civilization; the other
+that he is at least equally so--not only in what he brings, but in
+what he ceases to bring.  Thus the time was, and not so many years
+ago either, when the newsman constantly brought home to our doors--
+though I am afraid not to our hearts, which were custom-hardened--
+the most terrific accounts of murders, of our fellow-creatures
+being publicly put to death for what we now call trivial offences,
+in the very heart of London, regularly every Monday morning.  At
+the same time the newsman regularly brought to us the infliction of
+other punishments, which were demoralising to the innocent part of
+the community, while they did not operate as punishments in
+deterring offenders from the perpetration of crimes.  In those same
+days, also, the newsman brought to us daily accounts of a regularly
+accepted and received system of loading the unfortunate insane with
+chains, littering them down on straw, starving them on bread and
+water, damaging their clothes, and making periodical exhibitions of
+them at a small charge; and that on a Sunday one of our public
+resorts was a kind of demoniacal zoological gardens.  They brought
+us accounts at the same time of some damage done to the machinery
+which was destined to supply the operative classes with employment.
+In the same time they brought us accounts of riots for bread, which
+were constantly occurring, and undermining society and the state;
+of the most terrible explosions of class against class, and of the
+habitual employment of spies for the discovery--if not for the
+origination--of plots, in which both sides found in those days some
+relief.  In the same time the same newsmen were apprising us of a
+state of society all around us in which the grossest sensuality and
+intemperance were the rule; and not as now, when the ignorant, the
+wicked, and the wretched are the inexcusably vicious exceptions--a
+state of society in which the professional bully was rampant, and
+when deadly duels were daily fought for the most absurd and
+disgraceful causes.  All this the newsman has ceased to tell us of.
+This state of society has discontinued in England for ever; and
+when we remember the undoubted truth, that the change could never
+have been effected without the aid of the load which the newsman
+carries, surely it is not very romantic to express the hope on his
+behalf that the public will show to him some little token of the
+sympathetic remembrance which we are all of us glad to bestow on
+the bearers of happy tidings--the harbingers of good news.
+
+Now, ladies and gentlemen, you will be glad to hear that I am
+coming to a conclusion; for that conclusion I have a precedent.
+You all of you know how pleased you are on your return from a
+morning's walk to learn that the collector has called.  Well, I am
+the collector for this district, and I hope you will bear in mind
+that I have respectfully called.  Regarding the institution on
+whose behalf I have presented myself, I need only say technically
+two things.  First, that its annuities are granted out of its
+funded capital, and therefore it is safe as the Bank; and,
+secondly, that they are attainable by such a slight exercise of
+prudence and fore-thought, that a payment of 25s. extending over a
+period of five years, entitles a subscriber--if a male--to an
+annuity of 16 pounds a-year, and a female to 12 pounds a-year.
+Now, bear in mind that this is an institution on behalf of which
+the collector has called, leaving behind his assurance that what
+you can give to one of the most faithful of your servants shall be
+well bestowed and faithfully applied to the purposes to which you
+intend them, and to those purposes alone.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  NEWSPAPER PRESS FUND.--LONDON, MAY 20, 1865.
+
+
+
+[At the second annual dinner of the Institution, held at the
+Freemasons' Tavern, on Saturday, the 20th May, 1865, the following
+speech was delivered by the chairman, Mr. Charles Dickens, in
+proposing the toast of the evening:]
+
+Ladies and gentlemen,--When a young child is produced after dinner
+to be shown to a circle of admiring relations and friends, it may
+generally be observed that their conversation--I suppose in an
+instinctive remembrance of the uncertainty of infant life--takes a
+retrospective turn.  As how much the child has grown since the last
+dinner; what a remarkably fine child it is, to have been born only
+two or three years ago, how much stronger it looks now than before
+it had the measles, and so forth.  When a young institution is
+produced after dinner, there is not the same uncertainty or
+delicacy as in the case of the child, and it may be confidently
+predicted of it that if it deserve to live it will surely live, and
+that if it deserve to die it will surely die.  The proof of desert
+in such a case as this must be mainly sought, I suppose, firstly,
+in what the society means to do with its money; secondly, in the
+extent to which it is supported by the class with whom it
+originated, and for whose benefit it is designed; and, lastly, in
+the power of its hold upon the public.  I add this lastly, because
+no such institution that ever I heard of ever yet dreamed of
+existing apart from the public, or ever yet considered it a
+degradation to accept the public support.
+
+Now, what the Newspaper Press Fund proposes to do with its money is
+to grant relief to members in want or distress, and to the widows,
+families, parents, or other near relatives of deceased members in
+right of a moderate provident annual subscription--commutable, I
+observe, for a moderate provident life subscription--and its
+members comprise the whole paid class of literary contributors to
+the press of the United Kingdom, and every class of reporters.  The
+number of its members at this time last year was something below
+100.  At the present time it is somewhat above 170, not including
+30 members of the press who are regular subscribers, but have not
+as yet qualified as regular members.  This number is steadily on
+the increase, not only as regards the metropolitan press, but also
+as regards the provincial throughout the country.  I have observed
+within these few days that many members of the press at Manchester
+have lately at a meeting expressed a strong brotherly interest in
+this Institution, and a great desire to extend its operations, and
+to strengthen its hands, provided that something in the independent
+nature of life assurance and the purchase of deferred annuities
+could be introduced into its details, and always assuming that in
+it the metropolis and the provinces stand on perfectly equal
+ground.  This appears to me to be a demand so very moderate, that I
+can hardly have a doubt of a response on the part of the managers,
+or of the beneficial and harmonious results.  It only remains to
+add, on this head of desert, the agreeable circumstance that out of
+all the money collected in aid of the society during the last year
+more than one-third came exclusively from the press.
+
+Now, ladies and gentlemen, in regard to the last claim--the last
+point of desert--the hold upon the public--I think I may say that
+probably not one single individual in this great company has failed
+to-day to see a newspaper, or has failed to-day to hear something
+derived from a newspaper which was quite unknown to him or to her
+yesterday.  Of all those restless crowds that have this day
+thronged the streets of this enormous city, the same may be said as
+the general gigantic rule.  It may be said almost equally, of the
+brightest and the dullest, the largest and the least provincial
+town in the empire; and this, observe, not only as to the active,
+the industrious, and the healthy among the population, but also to
+the bedridden, the idle, the blind, and the deaf and dumb.  Now, if
+the men who provide this all-pervading presence, this wonderful,
+ubiquitous newspaper, with every description of intelligence on
+every subject of human interest, collected with immense pains and
+immense patience, often by the exercise of a laboriously-acquired
+faculty united to a natural aptitude, much of the work done in the
+night, at the sacrifice of rest and sleep, and (quite apart from
+the mental strain) by the constant overtasking of the two most
+delicate of the senses, sight and hearing--I say, if the men who,
+through the newspapers, from day to day, or from night to night, or
+from week to week, furnish the public with so much to remember,
+have not a righteous claim to be remembered by the public in
+return, then I declare before God I know no working class of the
+community who have.
+
+It would be absurd, it would be impertinent, in such an assembly as
+this, if I were to attempt to expatiate upon the extraordinary
+combination of remarkable qualities involved in the production of
+any newspaper.  But assuming the majority of this associated body
+to be composed of reporters, because reporters, of one kind or
+other, compose the majority of the literary staff of almost every
+newspaper that is not a compilation, I would venture to remind you,
+if I delicately may, in the august presence of members of
+Parliament, how much we, the public, owe to the reporters if it
+were only for their skill in the two great sciences of condensation
+and rejection.  Conceive what our sufferings, under an Imperial
+Parliament, however popularly constituted, under however glorious a
+constitution, would be if the reporters could not skip.  Dr.
+Johnson, in one of his violent assertions, declared that "the man
+who was afraid of anything must be a scoundrel, sir."  By no means
+binding myself to this opinion--though admitting that the man who
+is afraid of a newspaper will generally be found to be rather
+something like it, I must still freely own that I should approach
+my Parliamentary debate with infinite fear and trembling if it were
+so unskilfully served up for my breakfast.  Ever since the time
+when the old man and his son took their donkey home, which were the
+old Greek days, I believe, and probably ever since the time when
+the donkey went into the ark--perhaps he did not like his
+accommodation there--but certainly from that time downwards, he has
+objected to go in any direction required of him--from the remotest
+periods it has been found impossible to please everybody.
+
+I do not for a moment seek to conceal that I know this Institution
+has been objected to.  As an open fact challenging the freest
+discussion and inquiry, and seeking no sort of shelter or favour
+but what it can win, it has nothing, I apprehend, but itself, to
+urge against objection.  No institution conceived in perfect
+honesty and good faith has a right to object to being questioned to
+any extent, and any institution so based must be in the end the
+better for it.  Moreover, that this society has been questioned in
+quarters deserving of the most respectful attention I take to be an
+indisputable fact.  Now, I for one have given that respectful
+attention, and I have come out of the discussion to where you see
+me.  The whole circle of the arts is pervaded by institutions
+between which and this I can descry no difference.  The painters'
+art has four or five such institutions.  The musicians' art, so
+generously and charmingly represented here, has likewise several
+such institutions.  In my own art there is one, concerning the
+details of which my noble friend the president of the society and
+myself have torn each other's hair to a considerable extent, and
+which I would, if I could, assimilate more nearly to this.  In the
+dramatic art there are four, and I never yet heard of any objection
+to their principle, except, indeed, in the cases of some famous
+actors of large gains, who having through the whole period of their
+successes positively refused to establish a right in them, became,
+in their old age and decline, repentant suppliants for their
+bounty.  Is it urged against this particular Institution that it is
+objectionable because a parliamentary reporter, for instance, might
+report a subscribing M.P. in large, and a non-subscribing M.P. in
+little?  Apart from the sweeping nature of this charge, which, it
+is to be observed, lays the unfortunate member and the unfortunate
+reporter under pretty much the same suspicion--apart from this
+consideration, I reply that it is notorious in all newspaper
+offices that every such man is reported according to the position
+he can gain in the public eye, and according to the force and
+weight of what he has to say.  And if there were ever to be among
+the members of this society one so very foolish to his brethren,
+and so very dishonourable to himself, as venally to abuse his
+trust, I confidently ask those here, the best acquainted with
+journalism, whether they believe it possible that any newspaper so
+ill-conducted as to fail instantly to detect him could possibly
+exist as a thriving enterprise for one single twelvemonth?  No,
+ladies and gentlemen, the blundering stupidity of such an offence
+would have no chance against the acute sagacity of newspaper
+editors.  But I will go further, and submit to you that its
+commission, if it be to be dreaded at all, is far more likely on
+the part of some recreant camp-follower of a scattered, disunited,
+and half-recognized profession, than when there is a public opinion
+established in it, by the union of all classes of its members for
+the common good:  the tendency of which union must in the nature of
+things be to raise the lower members of the press towards the
+higher, and never to bring the higher members to the lower level.
+
+I hope I may be allowed in the very few closing words that I feel a
+desire to say in remembrance of some circumstances, rather special,
+attending my present occupation of this chair, to give those words
+something of a personal tone.  I am not here advocating the case of
+a mere ordinary client of whom I have little or no knowledge.  I
+hold a brief to-night for my brothers.  I went into the gallery of
+the House of Commons as a parliamentary reporter when I was a boy
+not eighteen, and I left it--I can hardly believe the inexorable
+truth--nigh thirty years ago.  I have pursued the calling of a
+reporter under circumstances of which many of my brethren at home
+in England here, many of my modern successors, can form no adequate
+conception.  I have often transcribed for the printer, from my
+shorthand notes, important public speeches in which the strictest
+accuracy was required, and a mistake in which would have been to a
+young man severely compromising, writing on the palm of my hand, by
+the light of a dark lantern, in a post-chaise and four, galloping
+through a wild country, and through the dead of the night, at the
+then surprising rate of fifteen miles an hour.  The very last time
+I was at Exeter, I strolled into the castle yard there to identify,
+for the amusement of a friend, the spot on which I once "took," as
+we used to call it, an election speech of my noble friend Lord
+Russell, in the midst of a lively fight maintained by all the
+vagabonds in that division of the county, and under such a pelting
+rain, that I remember two goodnatured colleagues, who chanced to be
+at leisure, held a pocket-handkerchief over my notebook, after the
+manner of a state canopy in an ecclesiastical procession.  I have
+worn my knees by writing on them on the old back row of the old
+gallery of the old House of Commons; and I have worn my feet by
+standing to write in a preposterous pen in the old House of Lords,
+where we used to be huddled together like so many sheep--kept in
+waiting, say, until the woolsack might want re-stuffing.  Returning
+home from excited political meetings in the country to the waiting
+press in London, I do verily believe I have been upset in almost
+every description of vehicle known in this country.  I have been,
+in my time, belated on miry by-roads, towards the small hours,
+forty or fifty miles from London, in a wheelless carriage, with
+exhausted horses and drunken postboys, and have got back in time
+for publication, to be received with never-forgotten compliments by
+the late Mr. Black, coming in the broadest of Scotch from the
+broadest of hearts I ever knew.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, I mention these trivial things as an
+assurance to you that I never have forgotten the fascination of
+that old pursuit.  The pleasure that I used to feel in the rapidity
+and dexterity of its exercise has never faded out of my breast.
+Whatever little cunning of hand or head I took to it, or acquired
+in it, I have so retained as that I fully believe I could resume it
+to-morrow, very little the worse from long disuse.  To this present
+year of my life, when I sit in this hall, or where not, hearing a
+dull speech, the phenomenon does occur--I sometimes beguile the
+tedium of the moment by mentally following the speaker in the old,
+old way; and sometimes, if you can believe me, I even find my hand
+going on the table-cloth, taking an imaginary note of it all.
+Accept these little truths as a confirmation of what I know; as a
+confirmation of my undying interest in this old calling.  Accept
+them as a proof that my feeling for the location of my youth is not
+a sentiment taken up to-night to be thrown away to-morrow--but is a
+faithful sympathy which is a part of myself.  I verily believe--I
+am sure--that if I had never quitted my old calling I should have
+been foremost and zealous in the interests of this Institution,
+believing it to be a sound, a wholesome, and a good one.  Ladies
+and gentlemen, I am to propose to you to drink "Prosperity to the
+Newspaper Press Fund," with which toast I will connect, as to its
+acknowledgment, a name that has shed new brilliancy on even the
+foremost newspaper in the world--the illustrious name of Mr.
+Russell.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  KNEBWORTH, JULY 29, 1865.
+
+
+
+[On the above date the members of the "Guild of Literature and Art"
+proceeded to the neighbourhood of Stevenage, near the magnificent
+seat of the President, Lord Lytton, to inspect three houses built
+in the Gothic style, on the ground given by him for the purpose.
+After their survey, the party drove to Knebworth to partake of the
+hospitality of Lord Lytton.  Mr. Dickens, who was one of the
+guests, proposed the health of the host in the following words:]
+
+Ladies and gentlemen,--It was said by a very sagacious person,
+whose authority I am sure my friend of many years will not impugn,
+seeing that he was named Augustus Tomlinson, the kind friend and
+philosopher of Paul Clifford--it was said by that remarkable man,
+"Life is short, and why should speeches be long?"  An aphorism so
+sensible under all circumstances, and particularly in the
+circumstances in which we are placed, with this delicious weather
+and such charming gardens near us, I shall practically adopt on the
+present occasion; and the rather so because the speech of my friend
+was exhaustive of the subject, as his speeches always are, though
+not in the least exhaustive of his audience.  In thanking him for
+the toast which he has done us the honour to propose, allow me to
+correct an error into which he has fallen.  Allow me to state that
+these houses never could have been built but for his zealous and
+valuable co-operation, and also that the pleasant labour out of
+which they have arisen would have lost one of its greatest charms
+and strongest impulses, if it had lost his ever ready sympathy with
+that class in which he has risen to the foremost rank, and of which
+he is the brightest ornament.
+
+Having said this much as simply due to my friend, I can only say,
+on behalf of my associates, that the ladies and gentlemen whom we
+shall invite to occupy the houses we have built will never be
+placed under any social disadvantage.  They will be invited to
+occupy them as artists, receiving them as a mark of the high
+respect in which they are held by their fellow-workers.  As artists
+I hope they will often exercise their calling within those walls
+for the general advantage; and they will always claim, on equal
+terms, the hospitality of their generous neighbour.
+
+Now I am sure I shall be giving utterance to the feelings of my
+brothers and sisters in literature in proposing "Health, long life,
+and prosperity to our distinguished host."  Ladies and gentlemen,
+you know very well that when the health, life, and beauty now
+overflowing these halls shall have fled, crowds of people will come
+to see the place where he lived and wrote.  Setting aside the
+orator and statesman--for happily we know no party here but this
+agreeable party--setting aside all, this you know very well, that
+this is the home of a very great man whose connexion with
+Hertfordshire every other county in England will envy for many long
+years to come.  You know that when this hall is dullest and
+emptiest you can make it when you please brightest and fullest by
+peopling it with the creations of his brilliant fancy.  Let us all
+wish together that they may be many more--for the more they are the
+better it will be, and, as he always excels himself, the better
+they will be.  I ask you to listen to their praises and not to
+mine, and to let them, not me, propose his health.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, FEBRUARY 14, 1866.
+
+
+
+[On this occasion Mr. Dickens officiated as Chairman at the annual
+dinner of the Dramatic, Equestrian, and Musical Fund, at Willis's
+Rooms, where he made the following speech:]
+
+Ladies, before I couple you with the gentlemen, which will be at
+least proper to the inscription over my head (St. Valentine's day)-
+-before I do so, allow me, on behalf of my grateful sex here
+represented, to thank you for the great pleasure and interest with
+which your gracious presence at these festivals never fails to
+inspire us.  There is no English custom which is so manifestly a
+relic of savage life as that custom which usually excludes you from
+participation in similar gatherings.  And although the crime
+carries its own heavy punishment along with it, in respect that it
+divests a public dinner of its most beautiful ornament and of its
+most fascinating charm, still the offence is none the less to be
+severely reprehended on every possible occasion, as outraging
+equally nature and art.  I believe that as little is known of the
+saint whose name is written here as can well be known of any saint
+or sinner.  We, your loyal servants, are deeply thankful to him for
+having somehow gained possession of one day in the year--for
+having, as no doubt he has, arranged the almanac for 1866--
+expressly to delight us with the enchanting fiction that we have
+some tender proprietorship in you which we should scarcely dare to
+claim on a less auspicious occasion.  Ladies, the utmost devotion
+sanctioned by the saint we beg to lay at your feet, and any little
+innocent privileges to which we may be entitled by the same
+authority we beg respectfully but firmly to claim at your hands.
+
+Now, ladies and gentlemen, you need no ghost to inform you that I
+am going to propose "Prosperity to the Dramatic, Musical, and
+Equestrian Sick Fund Association," and, further, that I should be
+going to ask you actively to promote that prosperity by liberally
+contributing to its funds, if that task were not reserved for a
+much more persuasive speaker.  But I rest the strong claim of the
+society for its useful existence and its truly charitable functions
+on a very few words, though, as well as I can recollect, upon
+something like six grounds.  First, it relieves the sick; secondly,
+it buries the dead; thirdly, it enables the poor members of the
+profession to journey to accept new engagements whenever they find
+themselves stranded in some remote, inhospitable place, or when,
+from other circumstances, they find themselves perfectly crippled
+as to locomotion for want of money; fourthly, it often finds such
+engagements for them by acting as their honest, disinterested
+agent; fifthly, it is its principle to act humanely upon the
+instant, and never, as is too often the case within my experience,
+to beat about the bush till the bush is withered and dead; lastly,
+the society is not in the least degree exclusive, but takes under
+its comprehensive care the whole range of the theatre and the
+concert-room, from the manager in his room of state, or in his
+caravan, or at the drum-head--down to the theatrical housekeeper,
+who is usually to be found amongst the cobwebs and the flies, or
+down to the hall porter, who passes his life in a thorough draught-
+-and, to the best of my observation, in perpetually interrupted
+endeavours to eat something with a knife and fork out of a basin,
+by a dusty fire, in that extraordinary little gritty room, upon
+which the sun never shines, and on the portals of which are
+inscribed the magic words, "stage-door."
+
+Now, ladies and gentlemen, this society administers its benefits
+sometimes by way of loan; sometimes by way of gift; sometimes by
+way of assurance at very low premiums; sometimes to members,
+oftener to non-members; always expressly, remember, through the
+hands of a secretary or committee well acquainted with the wants of
+the applicants, and thoroughly versed, if not by hard experience at
+least by sympathy, in the calamities and uncertainties incidental
+to the general calling.  One must know something of the general
+calling to know what those afflictions are.  A lady who had been
+upon the stage from her earliest childhood till she was a blooming
+woman, and who came from a long line of provincial actors and
+actresses, once said to me when she was happily married; when she
+was rich, beloved, courted; when she was mistress of a fine house--
+once said to me at the head of her own table, surrounded by
+distinguished guests of every degree, "Oh, but I have never
+forgotten the hard time when I was on the stage, and when my baby
+brother died, and when my poor mother and I brought the little baby
+from Ireland to England, and acted three nights in England, as we
+had acted three nights in Ireland, with the pretty creature lying
+upon the only bed in our lodging before we got the money to pay for
+its funeral."
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, such things are, every day, to this hour;
+but, happily, at this day and in this hour this association has
+arisen to be the timely friend of such great distress.
+
+It is not often the fault of the sufferers that they fall into
+these straits.  Struggling artists must necessarily change from
+place to place, and thus it frequently happens that they become, as
+it were, strangers in every place, and very slight circumstances--a
+passing illness, the sickness of the husband, wife, or child, a
+serious town, an anathematising expounder of the gospel of
+gentleness and forbearance--any one of these causes may often in a
+few hours wreck them upon a rock in the barren ocean; and then,
+happily, this society, with the swift alacrity of the life-boat,
+dashes to the rescue, and takes them off.  Looking just now over
+the last report issued by this society, and confining my scrutiny
+to the head of illness alone, I find that in one year, I think, 672
+days of sickness had been assuaged by its means.  In nine years,
+which then formed the term of its existence, as many as 5,500 and
+odd.  Well, I thought when I saw 5,500 and odd days of sickness,
+this is a very serious sum, but add the nights!  Add the nights--
+those long, dreary hours in the twenty-four when the shadow of
+death is darkest, when despondency is strongest, and when hope is
+weakest, before you gauge the good that is done by this
+institution, and before you gauge the good that really will be done
+by every shilling that you bestow here to-night.  Add, more than
+all, that the improvidence, the recklessness of the general
+multitude of poor members of this profession, I should say is a
+cruel, conventional fable.  Add that there is no class of society
+the members of which so well help themselves, or so well help each
+other.  Not in the whole grand chapters of Westminster Abbey and
+York Minster, not in the whole quadrangle of the Royal Exchange,
+not in the whole list of members of the Stock Exchange, not in the
+Inns of Court, not in the College of Physicians, not in the College
+of Surgeons, can there possibly be found more remarkable instances
+of uncomplaining poverty, of cheerful, constant self-denial, of the
+generous remembrance of the claims of kindred and professional
+brotherhood, than will certainly be found in the dingiest and
+dirtiest concert room, in the least lucid theatre--even in the
+raggedest tent circus that was ever stained by weather.
+
+I have been twitted in print before now with rather flattering
+actors when I address them as one of their trustees at their
+General Fund dinner.  Believe me, I flatter nobody, unless it be
+sometimes myself; but, in such a company as the present, I always
+feel it my manful duty to bear my testimony to this fact--first,
+because it is opposed to a stupid, unfeeling libel; secondly,
+because my doing so may afford some slight encouragement to the
+persons who are unjustly depreciated; and lastly, and most of all,
+because I know it is the truth.
+
+Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is time we should what we
+professionally call "ring down" on these remarks.  If you, such
+members of the general public as are here, will only think the
+great theatrical curtain has really fallen and been taken up again
+for the night on that dull, dark vault which many of us know so
+well; if you will only think of the theatre or other place of
+entertainment as empty; if you will only think of the "float," or
+other gas-fittings, as extinguished; if you will only think of the
+people who have beguiled you of an evening's care, whose little
+vanities and almost childish foibles are engendered in their
+competing face to face with you for your favour--surely it may be
+said their feelings are partly of your making, while their virtues
+are all their own.  If you will only do this, and follow them out
+of that sham place into the real world, where it rains real rain,
+snows real snow, and blows real wind; where people sustain
+themselves by real money, which is much harder to get, much harder
+to make, and very much harder to give away than the pieces of
+tobacco-pipe in property bags--if you will only do this, and do it
+in a really kind, considerate spirit, this society, then certain of
+the result of the night's proceedings, can ask no more.  I beg to
+propose to you to drink "Prosperity to the Dramatic, Equestrian,
+and Musical Sick Fund Association."
+
+
+[Mr. Dickens, in proposing the next toast, said:-]
+
+
+Gentlemen:  as I addressed myself to the ladies last time, so I
+address you this time, and I give you the delightful assurance that
+it is positively my last appearance but one on the present
+occasion.  A certain Mr. Pepys, who was Secretary for the Admiralty
+in the days of Charles II., who kept a diary well in shorthand,
+which he supposed no one could read, and which consequently remains
+to this day the most honest diary known to print--Mr. Pepys had two
+special and very strong likings, the ladies and the theatres.  But
+Mr. Pepys, whenever he committed any slight act of remissness, or
+any little peccadillo which was utterly and wholly untheatrical,
+used to comfort his conscience by recording a vow that he would
+abstain from the theatres for a certain time.  In the first part of
+Mr. Pepys' character I have no doubt we fully agree with him; in
+the second I have no doubt we do not.
+
+I learn this experience of Mr. Pepys from remembrance of a passage
+in his diary that I was reading the other night, from which it
+appears that he was not only curious in plays, but curious in
+sermons; and that one night when he happened to be walking past St.
+Dunstan's Church, he turned, went in, and heard what he calls "a
+very edifying discourse;" during the delivery of which discourse,
+he notes in his diary--"I stood by a pretty young maid, whom I did
+attempt to take by the hand."  But he adds--"She would not; and I
+did perceive that she had pins in her pocket with which to prick me
+if I should touch her again--and was glad that I spied her design."
+Afterwards, about the close of the same edifying discourse, Mr.
+Pepys found himself near another pretty, fair young maid, who would
+seem upon the whole to have had no pins, and to have been more
+impressible.
+
+Now, the moral of this story which I wish to suggest to you is,
+that we have been this evening in St. James's much more timid than
+Mr. Pepys was in St. Dunstan's, and that we have conducted
+ourselves very much better.  As a slight recompense to us for our
+highly meritorious conduct, and as a little relief to our over-
+charged hearts, I beg to propose that we devote this bumper to
+invoking a blessing on the ladies.  It is the privilege of this
+society annually to hear a lady speak for her own sex.  Who so
+competent to do this as Mrs. Stirling?  Surely one who has so
+gracefully and captivatingly, with such an exquisite mixture of
+art, and fancy, and fidelity, represented her own sex in
+innumerable charities, under an infinite variety of phases, cannot
+fail to represent them well in her own character, especially when
+it is, amidst her many triumphs, the most agreeable of all.  I beg
+to propose to you "The Ladies," and I will couple with that toast
+the name of Mrs. Stirling.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, MARCH 28, 1866.
+
+
+
+[The following speech was made by Mr. Dickens at the Annual
+Festival of the Royal General Theatrical Fund, held at the
+Freemasons' Tavern, in proposing the health of the Lord Mayor (Sir
+Benjamin Phillips), who occupied the chair.]
+
+Gentlemen, in my childish days I remember to have had a vague but
+profound admiration for a certain legendary person called the Lord
+Mayor's fool.  I had the highest opinion of the intellectual
+capacity of that suppositious retainer of the Mansion House, and I
+really regarded him with feelings approaching to absolute
+veneration, because my nurse informed me on every gastronomic
+occasion that the Lord Mayor's fool liked everything that was good.
+You will agree with me, I have no doubt, that if this
+discriminating jester had existed at the present time he could not
+fail to have liked his master very much, seeing that so good a Lord
+Mayor is very rarely to be found, and that a better Lord Mayor
+could not possibly be.
+
+You have already divined, gentlemen, that I am about to propose to
+you to drink the health of the right honourable gentleman in the
+chair.  As one of the Trustees of the General Theatrical Fund, I
+beg officially to tender him my best thanks for lending the very
+powerful aid of his presence, his influence, and his personal
+character to this very deserving Institution.  As his private
+friends we ventured to urge upon him to do us this gracious act,
+and I beg to assure you that the perfect simplicity, modesty,
+cordiality, and frankness with which he assented, enhanced the gift
+one thousand fold.  I think it must also be very agreeable to a
+company like this to know that the President of the night is not
+ceremoniously pretending, "positively for this night only," to have
+an interest in the drama, but that he has an unusual and thorough
+acquaintance with it, and that he has a living and discerning
+knowledge of the merits of the great old actors.  It is very
+pleasant to me to remember that the Lord Mayor and I once beguiled
+the tedium of a journey by exchanging our experiences upon this
+subject.  I rather prided myself on being something of an old
+stager, but I found the Lord Mayor so thoroughly up in all the
+stock pieces, and so knowing and yet so fresh about the merits of
+those who are most and best identified with them, that I readily
+recognised in him what would be called in fistic language, a very
+ugly customer--one, I assure you, by no means to be settled by any
+novice not in thorough good theatrical training.
+
+Gentlemen, we have all known from our earliest infancy that when
+the giants in Guildhall hear the clock strike one, they come down
+to dinner.  Similarly, when the City of London shall hear but one
+single word in just disparagement of its present Lord Mayor,
+whether as its enlightened chief magistrate, or as one of its
+merchants, or as one of its true gentlemen, he will then descend
+from the high personal place which he holds in the general honour
+and esteem.  Until then he will remain upon his pedestal, and my
+private opinion, between ourselves, is that the giants will come
+down long before him.
+
+Gentlemen, in conclusion, I would remark that when the Lord Mayor
+made his truly remarkable, and truly manly, and unaffected speech,
+I could not but be struck by the odd reversal of the usual
+circumstances at the Mansion House, which he presented to our view,
+for whereas it is a very common thing for persons to be brought
+tremblingly before the Lord Mayor, the Lord Mayor presented himself
+as being brought tremblingly before us.  I hope that the result may
+hold still further, for whereas it is a common thing for the Lord
+Mayor to say to a repentant criminal who does not seem to have much
+harm in him, "let me never see you here again," so I would propose
+that we all with one accord say to the Lord Mayor, "Let us by all
+means see you here again on the first opportunity."  Gentlemen, I
+beg to propose to you to drink, with all the honours, "The health
+of the right hon. the Lord Mayor."
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, MAY 7, 1866.
+
+
+
+[The Members of the Metropolitan Rowing Clubs dining together at
+the London Tavern, on the above date, Mr. Dickens, as President of
+the Nautilus Rowing Club, occupied the chair.  The Speech that
+follows was made in proposing "Prosperity to the Rowing Clubs of
+London."  Mr. Dickens said that:-]
+
+He could not avoid the remembrance of what very poor things the
+amateur rowing clubs on the Thames were in the early days of his
+noviciate; not to mention the difference in the build of the boats.
+He could not get on in the beginning without being a pupil under an
+anomalous creature called a "fireman waterman," who wore an
+eminently tall hat, and a perfectly unaccountable uniform, of which
+it might be said that if it was less adapted for one thing than
+another, that thing was fire.  He recollected that this gentleman
+had on some former day won a King's prize wherry, and they used to
+go about in this accursed wherry, he and a partner, doing all the
+hard work, while the fireman drank all the beer.  The river was
+very much clearer, freer, and cleaner in those days than these; but
+he was persuaded that this philosophical old boatman could no more
+have dreamt of seeing the spectacle which had taken place on
+Saturday (the procession of the boats of the Metropolitan Amateur
+Rowing Clubs), or of seeing these clubs matched for skill and
+speed, than he (the Chairman) should dare to announce through the
+usual authentic channels that he was to be heard of at the bar
+below, and that he was perfectly prepared to accommodate Mr. James
+Mace if he meant business.  Nevertheless, he could recollect that
+he had turned out for a spurt a few years ago on the River Thames
+with an occasional Secretary, who should be nameless, and some
+other Eton boys, and that he could hold his own against them.  More
+recently still, the last time that he rowed down from Oxford he was
+supposed to cover himself with honour, though he must admit that he
+found the "locks" so picturesque as to require much examination for
+the discovery of their beauty.  But what he wanted to say was this,
+that though his "fireman waterman" was one of the greatest humbugs
+that ever existed, he yet taught him what an honest, healthy, manly
+sport this was.  Their waterman would bid them pull away, and
+assure them that they were certain of winning in some race.  And
+here he would remark that aquatic sports never entailed a moment's
+cruelty, or a moment's pain, upon any living creature.  Rowing men
+pursued recreation under circumstances which braced their muscles,
+and cleared the cobwebs from their minds.  He assured them that he
+regarded such clubs as these as a "national blessing."  They owed,
+it was true, a vast deal to steam power--as was sometimes proved at
+matches on the Thames--but, at the same time, they were greatly
+indebted to all that tended to keep up a healthy, manly tone.  He
+understood that there had been a committee selected for the purpose
+of arranging a great amateur regatta, which was to take place off
+Putney in the course of the season that was just begun.  He could
+not abstain from availing himself of this occasion to express a
+hope that the committee would successfully carry on its labours to
+a triumphant result, and that they should see upon the Thames, in
+the course of this summer, such a brilliant sight as had never been
+seen there before.  To secure this there must be some hard work,
+skilful combinations, and rather large subscriptions.  But although
+the aggregate result must be great, it by no means followed that it
+need be at all large in its individual details.
+
+[In conclusion, Mr. Dickens made a laughable comparison between the
+paying off or purification of the national debt and the
+purification of the River Thames.]
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, JUNE 5, 1867.
+
+
+
+[On the above date Mr. Dickens presided at the Ninth Anniversary
+Festival of the Railway Benevolent Society, at Willis's Rooms, and
+in proposing the toast of the evening, made the following speech.]
+
+Although we have not yet left behind us by the distance of nearly
+fifty years the time when one of the first literary authorities of
+this country insisted upon the speed of the fastest railway train
+that the Legisture might disastrously sanction being limited by Act
+of Parliament to ten miles an hour, yet it does somehow happen that
+this evening, and every evening, there are railway trains running
+pretty smoothly to Ireland and to Scotland at the rate of fifty
+miles an hour; much as it was objected in its time to vaccination,
+that it must have a tendency to impart to human children something
+of the nature of the cow, whereas I believe to this very time
+vaccinated children are found to be as easily defined from calves
+as they ever were, and certainly they have no cheapening influence
+on the price of veal; much as it was objected that chloroform was a
+contravention of the will of Providence, because it lessened
+providentially-inflicted pain, which would be a reason for your not
+rubbing your face if you had the tooth-ache, or not rubbing your
+nose if it itched; so it was evidently predicted that the railway
+system, even if anything so absurd could be productive of any
+result, would infallibly throw half the nation out of employment;
+whereas, you observe that the very cause and occasion of our coming
+here together to-night is, apart from the various tributary
+channels of occupation which it has opened out, that it has called
+into existence a specially and directly employed population of
+upwards of 200,000 persons.
+
+Now, gentlemen, it is pretty clear and obvious that upwards of
+200,000 persons engaged upon the various railways of the United
+Kingdom cannot be rich; and although their duties require great
+care and great exactness, and although our lives are every day,
+humanly speaking, in the hands of many of them, still, for the most
+of these places there will be always great competition, because
+they are not posts which require skilled workmen to hold.  Wages,
+as you know very well, cannot be high where competition is great,
+and you also know very well that railway directors, in the bargains
+they make, and the salaries which they pay, have to deal with the
+money of the shareholders, to whom they are accountable.  Thus it
+necessarily happens that railway officers and servants are not
+remunerated on the whole by any means splendidly, and that they
+cannot hope in the ordinary course of things to do more than meet
+the ordinary wants and hazards of life.  But it is to be observed
+that the general hazards are in their case, by reason of the
+dangerous nature of their avocations, exceptionally great, so very
+great, I find, as to be stateable, on the authority of a
+parliamentary paper, by the very startling round of figures, that
+whereas one railway traveller in 8,000,000 of passengers is killed,
+one railway servant in every 2,000 is killed.
+
+Hence, from general, special, as well, no doubt, for the usual
+prudential and benevolent considerations, there came to be
+established among railway officers and servants, nine years ago,
+the Railway Benevolent Association.  I may suppose, therefore, as
+it was established nine years ago, that this is the ninth occasion
+of publishing from this chair the banns between this institution
+and the public.  Nevertheless, I feel bound individually to do my
+duty the same as if it had never been done before, and to ask
+whether there is any just cause or impediment why these two
+parties--the institution and the public--should not be joined
+together in holy charity.  As I understand the society, its objects
+are five-fold--first, to guarantee annuities which, it is always to
+be observed, is paid out of the interest of invested capital, so
+that those annuities may be secure and safe--annual pensions,
+varying from 10 to 25 pounds, to distressed railway officers and
+servants incapacitated by age, sickness, or accident; secondly, to
+guarantee small pensions to distressed widows; thirdly, to educate
+and maintain orphan children; fourthly, to provide temporary relief
+for all those classes till lasting relief can be guaranteed out of
+funds sufficiently large for the purpose; lastly, to induce railway
+officers and servants to assure their lives in some well-
+established office by sub-dividing the payment of the premiums into
+small periodical sums, and also by granting a reversionary bonus of
+10 pounds per cent. on the amount assured from the funds of the
+institution.
+
+This is the society we are met to assist--simple, sympathetic,
+practical, easy, sensible, unpretending.  The number of its members
+is large, and rapidly on the increase:  they number 12,000; the
+amount of invested capital is very nearly 15,000 pounds; it has
+done a world of good and a world of work in these first nine years
+of its life; and yet I am proud to say that the annual cost of the
+maintenance of the institution is no more than 250 pounds.  And now
+if you do not know all about it in a small compass, either I do not
+know all about it myself, or the fault must be in my "packing."
+
+One naturally passes from what the institution is and has done, to
+what it wants.  Well, it wants to do more good, and it cannot
+possibly do more good until it has more money.  It cannot safely,
+and therefore it cannot honourably, grant more pensions to
+deserving applicants until it grows richer, and it cannot grow rich
+enough for its laudable purpose by its own unaided self.  The thing
+is absolutely impossible.  The means of these railway officers and
+servants are far too limited.  Even if they were helped to the
+utmost by the great railway companies, their means would still be
+too limited; even if they were helped--and I hope they shortly will
+be--by some of the great corporations of this country, whom
+railways have done so much to enrich.  These railway officers and
+servants, on their road to a very humble and modest superannuation,
+can no more do without the help of the great public, than the great
+public, on their road from Torquay to Aberdeen, can do without
+them.  Therefore, I desire to ask the public whether the servants
+of the great railways--who, in fact, are their servants, their
+ready, zealous, faithful, hard-working servants--whether they have
+not established, whether they do not every day establish, a
+reasonable claim to liberal remembrance.
+
+Now, gentlemen, on this point of the case there is a story once
+told me by a friend of mine, which seems to my mind to have a
+certain application.  My friend was an American sea-captain, and,
+therefore, it is quite unnecessary to say his story was quite true.
+He was captain and part owner of a large American merchant liner.
+On a certain voyage out, in exquisite summer weather, he had for
+cabin passengers one beautiful young lady, and ten more or less
+beautiful young gentlemen.  Light winds or dead calms prevailing,
+the voyage was slow.  They had made half their distance when the
+ten young gentlemen were all madly in love with the beautiful young
+lady.  They had all proposed to her, and bloodshed among the rivals
+seemed imminent pending the young lady's decision.  On this
+extremity the beautiful young lady confided in my friend the
+captain, who gave her discreet advice.  He said:  "If your
+affections are disengaged, take that one of the young gentlemen
+whom you like the best and settle the question."  To this the
+beautiful young lady made reply, "I cannot do that because I like
+them all equally well."  My friend, who was a man of resource, hit
+upon this ingenious expedient, said he, "To-morrow morning at mid-
+day, when lunch is announced, do you plunge bodily overboard, head
+foremost.  I will be alongside in a boat to rescue you, and take
+the one of the ten who rushes to your rescue, and then you can
+afterwards have him."  The beautiful young lady highly approved,
+and did accordingly.  But after she plunged in, nine out of the ten
+more or less beautiful young gentlemen plunged in after her; and
+the tenth remained and shed tears, looking over the side of the
+vessel.  They were all picked up, and restored dripping to the
+deck.  The beautiful young lady upon seeing them said, "What am I
+to do?  See what a plight they are in.  How can I possibly choose,
+because every one of them is equally wet?"  Then said my friend the
+captain, acting upon a sudden inspiration, "Take the dry one."  I
+am sorry to say that she did so, and they lived happy ever
+afterwards.
+
+Now, gentleman, in my application of this story, I exactly reverse
+my friend the captain's anecdote, and I entreat the public in
+looking about to consider who are fit subjects for their bounty, to
+give each his hand with something in it, and not award a dry hand
+to the industrious railway servant who is always at his back.  And
+I would ask any one with a doubt upon this subject to consider what
+his experience of the railway servant is from the time of his
+departure to his arrival at his destination.  I know what mine is.
+Here he is, in velveteen or in a policeman's dress, scaling cabs,
+storming carriages, finding lost articles by a sort of instinct,
+binding up lost umbrellas and walking sticks, wheeling trucks,
+counselling old ladies, with a wonderful interest in their affairs-
+-mostly very complicated--and sticking labels upon all sorts of
+articles.  I look around--there he is, in a station-master's
+uniform, directing and overseeing, with the head of a general, and
+with the courteous manners of a gentleman; and then there is the
+handsome figure of the guard, who inspires confidence in timid
+passengers.  I glide out of the station, and there he is again with
+his flags in his hand at his post in the open country, at the level
+crossing, at the cutting, at the tunnel mouth, and at every station
+on the road until our destination is reached.  In regard,
+therefore, to the railway servants with whom we do come into
+contact, we may surely have some natural sympathy, and it is on
+their behalf that I this night appeal to you.  I beg now to propose
+"Success to the Railway Benevolent Society."
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, SEPTEMBER 17, 1867.
+
+
+
+[On presiding at a public Meeting of the Printers' Readers, held at
+the Salisbury Hotel, on the above date, Mr. Dickens said:-]
+
+That as the meeting was convened, not to hear him, but to hear a
+statement of facts and figures very nearly affecting the personal
+interests of the great majority of those present, his preface to
+the proceedings need be very brief.  Of the details of the question
+he knew, of his own knowledge, absolutely nothing; but he had
+consented to occupy the chair on that occasion at the request of
+the London Association of Correctors of the Press for two reasons--
+first, because he thought that openness and publicity in such cases
+were a very wholesome example very much needed at this time, and
+were highly becoming to a body of men associated with that great
+public safeguard--the Press; secondly, because he knew from some
+slight practical experience, what the duties of correctors of the
+press were, and how their duties were usually discharged; and he
+could testify, and did testify, that they were not mechanical, that
+they were not mere matters of manipulation and routine; but that
+they required from those who performed them much natural
+intelligence, much super-added cultivation, readiness of reference,
+quickness of resource, an excellent memory, and a clear
+understanding.  He most gratefully acknowledged that he had never
+gone through the sheets of any book that he had written, without
+having presented to him by the correctors of the press something
+that he had overlooked, some slight inconsistency into which he had
+fallen, some little lapse he had made--in short, without having set
+down in black and white some unquestionable indication that he had
+been closely followed through the work by a patient and trained
+mind, and not merely by a skilful eye.  And in this declaration he
+had not the slightest doubt that the great body of his brother and
+sister writers would, as a plain act of justice, readily concur.
+For these plain reasons he was there; and being there he begged to
+assure them that every one present--that every speaker--would have
+a patient hearing, whatever his opinions might be.
+
+[The proceedings concluded with a very cordial and hearty vote of
+thanks to Mr. Dickens for taking the chair on the occasion.]
+
+Mr. Dickens briefly returned thanks, and expressed the belief that
+their very calm and temperate proceedings would finally result in
+the establishment of relations of perfect amity between the
+employers and the employed, and consequently conduce to the general
+welfare of both.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, NOVEMBER 2, 1867.
+
+
+
+[On Saturday evening, November 2, 1867, a grand complimentary
+farewell dinner was given to Mr. Dickens at the Freemasons' Tavern
+on the occasion of his revisiting the United States of America.
+Lord Lytton officiated as chairman, and proposed as a toast--"A
+Prosperous Voyage, Health, and Long Life to our Illustrious Guest
+and Countryman, Charles Dickens".  The toast was drunk with all the
+honours, and one cheer more.  Mr. Dickens then rose, and spoke as
+follows:]
+
+No thanks that I can offer you can express my sense of my reception
+by this great assemblage, or can in the least suggest to you how
+deep the glowing words of my friend the chairman, and your
+acceptance of them, have sunk into my heart.  But both combined
+have so greatly shaken the composure which I am used to command
+before an audience, that I hope you may observe in me some traces
+of an eloquence more expressive than the richest words.  To say
+that I am fervently grateful to you is to say nothing; to say that
+I can never forget this beautiful sight, is to say nothing; to say
+that it brings upon me a rush of emotion not only in the present,
+but in the thought of its remembrance in the future by those who
+are dearest to me, is to say nothing; but to feel all this for the
+moment, even almost to pain, is very much indeed.  Mercutio says of
+the wound in his breast, dealt him by the hand of a foe, that--
+"'Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but 'tis
+enough, 'twill serve." {15}  I may say of the wound in my breast,
+newly dealt to me by the hands of my friends, that it is deeper
+than the soundless sea, and wider than the whole Catholic Church.
+I may safely add that it has for the moment almost stricken me
+dumb.  I should be more than human, and I assure you I am very
+human indeed, if I could look around upon this brilliant
+representative company and not feel greatly thrilled and stirred by
+the presence of so many brother artists, not only in literature,
+but also in the sister arts, especially painting, among whose
+professors living and unhappily dead, are many of my oldest and
+best friends.  I hope that I may, without presumption, regard this
+thronging of my brothers around me as a testimony on their part
+that they believe that the cause of art generally has been safe in
+my keeping, and that it has never been falsely dealt with by me.
+Your resounding cheers just now would have been but so many cruel
+reproaches to me if I could not here declare that, from the
+earliest days of my career down to this proud night, I have always
+tried to be true to my calling.  Never unduly to assert it, on the
+one hand, and never, on any pretence or consideration, to permit it
+to be patronized in my person, has been the steady endeavour of my
+life; and I have occasionally been vain enough to hope that I may
+leave its social position in England better than I found it.
+Similarly, and equally I hope without presumption, I trust that I
+may take this general representation of the public here, through so
+many orders, pursuits, and degrees, as a token that the public
+believe that, with a host of imperfections and shortcomings on my
+head, I have as a writer, in my soul and conscience, tried to be as
+true to them as they have ever been true to me.  And here, in
+reference to the inner circle of the arts and the outer circle of
+the public, I feel it a duty to-night to offer two remarks.  I have
+in my duty at odd times heard a great deal about literary sets and
+cliques, and coteries and barriers; about keeping this man up, and
+keeping that man down; about sworn disciples and sworn unbelievers,
+and mutual admiration societies, and I know not what other dragons
+in the upward path.  I began to tread it when I was very young,
+without influence, without money, without companion, introducer, or
+adviser, and I am bound to put in evidence in this place that I
+never lighted on these dragons yet.  So have I heard in my day, at
+divers other odd times, much generally to the effect that the
+English people have little or no love of art for its own sake, and
+that they do not greatly care to acknowledge or do honour to the
+artist.  My own experience has uniformly been exactly the reverse.
+I can say that of my countrymen, though I cannot say that of my
+country.
+
+And now passing to the immediate occasion of your doing me this
+great honour, the story of my going again 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 I was there
+before 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 relationship between us, have expressed a strong wish that I
+should read myself.  This wish, at first conveyed to me through
+public channels and business channels, has gradually become
+enforced by an immense accumulation of letters from individuals and
+associations of individuals, all expressing in the same hearty,
+homely, cordial unaffected way, a kind of personal interest in me--
+I had almost said a kind of personal affection for me, which I am
+sure you would agree with me it would be dull 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 torn 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 change and 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 the multitude of new friends
+upon whom I have never looked, and last, not least, to use my best
+endeavour 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 of the American nation:- "I know full well, whatever little
+motes my beamy eyes may have descried 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.  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 most deeply feel.  Let it, putting
+a girdle round the earth, comprehend both sides of the Atlantic at
+once in this moment, and say, as Tiny Tim observes, "God bless us
+every one."
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  BOSTON, APRIL 8, 1868.
+
+
+
+[Mr. Dickens gave his last Reading at Boston, on the above date.
+On his entrance a surprise awaited him.  His reading-stand had been
+decorated with flowers and palm-leaves by some of the ladies of the
+city.  He acknowledged this graceful tribute in the following
+words:- "Before allowing Dr. Marigold to tell his story in his own
+peculiar way, I kiss the kind, fair hands unknown, which have so
+beautifully decorated my table this evening."  After the Reading,
+Mr. Dickens attempted in vain to retire.  Persistent hands demanded
+"one word more."  Returning to his desk, pale, with a tear in his
+eye, that found its way to his voice, he spoke as follows:-]
+
+Ladies and gentlemen,--My gracious and generous welcome in America,
+which can never be obliterated from my remembrance, began here.  My
+departure begins here, too; for I assure you that I have never
+until this moment really felt that I am going away.  In this brief
+life of ours, it is sad to do almost anything for the last time,
+and I cannot conceal from you, although my face will so soon be
+turned towards my native land, and to all that makes it dear, that
+it is a sad consideration with me that in a very few moments from
+this time, this brilliant hall and all that it contains, will fade
+from my view--for ever more.  But it is my consolation that the
+spirit of the bright faces, the quick perception, the ready
+response, the generous and the cheering sounds that have made this
+place delightful to me, will remain; and you may rely upon it that
+that spirit will abide with me as long as I have sense and
+sentiment left.
+
+I do not say this with any limited reference to private friendships
+that have for years upon years made Boston a memorable and beloved
+spot to me, for such private references have no business in this
+public place.  I say it purely in remembrance of, and in homage to,
+the great public heart before me.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, I beg most earnestly, most gratefully, and
+most affectionately, to bid you, each and all, farewell
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  NEW YORK, APRIL 18, 1863.
+
+
+
+[On the above date Mr. Dickens was entertained at a farewell dinner
+at Delmonico's Hotel, previous to his return to England.  Two
+hundred gentlemen sat down to it; Mr. Horace Greeley presiding.  In
+acknowledgment of the toast of his health, proposed by the
+chairman, Mr. Dickens rose and said:-]
+
+Gentlemen,--I cannot do better than take my cue to from your
+distinguished president, and refer in my first remarks to his
+remarks in connexion with the old, natural, association between you
+and me.  When I received an invitation from a private association
+of working members of the press of New York to dine with them to-
+day, I accepted that compliment in grateful remembrance of a
+calling that was once my own, and in loyal sympathy towards a
+brotherhood which, in the spirit, I have never quieted.  To the
+wholesome training of severe newspaper work, when I was a very
+young man, I constantly refer my first successes; and my sons will
+hereafter testify of their father that he was always steadily proud
+of that ladder by which he rose.  If it were otherwise, I should
+have but a very poor opinion of their father, which, perhaps, upon
+the whole, I have not.  Hence, gentlemen, under any circumstances,
+this company would have been exceptionally interesting and
+gratifying to me.  But whereas I supposed that, like the fairies'
+pavilion in the "Arabian Nights," it would be but a mere handful,
+and I find it turn out, like the same elastic pavilion, capable of
+comprehending a multitude, so much the more proud am I of the
+honour of being your guest; for you will readily believe that the
+more widely representative of the press in America my entertainers
+are, the more I must feel the good-will and the kindly sentiments
+towards me of that vast institution.
+
+Gentlemen, so much of my voice has lately been heard in the land,
+and I have for upwards of four hard winter months so contended
+against what I have been sometimes quite admiringly assured was "a
+true American catarrh "--a possession which I have throughout
+highly appreciated, though I might have preferred to be naturalised
+by any other outward and visible signs--I say, gentlemen, so much
+of my voice has lately been heard, that I might have been contented
+with troubling you no further from my present standing-point, were
+it not a duty with which I henceforth charge myself, not only here
+but on every suitable occasion whatsoever and wheresoever, to
+express my high and grateful sense of my second reception in
+America, and to bear my honest testimony to the national generosity
+and magnanimity.  Also, to declare how astounded I have been by the
+amazing changes that I have seen around me on every side--changes
+moral, changes physical, changes in the amount of land subdued and
+peopled, changes in the rise of vast new cities, changes in the
+growth of older cities almost out of recognition, changes in the
+graces and amenities of life, changes in the press, without whose
+advancement no advancement can be made anywhere.  Nor am I, believe
+me, so arrogant as to suppose that in five-and-twenty years there
+have been no changes in me, and that I had nothing to learn and no
+extreme impressions to correct when I was here first.
+
+And, gentlemen, this brings me to a point on which I have, ever
+since I landed here last November, observed a strict silence,
+though tempted sometimes to break it, but in reference to which I
+will, with your good leave, take you into my confidence now.  Even
+the press, being human, may be sometimes mistaken or misinformed,
+and I rather think that I have in one or two rare instances known
+its information to be not perfectly accurate with reference to
+myself.  Indeed, I have now and again been more surprised by
+printed news that I have read of myself than by any printed news
+that I have ever read in my present state of existence.  Thus, the
+vigour and perseverance with which I have for some months past been
+collecting materials for and hammering away at a new book on
+America have much astonished me, seeing that all that time it has
+been perfectly well known to my publishers on both sides of the
+Atlantic that I positively declared that no consideration on earth
+should induce me to write one.  But what I have intended, what I
+have resolved upon (and this is the confidence I seek to place in
+you) is, on my return to England, in my own person, to bear, for
+the behoof of my countrymen, such testimony to the gigantic changes
+in this country as I have hinted at to-night.  Also, to record that
+wherever I have been, in the smallest places equally with the
+largest, I have been received with unsurpassable politeness,
+delicacy, sweet temper, hospitality, consideration, and with
+unsurpassable respect for the privacy daily enforced upon me by the
+nature of my avocation here, and the state of my health.  This
+testimony, so long as I live, and so long as my descendants have
+any legal right in my books, I shall cause to be re-published, as
+an appendix to every copy of those two books of mine in which I
+have referred to America.  And this I will do and cause to be done,
+not in mere love and thankfulness, but because I regard it as an
+act of plain justice and honour.
+
+Gentlemen, the transition from my own feelings towards and interest
+in America to those of the mass of my countrymen seems to be a
+natural one; but, whether or no, I make it with an express object.
+I was asked in this very city, about last Christmas time, whether
+an American was not at some disadvantage in England as a foreigner.
+The notion of an American being regarded in England as a foreigner
+at all, of his ever being thought of or spoken of in that
+character, was so uncommonly incongruous and absurd to me, that my
+gravity was, for the moment, quite overpowered.  As soon as it was
+restored, I said that for years and years past I hoped I had had as
+many American friends and had received as many American visitors as
+almost any Englishman living, and that my unvarying experience,
+fortified by theirs, was that it was enough in England to be an
+American to be received with the readiest respect and recognition
+anywhere.  Hereupon, out of half-a-dozen people, suddenly spoke out
+two, one an American gentleman, with a cultivated taste for art,
+who, finding himself on a certain Sunday outside the walls of a
+certain historical English castle, famous for its pictures, was
+refused admission there, according to the strict rules of the
+establishment on that day, but who, on merely representing that he
+was an American gentleman, on his travels, had, not to say the
+picture gallery, but the whole castle, placed at his immediate
+disposal.  The other was a lady, who, being in London, and having a
+great desire to see the famous reading-room of the British Museum,
+was assured by the English family with whom she stayed that it was
+unfortunately impossible, because the place was closed for a week,
+and she had only three days there.  Upon that lady's going to the
+Museum, as she assured me, alone to the gate, self-introduced as an
+American lady, the gate flew open, as it were magically.  I am
+unwillingly bound to add that she certainly was young and
+exceedingly pretty.  Still, the porter of that institution is of an
+obese habit, and, according to the best of my observation of him,
+not very impressible.
+
+Now, gentlemen, I refer to these trifles as a collateral assurance
+to you that the Englishman who shall humbly strive, as I hope to
+do, to be in England as faithful to America as to England herself,
+has no previous conceptions to contend against.  Points of
+difference there have been, points of difference there are, points
+of difference there probably always will be between the two great
+peoples.  But broadcast in England is sown the sentiment that those
+two peoples are essentially one, and that it rests with them
+jointly to uphold the great Anglo-Saxon race, to which our
+president has referred, and all its great achievements before the
+world.  And if I know anything of my countrymen--and they give me
+credit for knowing something--if I know anything of my countrymen,
+gentlemen, the English heart is stirred by the fluttering of those
+Stars and Stripes, as it is stirred by no other flag that flies
+except its own.  If I know my countrymen, in any and every relation
+towards America, they begin, not as Sir Anthony Absolute
+recommended that lovers should begin, with "a little aversion," but
+with a great liking and a profound respect; and whatever the little
+sensitiveness of the moment, or the little official passion, or the
+little official policy now, or then, or here, or there, may be,
+take my word for it, that the first enduring, great, popular
+consideration in England is a generous construction of justice.
+
+Finally, gentlemen, and I say this subject to your correction, I do
+believe that from the great majority of honest minds on both sides,
+there cannot be absent the conviction that it would be better for
+this globe to be riven by an earthquake, fired by a comet, overrun
+by an iceberg, and abandoned to the Arctic fox and bear, than that
+it should present the spectacle of these two great nations, each of
+which has, in its own way and hour, striven so hard and so
+successfully for freedom, ever again being arrayed the one against
+the other.  Gentlemen, I cannot thank your president enough or you
+enough for your kind reception of my health, and of my poor
+remarks, but, believe me, I do thank you with the utmost fervour of
+which my soul is capable.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  NEW YORK, APRIL 20, 1868.
+
+
+
+[Mr. Dickens's last Reading in the United States was given at the
+Steinway Hall on the above date.  The task finished he was about to
+retire, but a tremendous burst of applause stopped him.  He came
+forward and spoke thus:-]
+
+Ladies and gentlemen,--The shadow of one word has impended over me
+this evening, and the time has come at length when the shadow must
+fall.  It is but a very short one, but the weight of such things is
+not measured by their length, and two much shorter words express
+the round of our human existence.  When I was reading "David
+Copperfield" a few evenings since, I felt there was more than usual
+significance in the words of Peggotty, "My future life lies over
+the sea."  And when I closed this book just now, I felt most keenly
+that I was shortly to establish such an alibi as would have
+satisfied even the elder Mr. Weller.  The relations which have been
+set up between us, while they have involved for me something more
+than mere devotion to a task, have been by you sustained with the
+readiest sympathy and the kindest acknowledgment.
+
+Those relations must now be broken for ever.  Be assured, however,
+that you will not pass from my mind.  I shall often realise you as
+I see you now, equally by my winter fire and in the green English
+summer weather.  I shall never recall you as a mere public
+audience, but rather as a host of personal friends, and ever with
+the greatest gratitude, tenderness, and consideration.  Ladies and
+gentlemen, I beg to bid you farewell.  God bless you, and God bless
+the land in which I leave you.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LIVERPOOL, APRIL 10, 1869.
+
+
+
+[The following speech was delivered by Mr. Dickens at a Banquet
+held in his honour at St. George's Hall, Liverpool, after his
+health had been proposed by Lord Dufferin.]
+
+Mr. Mayor, ladies and gentlemen, although I have been so well
+accustomed of late to the sound of my own voice in this
+neighbourhood as to hear it with perfect composure, the occasion
+is, believe me, very, very different in respect of those
+overwhelming voices of yours.  As Professor Wilson once confided to
+me in Edinburgh that I had not the least idea, from hearing him in
+public, what a magnificent speaker he found himself to be when he
+was quite alone--so you can form no conception, from the specimen
+before you, of the eloquence with which I shall thank you again and
+again in some of the innermost moments of my future life.  Often
+and often, then, God willing, my memory will recall this brilliant
+scene, and will re-illuminate this banquet-hall.  I, faithful to
+this place in its present aspect, will observe it exactly as it
+stands--not one man's seat empty, not one woman's fair face absent,
+while life and memory abide by me.
+
+Mr. Mayor, Lord Dufferin in his speech so affecting to me, so
+eloquently uttered, and so rapturously received, made a graceful
+and gracious allusion to the immediate occasion of my present visit
+to your noble city.  It is no homage to Liverpool, based upon a
+moment's untrustworthy enthusiasm, but it is the solid fact built
+upon the rock of experience that when I first made up my mind,
+after considerable deliberation, systematically to meet my readers
+in large numbers, face to face, and to try to express myself to
+them through the breath of life, Liverpool stood foremost among the
+great places out of London to which I looked with eager confidence
+and pleasure.  And why was this?  Not merely because of the
+reputation of its citizens for generous estimation of the arts; not
+merely because I had unworthily filled the chair of its great self-
+educational institution long ago; not merely because the place had
+been a home to me since the well-remembered day when its blessed
+roofs and steeples dipped into the Mersey behind me on the occasion
+of my first sailing away to see my generous friends across the
+Atlantic twenty-seven years ago.  Not for one of those
+considerations, but because it had been my happiness to have a
+public opportunity of testing the spirit of its people.  I had
+asked Liverpool for help towards the worthy preservation of
+Shakespeare's house.  On another occasion I had ventured to address
+Liverpool in the names of Leigh Hunt and Sheridan Knowles.  On
+still another occasion I had addressed it in the cause of the
+brotherhood and sisterhood of letters and the kindred arts, and on
+each and all the response had been unsurpassably spontaneous, open-
+handed, and munificent.
+
+Mr. Mayor, and ladies and gentlemen, if I may venture to take a
+small illustration of my present position from my own peculiar
+craft, I would say that there is this objection in writing fiction
+to giving a story an autobiographical form, that through whatever
+dangers the narrator may pass, it is clear unfortunately to the
+reader beforehand that he must have come through them somehow else
+he could not have lived to tell the tale.  Now, in speaking fact,
+when the fact is associated with such honours as those with which
+you have enriched me, there is this singular difficulty in the way
+of returning thanks, that the speaker must infallibly come back to
+himself through whatever oratorical disasters he may languish on
+the road.  Let me, then, take the plainer and simpler middle course
+of dividing my subject equally between myself and you.  Let me
+assure you that whatever you have accepted with pleasure, either by
+word of pen or by word of mouth, from me, you have greatly improved
+in the acceptance.  As the gold is said to be doubly and trebly
+refined which has seven times passed the furnace, so a fancy may be
+said to become more and more refined each time it passes through
+the human heart.  You have, and you know you have, brought to the
+consideration of me that quality in yourselves without which I
+should but have beaten the air.  Your earnestness has stimulated
+mine, your laughter has made me laugh, and your tears have
+overflowed my eyes.  All that I can claim for myself in
+establishing the relations which exist between us is constant
+fidelity to hard work.  My literary fellows about me, of whom I am
+so proud to see so many, know very well how true it is in all art
+that what seems the easiest done is oftentimes the most difficult
+to do, and that the smallest truth may come of the greatest pains--
+much, as it occurred to me at Manchester the other day, as the
+sensitive touch of Mr. Whitworth's measuring machine, comes at
+last, of Heaven and Manchester and its mayor only know how much
+hammering--my companions-in-arms know thoroughly well, and I think
+it only right the public should know too, that in our careful toil
+and trouble, and in our steady striving for excellence--not in any
+little gifts, misused by fits and starts--lies our highest duty at
+once to our calling, to one another, to ourselves, and to you.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, before sitting down I find that I have to
+clear myself of two very unexpected accusations.  The first is a
+most singular charge preferred against me by my old friend Lord
+Houghton, that I have been somewhat unconscious of the merits of
+the House of Lords.  Now, ladies and gentlemen, seeing that I have
+had some few not altogether obscure or unknown personal friends in
+that assembly, seeing that I had some little association with, and
+knowledge of, a certain obscure peer lately known in England by the
+name of Lord Brougham; seeing that I regard with some admiration
+and affection another obscure peer wholly unknown in literary
+circles, called Lord Lytton; seeing also that I have had for some
+years some slight admiration of the extraordinary judicial
+properties and amazingly acute mind of a certain Lord Chief Justice
+popularly known by the name of Cockburn; and also seeing that there
+is no man in England whom I respect more in his public capacity,
+whom I love more in his private capacity, or from whom I have
+received more remarkable proofs of his honour and love of
+literature than another obscure nobleman called Lord Russell;
+taking these circumstances into consideration, I was rather amazed
+by my noble friend's accusation.  When I asked him, on his sitting
+down, what amazing devil possessed him to make this charge, he
+replied that he had never forgotten the days of Lord Verisopht.
+Then, ladies and gentlemen, I understood it all.  Because it is a
+remarkable fact that in the days when that depreciative and
+profoundly unnatural character was invented there was no Lord
+Houghton in the House of Lords.  And there was in the House of
+Commons a rather indifferent member called Richard Monckton Milnes.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, to conclude, for the present, I close with
+the other charge of my noble friend, and here I am more serious,
+and I may be allowed perhaps to express my seriousness in half a
+dozen plain words.  When I first took literature as my profession
+in England, I calmly resolved within myself that, whether I
+succeeded or whether I failed, literature should be my sole
+profession.  It appeared to me at that time that it was not so well
+understood in England as it was in other countries that literature
+was a dignified profession, by which any man might stand or fall.
+I made a compact with myself that in my person literature should
+stand, and by itself, of itself, and for itself; and there is no
+consideration on earth which would induce me to break that bargain.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, finally allow me to thank you for your great
+kindness, and for the touching earnestness with which you have
+drunk my health.  I should have thanked you with all my heart if it
+had not so unfortunately happened that, for many sufficient
+reasons, I lost my heart at between half-past six and half-past
+seven to-night.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  THE OXFORD AND HARVARD BOAT RACE.  SYDENHAM, AUGUST 30,
+1869.
+
+
+
+[The International University Boat Race having taken place on
+August 27, the London Rowing Club invited the Crews to a Dinner at
+the Crystal Palace on the following Monday.  The dinner was
+followed by a grand display of pyrotechnics.  Mr. Dickens, in
+proposing the health of the Crews, made the following speech:]
+
+Gentlemen, flushed with fireworks, I can warrant myself to you as
+about to imitate those gorgeous illusions by making a brief spirt
+and then dying out.  And, first of all, as an invited visitor of
+the London Rowing Club on this most interesting occasion, I will
+beg, in the name of the other invited visitors present--always
+excepting the distinguished guests who are the cause of our
+meeting--to thank the president for the modesty and the courtesy
+with which he has deputed to one of us the most agreeable part of
+his evening's duty.  It is the more graceful in him to do this
+because he can hardly fail to see that he might very easily do it
+himself, as this is a case of all others in which it is according
+to good taste and the very principles of things that the great
+social vice, speech-making, should hide it diminished head before
+the great social virtue action.  However, there is an ancient story
+of a lady who threw her glove into an arena full of wild beasts to
+tempt her attendant lover to climb down and reclaim it.  The lover,
+rightly inferring from the action the worth of the lady, risked his
+life for the glove, and then threw it rightly in her face as a
+token of his eternal adieu. {16}  I take up the President's glove,
+on the contrary, as a proof of his much higher worth, and of my
+real interest in the cause in which it was thrown down, and I now
+profess my readiness to do even injustice to the duty which he has
+assigned me.
+
+Gentlemen, a very remarkable and affecting volume was published in
+the United States within a short time before my last visit to that
+hospitable land, containing ninety-five biographies of young men,
+for the most part well-born and well nurtured, and trained in
+various peaceful pursuits of life, who, when the flag of their
+country waved them from those quiet paths in which they were
+seeking distinction of various kinds, took arms in the dread civil
+war which elicited so much bravery on both sides, and died in the
+defence of their country.  These great spirits displayed
+extraordinary aptitude in the acquisition, even in the invention,
+of military tactics, in the combining and commanding of great
+masses of men, in surprising readiness of self-resource for the
+general good, in humanely treating the sick and the wounded, and in
+winning to themselves a very rare amount of personal confidence and
+trust.  They had all risen to be distinguished soldiers; they had
+all done deeds of great heroism; they had all combined with their
+valour and self-devotion a serene cheerfulness, a quiet modesty,
+and a truly Christian spirit; and they had all been educated in one
+school--Harvard University.
+
+Gentlemen, nothing was more remarkable in these fine descendants of
+our forefathers than the invincible determination with which they
+fought against odds, and the undauntable spirit with which they
+resisted defeat.  I ask you, who will say after last Friday that
+Harvard University is less true to herself in peace than she was in
+war?  I ask you, who will not recognise in her boat's crew the
+leaven of her soldiers, and who does not feel that she has now a
+greater right than ever to be proud of her sons, and take these
+sons to her breast when they return with resounding acclamations?
+It is related of the Duke of Wellington that he once told a lady
+who foolishly protested that she would like to see a great victory
+that there was only one thing worse than a great victory, and that
+was a great defeat.
+
+But, gentlemen, there is another sense in which to use the term a
+great defeat.  Such is the defeat of a handful of daring fellows
+who make a preliminary dash of three or four thousand stormy miles
+to meet great conquerors on their own domain--who do not want the
+stimulus of friends and home, but who sufficiently hear and feel
+their own dear land in the shouts and cheers of another--and who
+strive to the last with a desperate tenacity that makes the beating
+of them a new feather in the proudest cap.  Gentlemen, you agree
+with me that such a defeat is a great, noble part of a manly,
+wholesome action; and I say that it is in the essence and life-
+blood of such a defeat to become at last sure victory.
+
+Now, gentlemen, you know perfectly well the toast I am going to
+propose, and you know equally well that in thus glancing first
+towards our friends of the white stripes, I merely anticipate and
+respond to the instinctive courtesy of Oxford towards our brothers
+from a distance--a courtesy extending, I hope, and I do not doubt,
+to any imaginable limits except allowing them to take the first
+place in last Friday's match, if they could by any human and
+honourable means be kept in the second.  I will not avail myself of
+the opportunity provided for me by the absence of the greater part
+of the Oxford crew--indeed, of all but one, and that, its most
+modest and devoted member--I will not avail myself of the golden
+opportunity considerately provided for me to say a great deal in
+honour of the Oxford crew.  I know that the gentleman who attends
+here attends under unusual anxieties and difficulties, and that if
+he were less in earnest his filial affection could not possibly
+allow him to be here.
+
+It is therefore enough for me, gentlemen, and enough for you, that
+I should say here, and now, that we all unite with one accord in
+regarding the Oxford crew as the pride and flower of England--and
+that we should consider it very weak indeed to set anything short
+of England's very best in opposition to or competition with
+America; though it certainly must be confessed--I am bound in
+common justice and honour to admit it--it must be confessed in
+disparagement of the Oxford men, as I heard a discontented
+gentleman remark--last Friday night, about ten o'clock, when he was
+baiting a very small horse in the Strand--he was one of eleven with
+pipes in a chaise cart--I say it must be admitted in disparagement
+of the Oxford men on the authority of this gentleman, that they
+have won so often that they could afford to lose a little now, and
+that "they ought to do it, but they won't."
+
+Gentlemen, in drinking to both crews, and in offering the poor
+testimony of our thanks in acknowledgment of the gallant spectacle
+which they presented to countless thousands last Friday, I am sure
+I express not only your feeling, and my feeling, and the feeling of
+the Blue, but also the feeling of the whole people of England, when
+I cordially give them welcome to our English waters and English
+ground, and also bid them "God speed" in their voyage home.  As the
+greater includes the less, and the sea holds the river, so I think
+it is no very bold augury to predict that in the friendly contests
+yet to come and to take place, I hope, on both sides of the
+Atlantic--there are great river triumphs for Harvard University yet
+in store.  Gentlemen, I warn the English portion of this audience
+that these are very dangerous men.  Remember that it was an
+undergraduate of Harvard University who served as a common seaman
+two years before the mast, {17} and who wrote about the best sea
+book in the English tongue.  Remember that it was one of those
+young American gentlemen who sailed his mite of a yacht across the
+Atlantic in mid-winter, and who sailed in her to sink or swim with
+the men who believed in him.
+
+And now, gentlemen, in conclusion, animated by your cordial
+acquiescence, I will take upon myself to assure our brothers from a
+distance that the utmost enthusiasm with which they can be received
+on their return home will find a ready echo in every corner of
+England--and further, that none of their immediate countrymen--I
+use the qualifying term immediate, for we are, as our president
+said, fellow countrymen, thank God--that none of their compatriots
+who saw, or who will read of, what they did in this great race, can
+be more thoroughly imbued with a sense of their indomitable courage
+and their high deserts than are their rivals and their hosts to-
+night.  Gentlemen, I beg to propose to you to drink the crews of
+Harvard and Oxford University, and I beg to couple with that toast
+the names of Mr. Simmons and Mr. Willan.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  BIRMINGHAM, SEPTEMBER 27, 1869.
+
+
+
+[Inaugural Address on the opening of the Winter Session of the
+Birmingham and Midland Institute.
+
+One who was present during the delivery of the following speech,
+informs the editor that "no note of any kind was referred to by Mr.
+Dickens--except the Quotation from Sydney Smith.  The address,
+evidently carefully prepared, was delivered without a single pause,
+in Mr. Dickens's best manner, and was a very great success."]
+
+Ladies and gentlemen,--We often hear of our common country that it
+is an over-populated one, that it is an over-pauperized one, that
+it is an over-colonizing one, and that it is an over-taxed one.
+Now, I entertain, especially of late times, the heretical belief
+that it is an over-talked one, and that there is a deal of public
+speech-making going about in various directions which might be
+advantageously dispensed with.  If I were free to act upon this
+conviction, as president for the time being of the great
+institution so numerously represented here, I should immediately
+and at once subside into a golden silence, which would be of a
+highly edifying, because of a very exemplary character.  But I
+happen to be the institution's willing servant, not its imperious
+master, and it exacts tribute of mere silver or copper speech--not
+to say brazen--from whomsoever it exalts to my high office.  Some
+African tribes--not to draw the comparison disrespectfully--some
+savage African tribes, when they make a king require him perhaps to
+achieve an exhausting foot-race under the stimulus of considerable
+popular prodding and goading, or perhaps to be severely and
+experimentally knocked about the head by his Privy Council, or
+perhaps to be dipped in a river full of crocodiles, or perhaps to
+drink immense quantities of something nasty out of a calabash--at
+all events, to undergo some purifying ordeal in presence of his
+admiring subjects.
+
+I must confess that I became rather alarmed when I was duly warned
+by your constituted authorities that whatever I might happen to say
+here to-night would be termed an inaugural address on the entrance
+upon a new term of study by the members of your various classes;
+for, besides that, the phrase is something high-sounding for my
+taste, I avow that I do look forward to that blessed time when
+every man shall inaugurate his own work for himself, and do it.  I
+believe that we shall then have inaugurated a new era indeed, and
+one in which the Lord's Prayer will become a fulfilled prophecy
+upon this earth.  Remembering, however, that you may call anything
+by any name without in the least changing its nature--bethinking
+myself that you may, if you be so minded, call a butterfly a
+buffalo, without advancing a hair's breadth towards making it one--
+I became composed in my mind, and resolved to stick to the very
+homely intention I had previously formed.  This was merely to tell
+you, the members, students, and friends of the Birmingham and
+Midland Institute--firstly, what you cannot possibly want to know,
+(this is a very popular oratorical theme); secondly, what your
+institution has done; and, thirdly, what, in the poor opinion of
+its President for the time being, remains for it to do and not to
+do.
+
+Now, first, as to what you cannot possibly want to know.  You
+cannot need from me any oratorical declamation concerning the
+abstract advantages of knowledge or the beauties of self-
+improvement.  If you had any such requirement you would not be
+here.  I conceive that you are here because you have become
+thoroughly penetrated with such principles, either in your own
+persons or in the persons of some striving fellow-creatures, on
+whom you have looked with interest and sympathy.  I conceive that
+you are here because you feel the welfare of the great chiefly
+adult educational establishment, whose doors stand really open to
+all sorts and conditions of people, to be inseparable from the best
+welfare of your great town and its neighbourhood.  Nay, if I take a
+much wider range than that, and say that we all--every one of us
+here--perfectly well know that the benefits of such an
+establishment must extend far beyond the limits of this midland
+county--its fires and smoke,--and must comprehend, in some sort,
+the whole community, I do not strain the truth.  It was suggested
+by Mr. Babbage, in his ninth "Bridgewater Treatise," that a mere
+spoken word--a single articulated syllable thrown into the air--may
+go on reverberating through illimitable space for ever and for
+ever, seeing that there is no rim against which it can strike--no
+boundary at which it can possibly arrive.  Similarly it may be
+said--not as an ingenious speculation, but as a stedfast and
+absolute fact--that human calculation cannot limit the influence of
+one atom of wholesome knowledge patiently acquired, modestly
+possessed, and faithfully used.
+
+As the astronomers tell us that it is probable that there are in
+the universe innumerable solar systems besides ours, to each of
+which myriads of utterly unknown and unseen stars belong, so it is
+certain that every man, however obscure, however far removed from
+the general recognition, is one of a group of men impressible for
+good, and impressible for evil, and that it is in the eternal
+nature of things that he cannot really improve himself without in
+some degree improving other men.  And observe, this is especially
+the case when he has improved himself in the teeth of adverse
+circumstances, as in a maturity succeeding to a neglected or an
+ill-taught youth, in the few daily hours remaining to him after ten
+or twelve hours' labour, in the few pauses and intervals of a life
+of toil; for then his fellows and companions have assurance that he
+can have known no favouring conditions, and that they can do what
+he has done, in wresting some enlightenment and self-respect from
+what Lord Lytton finely calls -
+
+
+"Those twin gaolers of the daring heart,
+Low birth and iron fortune."
+
+
+As you have proved these truths in your own experience or in your
+own observation, and as it may be safely assumed that there can be
+very few persons in Birmingham, of all places under heaven, who
+would contest the position that the more cultivated the employed
+the better for the employer, and the more cultivated the employer
+the better for the employed; therefore, my references to what you
+do not want to know shall here cease and determine.
+
+Next, with reference to what your institution has done on my
+summary, which shall be as concise and as correct as my information
+and my remembrance of it may render possible, I desire to lay
+emphatic stress.  Your institution, sixteen years old, and in which
+masters and workmen study together, has outgrown the ample edifice
+in which it receives its 2,500 or 2,600 members and students.  It
+is a most cheering sign of its vigorous vitality that of its
+industrial-students almost half are artisans in the receipt of
+weekly wages.  I think I am correct in saying that 400 others are
+clerks, apprentices, tradesmen, or tradesmen's sons.  I note with
+particular pleasure the adherence of a goodly number of the gentler
+sex, without whom no institution whatever can truly claim to be
+either a civilising or a civilised one.  The increased attendance
+at your educational classes is always greatest on the part of the
+artisans--the class within my experience the least reached in any
+similar institutions elsewhere, and whose name is the oftenest and
+the most constantly taken in vain.  But it is specially reached
+here, not improbably because it is, as it should be, specially
+addressed in the foundation of the industrial department, in the
+allotment of the direction of the society's affairs, and in the
+establishment of what are called its penny classes--a bold, and, I
+am happy to say, a triumphantly successful experiment, which
+enables the artisan to obtain sound evening instruction in subjects
+directly bearing upon his daily usefulness or on his daily
+happiness, as arithmetic (elementary and advanced), chemistry,
+physical geography, and singing, on payment of the astoundingly low
+fee of a single penny every time he attends the class.  I beg
+emphatically to say that I look upon this as one of the most
+remarkable schemes ever devised for the educational behoof of the
+artisan, and if your institution had done nothing else in all its
+life, I would take my stand by it on its having done this.
+
+Apart, however, from its industrial department, it has its general
+department, offering all the advantages of a first-class literary
+institution.  It has its reading-rooms, its library, its chemical
+laboratory, its museum, its art department, its lecture hall, and
+its long list of lectures on subjects of various and comprehensive
+interest, delivered by lecturers of the highest qualifications.
+Very well.  But it may be asked, what are the practical results of
+all these appliances?  Now, let us suppose a few.  Suppose that
+your institution should have educated those who are now its
+teachers.  That would be a very remarkable fact.  Supposing,
+besides, it should, so to speak, have educated education all around
+it, by sending forth numerous and efficient teachers into many and
+divers schools.  Suppose the young student, reared exclusively in
+its laboratory, should be presently snapped up for the laboratory
+of the great and famous hospitals.  Suppose that in nine years its
+industrial students should have carried off a round dozen of the
+much competed for prizes awarded by the Society of Arts and the
+Government department, besides two local prizes originating in the
+generosity of a Birmingham man.  Suppose that the Town Council,
+having it in trust to find an artisan well fit to receive the
+Whitworth prizes, should find him here.  Suppose that one of the
+industrial students should turn his chemical studies to the
+practical account of extracting gold from waste colour water, and
+of taking it into custody, in the very act of running away with
+hundreds of pounds down the town drains.  Suppose another should
+perceive in his books, in his studious evenings, what was amiss
+with his master's until then inscrutably defective furnace, and
+should go straight--to the great annual saving of that master--and
+put it right.  Supposing another should puzzle out the means, until
+then quite unknown in England, of making a certain description of
+coloured glass.  Supposing another should qualify himself to
+vanquish one by one, as they daily arise, all the little
+difficulties incidental to his calling as an electro-plater, and
+should be applied to by his companions in the shop in all
+emergencies under the name of the "Encyclopaedia."  Suppose a long
+procession of such cases, and then consider that these are not
+suppositions at all, but are plain, unvarnished facts, culminating
+in the one special and significant fact that, with a single
+solitary exception, every one of the institution's industrial
+students who have taken its prizes within ten years, have since
+climbed to higher situations in their way of life.
+
+As to the extent to which the institution encourages the artisan to
+think, and so, for instance, to rise superior to the little
+shackling prejudices and observances perchance existing in his
+trade when they will not bear the test of inquiry, that is only to
+be equalled by the extent to which it encourages him to feel.
+There is a certain tone of modest manliness pervading all the
+little facts which I have looked through which I found remarkably
+impressive.  The decided objection on the part of industrial
+students to attend classes in their working clothes, breathes this
+tone, as being a graceful and at the same time perfectly
+independent recognition of the place and of one another.  And this
+tone is admirably illustrated in a different way, in the case of a
+poor bricklayer, who, being in temporary reverses through the
+illness of his family, and having consequently been obliged to part
+with his best clothes, and being therefore missed from his classes,
+in which he had been noticed as a very hard worker, was persuaded
+to attend them in his working clothes.  He replied, "No, it was not
+possible.  It must not be thought of.  It must not come into
+question for a moment.  It would be supposed, or it might be
+thought, that he did it to attract attention." And the same man
+being offered by one of the officers a loan of money to enable him
+to rehabilitate his appearance, positively declined it, on the
+ground that he came to the institution to learn and to know better
+how to help himself, not otherwise to ask help, or to receive help
+from any man.  Now, I am justified in calling this the tone of the
+institution, because it is no isolated instance, but is a fair and
+honourable sample of the spirit of the place, and as such I put it
+at the conclusion--though last certainly not least--of my
+references to what your institution has indubitably done.
+
+Well, ladies and gentlemen, I come at length to what, in the humble
+opinion of the evanescent officer before you, remains for the
+institution to do, and not to do.  As Mr. Carlyle has it towards
+the closing pages of his grand history of the French Revolution,
+"This we are now with due brevity to glance at; and then courage,
+oh listener, I see land!" {18}  I earnestly hope--and I firmly
+believe--that your institution will do henceforth as it has done
+hitherto; it can hardly do better.  I hope and believe that it will
+know among its members no distinction of persons, creed, or party,
+but that it will conserve its place of assemblage as a high, pure
+ground, on which all such considerations shall merge into the one
+universal, heaven-sent aspiration of the human soul to be wiser and
+better.  I hope and believe that it will always be expansive and
+elastic; for ever seeking to devise new means of enlarging the
+circle of its members, of attracting to itself the confidence of
+still greater and greater numbers, and never evincing any more
+disposition to stand still than time does, or life does, or the
+seasons do.  And above all things, I hope, and I feel confident
+from its antecedents, that it will never allow any consideration on
+the face of the earth to induce it to patronise or to be
+patronised, for I verily believe that the bestowal and receipt of
+patronage in such wise has been a curse in England, and that it has
+done more to prevent really good objects, and to lower really high
+character, than the utmost efforts of the narrowest antagonism
+could have effected in twice the time.
+
+I have no fear that the walls of the Birmingham and Midland
+Institute will ever tremble responsive to the croakings of the
+timid opponents of intellectual progress; but in this connexion
+generally I cannot forbear from offering a remark which is much
+upon my mind.  It is commonly assumed--much too commonly--that this
+age is a material age, and that a material age is an irreligious
+age.  I have been pained lately to see this assumption repeated in
+certain influential quarters for which I have a high respect, and
+desire to have a higher.  I am afraid that by dint of constantly
+being reiterated, and reiterated without protest, this assumption--
+which I take leave altogether to deny--may be accepted by the more
+unthinking part of the public as unquestionably true; just as
+caricaturists and painters, professedly making a portrait of some
+public man, which was not in the least like him to begin with, have
+gone on repeating and repeating it until the public came to believe
+that it must be exactly like him, simply because it was like
+itself, and really have at last, in the fulness of time, grown
+almost disposed to resent upon him their tardy discovery--really to
+resent upon him their late discovery--that he was not like it.  I
+confess, standing here in this responsible situation, that I do not
+understand this much-used and much-abused phrase--the "material
+age."  I cannot comprehend--if anybody can I very much doubt--its
+logical signification.  For instance, has electricity become more
+material in the mind of any sane or moderately insane man, woman,
+or child, because of the discovery that in the good providence of
+God it could be made available for the service and use of man to an
+immeasurably greater extent than for his destruction?  Do I make a
+more material journey to the bed-side of my dying parent or my
+dying child when I travel there at the rate of sixty miles an hour,
+than when I travel thither at the rate of six?  Rather, in the
+swiftest case, does not my agonised heart become over-fraught with
+gratitude to that Supreme Beneficence from whom alone could have
+proceeded the wonderful means of shortening my suspense?  What is
+the materiality of the cable or the wire compared with the
+materiality of the spark?  What is the materiality of certain
+chemical substances that we can weigh or measure, imprison or
+release, compared with the materiality of their appointed
+affinities and repulsions presented to them from the instant of
+their creation to the day of judgment?  When did this so-called
+material age begin?  With the use of clothing; with the discovery
+of the compass; with the invention of the art of printing?  Surely,
+it has been a long time about; and which is the more material
+object, the farthing tallow candle that will not give me light, or
+that flame of gas which will?
+
+No, ladies and gentlemen, do not let us be discouraged or deceived
+by any fine, vapid, empty words.  The true material age is the
+stupid Chinese age, in which no new or grand revelations of nature
+are granted, because they are ignorantly and insolently repelled,
+instead of being diligently and humbly sought.  The difference
+between the ancient fiction of the mad braggart defying the
+lightning and the modern historical picture of Franklin drawing it
+towards his kite, in order that he might the more profoundly study
+that which was set before him to be studied (or it would not have
+been there), happily expresses to my mind the distinction between
+the much-maligned material sages--material in one sense, I suppose,
+but in another very immaterial sages--of the Celestial Empire
+school.  Consider whether it is likely or unlikely, natural or
+unnatural, reasonable or unreasonable, that I, a being capable of
+thought, and finding myself surrounded by such discovered wonders
+on every hand, should sometimes ask myself the question--should put
+to myself the solemn consideration--can these things be among those
+things which might have been disclosed by divine lips nigh upon two
+thousand years ago, but that the people of that time could not bear
+them?  And whether this be so or no, if I am so surrounded on every
+hand, is not my moral responsibility tremendously increased
+thereby, and with it my intelligence and submission as a child of
+Adam and of the dust, before that Shining Source which equally of
+all that is granted and all that is withheld holds in His mighty
+hands the unapproachable mysteries of life and death.
+
+To the students of your industrial classes generally I have had it
+in my mind, first, to commend the short motto, in two words,
+"Courage--Persevere."  This is the motto of a friend and worker.
+Not because the eyes of Europe are upon them, for I don't in the
+least believe it; nor because the eyes of even England are upon
+them, for I don't in the least believe it; not because their doings
+will be proclaimed with blast of trumpet at street corners, for no
+such musical performances will take place; not because self-
+improvement is at all certain to lead to worldly success, but
+simply because it is good and right of itself, and because, being
+so, it does assuredly bring with it its own resources and its own
+rewards.  I would further commend to them a very wise and witty
+piece of advice on the conduct of the understanding which was given
+more than half a century ago by the Rev. Sydney Smith--wisest and
+wittiest of the friends I have lost.  He says--and he is speaking,
+you will please understand, as I speak, to a school of volunteer
+students--he says:  "There is a piece of foppery which is to be
+cautiously guarded against, the foppery of universality, of knowing
+all sciences and excelling in all arts--chymistry, mathematics,
+algebra, dancing, history, reasoning, riding, fencing, Low Dutch,
+High Dutch, and natural philosophy.  In short, the modern precept
+of education very often is, 'Take the Admirable Crichton for your
+model, I would have you ignorant of nothing.'  Now," says he, "my
+advice, on the contrary, is to have the courage to be ignorant of a
+great number of things, in order that you may avoid the calamity of
+being ignorant of everything."
+
+To this I would superadd a little truth, which holds equally good
+of my own life and the life of every eminent man I have ever known.
+The one serviceable, safe, certain, remunerative, attainable
+quality in every study and in every pursuit is the quality of
+attention.  My own invention or imagination, such as it is, I can
+most truthfully assure you, would never have served me as it has,
+but for the habit of commonplace, humble, patient, daily, toiling,
+drudging attention.  Genius, vivacity, quickness of penetration,
+brilliancy in association of ideas--such mental qualities, like the
+qualities of the apparition of the externally armed head in
+Macbeth, will not be commanded; but attention, after due term of
+submissive service, always will.  Like certain plants which the
+poorest peasant may grow in the poorest soil, it can be cultivated
+by any one, and it is certain in its own good season to bring forth
+flowers and fruit.  I can most truthfully assure you by-the-by,
+that this eulogium on attention is so far quite disinterested on my
+part as that it has not the least reference whatever to the
+attention with which you have honoured me.
+
+Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have done.  I cannot but reflect how
+often you have probably heard within these walls one of the
+foremost men, and certainly one of the very best speakers, if not
+the very best, in England.  I could not say to myself, when I began
+just now, in Shakespeare's line -
+
+
+"I will be BRIGHT and shining gold,"
+
+
+but I could say to myself, and I did say to myself, "I will be as
+natural and easy as I possibly can," because my heart has all been
+in my subject, and I bear an old love towards Birmingham and
+Birmingham men.  I have said that I bear an old love towards
+Birmingham and Birmingham men; let me amend a small omission, and
+add "and Birmingham women."  This ring I wear on my finger now is
+an old Birmingham gift, and if by rubbing it I could raise the
+spirit that was obedient to Aladdin's ring, I heartily assure you
+that my first instruction to that genius on the spot should be to
+place himself at Birmingham's disposal in the best of causes.
+
+
+[In acknowledging the vote of thanks, Mr. Dickens said:-]
+
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, as I hope it is more than possible that I
+shall have the pleasure of meeting you again before Christmas is
+out, and shall have the great interest of seeing the faces and
+touching the bands of the successful competitors in your lists, I
+will not cast upon that anticipated meeting the terrible
+foreshadowing of dread which must inevitably result from a second
+speech.  I thank you most heartily, and I most sincerely and
+fervently say to you, "Good night, and God bless you."  In
+reference to the appropriate and excellent remarks of Mr. Dixon, I
+will now discharge my conscience of my political creed, which is
+contained in two articles, and has no reference to any party or
+persons.  My faith in the people governing is, on the whole,
+infinitesimal; my faith in the People governed is, on the whole,
+illimitable.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  BIRMINGHAM, JANUARY 6, 1870.
+
+
+
+[On the evening of the above date, Mr. Dickens, as President of the
+Birmingham and Midland Institute, distributed the prizes and
+certificates awarded to the most successful students in the first
+year.  The proceedings took place in the Town Hall:  Mr. Dickens
+entered at eight o'clock, accompanied by the officers of the
+Institute, and was received with loud applause.  After the lapse of
+a minute or two, he rose and said:-]
+
+Ladies and gentlemen,--When I last had the honour to preside over a
+meeting of the Institution which again brings us together, I took
+occasion to remark upon a certain superabundance of public speaking
+which seems to me to distinguish the present time.  It will require
+very little self-denial on my part to practise now what I preached
+then; firstly, because I said my little say that night; and
+secondly, because we have definite and highly interesting action
+before us to-night.  We have now to bestow the rewards which have
+been brilliantly won by the most successful competitors in the
+society's lists.  I say the most successful, because to-night we
+should particularly observe, I think, that there is success in all
+honest endeavour, and that there is some victory gained in every
+gallant struggle that is made.  To strive at all involves a victory
+achieved over sloth, inertness, and indifference; and competition
+for these prizes involves, besides, in the vast majority of cases,
+competition with and mastery asserted over circumstances adverse to
+the effort made.  Therefore, every losing competitor among my
+hearers may be certain that he has still won much--very much--and
+that he can well afford to swell the triumph of his rivals who have
+passed him in the race.
+
+I have applied the word "rewards" to these prizes, and I do so, not
+because they represent any great intrinsic worth in silver or gold,
+but precisely because they do not.  They represent what is above
+all price--what can be stated in no arithmetical figures, and what
+is one of the great needs of the human soul--encouraging sympathy.
+They are an assurance to every student present or to come in your
+institution, that he does not work either neglected or unfriended,
+and that he is watched, felt for, stimulated, and appreciated.
+Such an assurance, conveyed in the presence of this large assembly,
+and striking to the breasts of the recipients that thrill which is
+inseparable from any great united utterance of feeling, is a
+reward, to my thinking, as purely worthy of the labour as the
+labour itself is worthy of the reward; and by a sensitive spirit
+can never be forgotten.
+
+[One of the prize-takers was a Miss Winkle, a name suggestive of
+"Pickwick," which was received with laugher.  Mr. Dickens made some
+remarks to the lady in an undertone; and then observed to the
+audience, "I have recommended Miss Winkle to change her name."  The
+prizes having been distributed, Mr. Dickens made a second brief
+speech.  He said:-]
+
+The prizes are now all distributed, and I have discharged myself of
+the delightful task you have entrusted to me; and if the recipients
+of these prizes and certificates who have come upon this platform
+have had the genuine pleasure in receiving their acknowledgments
+from my hands that I have had in placing them in theirs, they are
+in a true Christian temper to-night.  I have the painful sense upon
+me, that it is reserved for some one else to enjoy this great
+satisfaction of mind next time.  It would be useless for the few
+short moments longer to disguise the fact that I happen to have
+drawn King this Twelfth Night, but that another Sovereign will very
+soon sit upon my inconstant throne.  To-night I abdicate, or, what
+is much the same thing in the modern annals of Royalty--I am
+politely dethroned.  This melancholy reflection, ladies and
+gentlemen, brings me to a very small point, personal to myself,
+upon which I will beg your permission to say a closing word.
+
+When I was here last autumn I made, in reference to some remarks of
+your respected member, Mr. Dixon, a short confession of my
+political faith--or perhaps I should better say want of faith.  It
+imported that I have very little confidence in the people who
+govern us--please to observe "people" there will be with a small
+"p,"--but that I have great confidence in the People whom they
+govern; please to observe "people" there with a large "P."  This
+was shortly and elliptically stated, and was with no evil
+intention, I am absolutely sure, in some quarters inversely
+explained.  Perhaps as the inventor of a certain extravagant
+fiction, but one which I do see rather frequently quoted as if
+there were grains of truth at the bottom of it--a fiction called
+the "Circumlocution Office,"--and perhaps also as the writer of an
+idle book or two, whose public opinions are not obscurely stated--
+perhaps in these respects I do not sufficiently bear in mind
+Hamlet's caution to speak by the card lest equivocation should undo
+me.
+
+Now I complain of nobody; but simply in order that there may be no
+mistake as to what I did mean, and as to what I do mean, I will re-
+state my meaning, and I will do so in the words of a great thinker,
+a great writer, and a great scholar, {19} whose death,
+unfortunately for mankind, cut short his "History of Civilization
+in England:"--"They may talk as they will about reforms which
+Government has introduced and improvements to be expected from
+legislation, but whoever will take a wider and more commanding view
+of human affairs, will soon discover that such hopes are
+chimerical.  They will learn that lawgivers are nearly always the
+obstructors of society instead of its helpers, and that in the
+extremely few cases where their measures have turned out well their
+success has been owing to the fact that, contrary to their usual
+custom, they have implicitly obeyed the spirit of their time, and
+have been--as they always should be--the mere servants of the
+people, to whose wishes they are bound to give a public and legal
+sanction."
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, APRIL 6, 1846. {20}
+
+
+
+[The first anniversary festival of the General Theatrical Fund
+Association was held on the evening of the above date at the London
+Tavern.  The chair was taken by Mr. Dickens, who thus proposed the
+principal toast:]
+
+Gentlemen,--In offering to you a toast which has not as yet been
+publicly drunk in any company, it becomes incumbent on me to offer
+a few words in explanation:  in the first place, premising that the
+toast will be "The General Theatrical Fund."
+
+The Association, whose anniversary we celebrate to-night, was
+founded seven years ago, for the purpose of granting permanent
+pensions to such of the corps dramatique as had retired from the
+stage, either from a decline in their years or a decay of their
+powers.  Collected within the scope of its benevolence are all
+actors and actresses, singers, or dancers, of five years' standing
+in the profession.  To relieve their necessities and to protect
+them from want is the great end of the Society, and it is good to
+know that for seven years the members of it have steadily,
+patiently, quietly, and perseveringly pursued this end, advancing
+by regular contribution, moneys which many of them could ill
+afford, and cheered by no external help or assistance of any kind
+whatsoever.  It has thus served a regular apprenticeship, but I
+trust that we shall establish to-night that its time is out, and
+that henceforth the Fund will enter upon a flourishing and
+brilliant career.
+
+I have no doubt that you are all aware that there are, and were
+when this institution was founded, two other institutions existing
+of a similar nature--Covent Garden and Drury Lane--both of long
+standing, both richly endowed.  It cannot, however, be too
+distinctly understood, that the present Institution is not in any
+way adverse to those.  How can it be when it is only a wide and
+broad extension of all that is most excellent in the principles on
+which they are founded?  That such an extension was absolutely
+necessary was sufficiently proved by the fact that the great body
+of the dramatic corps were excluded from the benefits conferred by
+a membership of either of these institutions; for it was essential,
+in order to become a member of the Drury Lane Society, that the
+applicant, either he or she, should have been engaged for three
+consecutive seasons as a performer.  This was afterwards reduced,
+in the case of Covent Garden, to a period of two years, but it
+really is as exclusive one way as the other, for I need not tell
+you that Covent Garden is now but a vision of the past.  You might
+play the bottle conjuror with its dramatic company and put them all
+into a pint bottle.  The human voice is rarely heard within its
+walls save in connexion with corn, or the ambidextrous
+prestidigitation of the Wizard of the North.  In like manner, Drury
+Lane is conducted now with almost a sole view to the opera and
+ballet, insomuch that the statue of Shakespeare over the door
+serves as emphatically to point out his grave as his bust did in
+the church of Stratford-upon-Avon.  How can the profession
+generally hope to qualify for the Drury Lane or Covent Garden
+institution, when the oldest and most distinguished members have
+been driven from the boards on which they have earned their
+reputations, to delight the town in theatres to which the General
+Theatrical Fund alone extended?
+
+I will again repeat that I attach no reproach to those other Funds,
+with which I have had the honour of being connected at different
+periods of my life.  At the time those Associations were
+established, an engagement at one of those theatres was almost a
+matter of course, and a successful engagement would last a whole
+life; but an engagement of two months' duration at Covent Garden
+would be a perfect Old Parr of an engagement just now.  It should
+never be forgotten that when those two funds were established, the
+two great theatres were protected by patent, and that at that time
+the minor theatres were condemned by law to the representation of
+the most preposterous nonsense, and some gentlemen whom I see
+around me could no more belong to the minor theatres of that day
+than they could now belong to St. Bartholomew fair.
+
+As I honour the two old funds for the great good which they have
+done, so I honour this for the much greater good it is resolved to
+do.  It is not because I love them less, but because I love this
+more--because it includes more in its operation.
+
+Let us ever remember that there is no class of actors who stand so
+much in need of a retiring fund as those who do not win the great
+prizes, but who are nevertheless an essential part of the
+theatrical system, and by consequence bear a part in contributing
+to our pleasures.  We owe them a debt which we ought to pay.  The
+beds of such men are not of roses, but of very artificial flowers
+indeed.  Their lives are lives of care and privation, and hard
+struggles with very stern realities.  It is from among the poor
+actors who drink wine from goblets, in colour marvellously like
+toast and water, and who preside at Barmecide beasts with wonderful
+appetites for steaks,--it is from their ranks that the most
+triumphant favourites have sprung.  And surely, besides this, the
+greater the instruction and delight we derive from the rich English
+drama, the more we are bound to succour and protect the humblest of
+those votaries of the art who add to our instruction and amusement.
+
+Hazlitt has well said that "There is no class of society whom so
+many persons regard with affection as actors.  We greet them on the
+stage, we like to meet them in the streets; they almost always
+recal to us pleasant associations." {21}  When they have strutted
+and fretted their hour upon the stage, let them not be heard no
+more--but let them be heard sometimes to say that they are happy in
+their old age.  When they have passed for the last time from behind
+that glittering row of lights with which we are all familiar, let
+them not pass away into gloom and darkness,--but let them pass into
+cheerfulness and light--into a contented and happy home.
+
+This is the object for which we have met; and I am too familiar
+with the English character not to know that it will be effected.
+When we come suddenly in a crowded street upon the careworn
+features of a familiar face--crossing us like the ghost of pleasant
+hours long forgotten--let us not recal those features with pain, in
+sad remembrance of what they once were, but let us in joy recognise
+it, and go back a pace or two to meet it once again, as that of a
+friend who has beguiled us of a moment of care, who has taught us
+to sympathize with virtuous grief, cheating us to tears for sorrows
+not our own--and we all know how pleasant are such tears.  Let such
+a face be ever remembered as that of our benefactor and our friend.
+
+I tried to recollect, in coming here, whether I had ever been in
+any theatre in my life from which I had not brought away some
+pleasant association, however poor the theatre, and I protest, out
+of my varied experience, I could not remember even one from which I
+had not brought some favourable impression, and that, commencing
+with the period when I believed the clown was a being born into the
+world with infinite pockets, and ending with that in which I saw
+the other night, outside one of the "Royal Saloons," a playbill
+which showed me ships completely rigged, carrying men, and
+careering over boundless and tempestuous oceans.  And now,
+bespeaking your kindest remembrance of our theatres and actors, I
+beg to propose that you drink as heartily and freely as ever a
+toast was drunk in this toast-drinking city "Prosperity to the
+General Theatrical Fund."
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LEEDS, DECEMBER 1, 1847.
+
+
+
+[On the above evening a Soiree of the Leeds Mechanics' Institution
+took place, at which about 1200 persons were present.  The chair
+was taken by Mr. Dickens, who thus addressed the meeting:]
+
+Ladies and gentlemen,--Believe me, speaking to you with a most
+disastrous cold, which makes my own voice sound very strangely in
+my ears--that if I were not gratified and honoured beyond
+expression by your cordial welcome, I should have considered the
+invitation to occupy my present position in this brilliant
+assemblage in itself a distinction not easy to be surpassed.  The
+cause in which we are assembled and the objects we are met to
+promote, I take, and always have taken to be, THE cause and THE
+objects involving almost all others that are essential to the
+welfare and happiness of mankind.  And in a celebration like the
+present, commemorating the birth and progress of a great
+educational establishment, I recognise a something, not limited to
+the spectacle of the moment, beautiful and radiant though it be--
+not limited even to the success of the particular establishment in
+which we are more immediately interested--but extending from this
+place and through swarms of toiling men elsewhere, cheering and
+stimulating them in the onward, upward path that lies before us
+all.  Wherever hammers beat, or wherever factory chimneys smoke,
+wherever hands are busy, or the clanking of machinery resounds--
+wherever, in a word, there are masses of industrious human beings
+whom their wise Creator did not see fit to constitute all body, but
+into each and every one of whom He breathed a mind--there, I would
+fain believe, some touch of sympathy and encouragement is felt from
+our collective pulse now beating in this Hall.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, glancing with such feelings at the report of
+your Institution for the present year sent to me by your respected
+President--whom I cannot help feeling it, by-the-bye, a kind of
+crime to depose, even thus peacefully, and for so short a time--I
+say, glancing over this report, I found one statement of fact in
+the very opening which gave me an uncommon satisfaction.  It is,
+that a great number of the members and subscribers are among that
+class of persons for whose advantage Mechanics' Institutions were
+originated, namely, persons receiving weekly wages.  This
+circumstance gives me the greatest delight.  I am sure that no
+better testimony could be borne to the merits and usefulness of
+this Institution, and that no better guarantee could be given for
+its continued prosperity and advancement.
+
+To such Associations as this, in their darker hours, there may yet
+reappear now and then the spectral shadow of a certain dead and
+buried opposition; but before the light of a steady trust in them
+on the part of the general people, bearing testimony to the
+virtuous influences of such Institutions by their own intelligence
+and conduct, the ghost will melt away like early vapour from the
+ground.  Fear of such Institutions as these!  We have heard people
+sometimes speak with jealousy of them,--with distrust of them!
+Imagine here, on either hand, two great towns like Leeds, full of
+busy men, all of them feeling necessarily, and some of them
+heavily, the burdens and inequalities inseparable from civilized
+society.  In this town there is ignorance, dense and dark; in that
+town, education--the best of education; that which the grown man
+from day to day and year to year furnishes for himself and
+maintains for himself, and in right of which his education goes on
+all his life, instead of leaving off, complacently, just when he
+begins to live in the social system.  Now, which of these two towns
+has a good man, or a good cause, reason to distrust and dread?
+"The educated one," does some timid politician, with a marvellously
+weak sight, say (as I have heard such politicians say), "because
+knowledge is power, and because it won't do to have too much power
+abroad."  Why, ladies and gentlemen, reflect whether ignorance be
+not power, and a very dreadful power.  Look where we will, do we
+not find it powerful for every kind of wrong and evil?  Powerful to
+take its enemies to its heart, and strike its best friends down--
+powerful to fill the prisons, the hospitals, and the graves--
+powerful for blind violence, prejudice, and error, in all their
+gloomy and destructive shapes.  Whereas the power of knowledge, if
+I understand it, is, to bear and forbear; to learn the path of duty
+and to tread it; to engender that self-respect which does not stop
+at self, but cherishes the best respect for the best objects--to
+turn an always enlarging acquaintance with the joys and sorrows,
+capabilities and imperfections of our race to daily account in
+mildness of life and gentleness of construction and humble efforts
+for the improvement, stone by stone, of the whole social fabric.
+
+I never heard but one tangible position taken against educational
+establishments for the people, and that was, that in this or that
+instance, or in these or those instances, education for the people
+has failed.  And I have never traced even this to its source but I
+have found that the term education, so employed, meant anything but
+education--implied the mere imperfect application of old, ignorant,
+preposterous spelling-book lessons to the meanest purposes--as if
+you should teach a child that there is no higher end in
+electricity, for example, than expressly to strike a mutton-pie out
+of the hand of a greedy boy--and on which it is as unreasonable to
+found an objection to education in a comprehensive sense, as it
+would be to object altogether to the combing of youthful hair,
+because in a certain charity school they had a practice of combing
+it into the pupils' eyes.
+
+Now, ladies and gentlemen, I turn to the report of this
+Institution, on whose behalf we are met; and I start with the
+education given there, and I find that it really is an education
+that is deserving of the name.  I find that there are papers read
+and lectures delivered, on a variety of subjects of interest and
+importance.  I find that there are evening classes formed for the
+acquisition of sound, useful English information, and for the study
+of those two important languages, daily becoming more important in
+the business of life,--the French and German.  I find that there is
+a class for drawing, a chemical class, subdivided into the
+elementary branch and the manufacturing branch, most important
+here.  I find that there is a day-school at twelve shillings a
+quarter, which small cost, besides including instruction in all
+that is useful to the merchant and the man of business, admits to
+all the advantages of the parent institution.  I find that there is
+a School of Design established in connexion with the Government
+School; and that there was in January this year, a library of
+between six and seven thousand books.  Ladies and gentlemen, if any
+man would tell me that anything but good could come of such
+knowledge as this, all I can say is, that I should consider him a
+new and most lamentable proof of the necessity of such
+institutions, and should regard him in his own person as a
+melancholy instance of what a man may come to by never having
+belonged to one or sympathized with one.
+
+There is one other paragraph in this report which struck my eye in
+looking over it, and on which I cannot help offering a word of
+joyful notice.  It is the steady increase that appears to have
+taken place in the number of lady members--among whom I hope I may
+presume are included some of the bright fair faces that are
+clustered around me.  Gentlemen, I hold that it is not good for man
+to be alone--even in Mechanics' Institutions; and I rank it as very
+far from among the last or least of the merits of such places, that
+he need not be alone there, and that he is not.  I believe that the
+sympathy and society of those who are our best and dearest friends
+in infancy, in childhood, in manhood, and in old age, the most
+devoted and least selfish natures that we know on earth, who turn
+to us always constant and unchanged, when others turn away, should
+greet us here, if anywhere, and go on with us side by side.
+
+I know, gentlemen, by the evidence of my own proper senses at this
+moment, that there are charms and graces in such greetings, such as
+no other greeting can possess.  I know that in every beautiful work
+of the Almighty hand, which is illustrated in your lectures, and in
+every real or ideal portraiture of fortitude and goodness that you
+find in your books, there is something that must bring you home
+again to them for its brightest and best example.  And therefore,
+gentlemen, I hope that you will never be without them, or without
+an increasing number of them in your studies and your
+commemorations; and that an immense number of new marriages, and
+other domestic festivals naturally consequent upon those marriages,
+may be traced back from time to time to the Leeds Mechanics'
+Institution.
+
+There are many gentlemen around me, distinguished by their public
+position and service, or endeared to you by frequent intercourse,
+or by their zealous efforts on behalf of the cause which brings us
+together; and to them I shall beg leave to refer you for further
+observations on this happy and interesting occasion; begging to
+congratulate you finally upon the occasion itself; upon the
+prosperity and thriving prospects of your institution; and upon our
+common and general good fortune in living in these times, when the
+means of mental culture and improvement are presented cheaply,
+socially, and cheerfully, and not in dismal cells or lonely
+garrets.  And lastly, I congratulate myself, I assure you most
+heartily, upon the part with which I am honoured on an occasion so
+congenial to my warmest feelings and sympathies, and I beg to thank
+you for such evidences of your good-will, as I never can coldly
+remember and never forget.
+
+
+[In acknowledging the vote of thanks, Mr, Dickens said:-]
+
+
+Ladies and Gentlemen,--It is a great satisfaction to me that this
+question has been put by the Mayor, inasmuch as I hope I may
+receive it as a token that he has forgiven me those extremely large
+letters, which I must say, from the glimpse I caught of them when I
+arrived in the town, looked like a leaf from the first primer of a
+very promising young giant.
+
+I will only observe, in reference to the proceeding of this
+evening, that after what I have seen, and the excellent speeches I
+have heard from gentlemen of so many different callings and
+persuasions, meeting here as on neutral ground, I do more strongly
+and sincerely believe than I ever have in my life,--and that is
+saying a great deal,--that institutions such as this will be the
+means of refining and improving that social edifice which has been
+so often mentioned to-night, until,--unlike that Babel tower that
+would have taken heaven by storm,--it shall end in sweet accord and
+harmony amongst all classes of its builders.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, most respectfully and heartily I bid you good
+night and good-bye, and I trust the next time we meet it will be in
+even greater numbers, and in a larger room, and that we often shall
+meet again, to recal this evening, then of the past, and remember
+it as one of a series of increasing triumphs of your excellent
+institution.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  GLASGOW, DECEMBER 28, 1847.
+
+
+
+[The first Soiree, commemorative of the opening of the Glasgow
+Athenaeum took place on the above evening in the City Hall.  Mr.
+Charles Dickens presided, and made the following speech:]
+
+Ladies and gentlemen--Let me begin by endeavouring to convey to you
+the assurance that not even the warmth of your reception can
+possibly exceed, in simple earnestness, the cordiality of the
+feeling with which I come amongst you.  This beautiful scene and
+your generous greeting would naturally awaken, under any
+circumstances, no common feeling within me; but when I connect them
+with the high purpose of this brilliant assembly--when I regard it
+as an educational example and encouragement to the rest of
+Scotland--when I regard it no less as a recognition on the part of
+everybody here of the right, indisputable and inalienable, of all
+those who are actively engaged in the work and business of life to
+elevate and improve themselves so far as in them lies, by all good
+means--I feel as if I stand here to swear brotherhood to all the
+young men in Glasgow;--and I may say to all the young women in
+Glasgow; being unfortunately in no position to take any tenderer
+vows upon myself--and as if we were pledged from this time
+henceforth to make common cause together in one of the most
+laudable and worthy of human objects.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, a common cause must be made in such a design
+as that which brings us together this night; for without it,
+nothing can be done, but with it, everything.  It is a common cause
+of right, God knows; for it is idle to suppose that the advantages
+of such an institution as the Glasgow Athenaeum will stop within
+its own walls or be confined to its own members.  Through all the
+society of this great and important city, upwards to the highest
+and downwards to the lowest, it must, I know, be felt for good.
+Downward in a clearer perception of, and sympathy with, those
+social miseries which can be alleviated, and those wide-open doors
+to vice and crime that can be shut and barred; and upward in a
+greater intelligence, increased efficiency, and higher knowledge,
+of all who partake of its benefits themselves, or who communicate,
+as all must do, in a greater or less degree, some portion to the
+circle of relatives or friends in which they move.
+
+Nor, ladies and gentlemen, would I say for any man, however high
+his social position, or however great his attainments, that he
+might not find something to be learnt even from immediate contact
+with such institutions.  If he only saw the goddess Knowledge
+coming out of her secluded palaces and high places to mingle with
+the throng, and to give them shining glimpses of the delights which
+were long kept hoarded up, he might learn something.  If he only
+saw the energy and the courage with which those who earn their
+daily bread by the labour of their hands or heads, come night after
+night, as to a recreation, to that which was, perhaps, the whole
+absorbing business of his youth, there might still be something
+very wholesome for him to learn.  But when he could see in such
+places their genial and reviving influences, their substituting of
+the contemplation of the beauties of nature and art, and of the
+wisdom of great men, for mere sensual enjoyment or stupid idleness-
+-at any rate he would learn this--that it is at once the duty and
+the interest of all good members of society to encourage and
+protect them.
+
+I took occasion to say at an Athenaeum in Yorkshire a few weeks
+since, and I think it a point most important to be borne in mind on
+such commemorations as these, that when such societies are objected
+to, or are decried on the ground that in the views of the
+objectors, education among the people has not succeeded, the term
+education is used with not the least reference to its real meaning,
+and is wholly misunderstood.  Mere reading and writing is not
+education; it would be quite as reasonable to call bricks and
+mortar architecture--oils and colours art--reeds and cat-gut music-
+-or the child's spelling-books the works of Shakespeare, Milton, or
+Bacon--as to call the lowest rudiments of education, education, and
+to visit on that most abused and slandered word their failure in
+any instance; and precisely because they were not education;
+because, generally speaking, the word has been understood in that
+sense a great deal too long; because education for the business of
+life, and for the due cultivation of domestic virtues, is at least
+as important from day to day to the grown person as to the child;
+because real education, in the strife and contention for a
+livelihood, and the consequent necessity incumbent on a great
+number of young persons to go into the world when they are very
+young, is extremely difficult.  It is because of these things that
+I look upon mechanics' institutions and athenaeums as vitally
+important to the well-being of society.  It is because the
+rudiments of education may there be turned to good account in the
+acquisition of sound principles, and of the great virtues, hope,
+faith, and charity, to which all our knowledge tends; it is because
+of that, I take it, that you have met in education's name to-night.
+
+It is a great satisfaction to me to occupy the place I do in behalf
+of an infant institution; a remarkably fine child enough, of a
+vigorous constitution, but an infant still.  I esteem myself
+singularly fortunate in knowing it before its prime, in the hope
+that I may have the pleasure of remembering in its prime, and when
+it has attained to its lusty maturity, that I was a friend of its
+youth.  It has already passed through some of the disorders to
+which children are liable; it succeeded to an elder brother of a
+very meritorious character, but of rather a weak constitution, and
+which expired when about twelve months old, from, it is said, a
+destructive habit of getting up early in the morning:  it succeeded
+this elder brother, and has fought manfully through a sea of
+troubles.  Its friends have often been much concerned for it; its
+pulse has been exceedingly low, being only 1250, when it was
+expected to have been 10,000; several relations and friends have
+even gone so far as to walk off once or twice in the melancholy
+belief that it was dead.  Through all that, assisted by the
+indomitable energy of one or two nurses, to whom it can never be
+sufficiently grateful, it came triumphantly, and now, of all the
+youthful members of its family I ever saw, it has the strongest
+attitude, the healthiest look, the brightest and most cheerful air.
+I find the institution nobly lodged; I find it with a reading-room,
+a coffee-room, and a news-room; I find it with lectures given and
+in progress, in sound, useful and well-selected subjects; I find it
+with morning and evening classes for mathematics, logic, grammar,
+music, French, German, Spanish, and Italian, attended by upwards of
+five hundred persons; but, best and first of all and what is to me
+more satisfactory than anything else in the history of the
+institution, I find that all, this has been mainly achieved by the
+young men of Glasgow themselves, with very little assistance.  And,
+ladies and gentlemen, as the axiom, "Heaven helps those who help
+themselves," is truer in no case than it is in this, I look to the
+young men of Glasgow, from such a past and such a present, to a
+noble future.  Everything that has been done in any other
+athenaeum, I confidently expect to see done here; and when that
+shall be the case, and when there shall be great cheap schools in
+connexion with the institution, and when it has bound together for
+ever all its friends, and brought over to itself all those who look
+upon it as an objectionable institution,--then, and not till then,
+I hope the young men of Glasgow will rest from their labours, and
+think their study done.
+
+If the young men of Glasgow want any stimulus or encouragement in
+this wise, they have one beside them in the presence of their fair
+townswomen, which is irresistible.  It is a most delightful
+circumstance to me, and one fraught with inestimable benefits to
+institutions of this kind, that at a meeting of this nature those
+who in all things are our best examples, encouragers, and friends,
+are not excluded.  The abstract idea of the Graces was in ancient
+times associated with those arts which refine the human
+understanding; and it is pleasant to see now, in the rolling of the
+world, the Graces popularising the practice of those arts by their
+example, and adorning it with their presence.
+
+I am happy to know that in the Glasgow Athenaeum there is a
+peculiar bond of union between the institution and the fairest part
+of creation.  I understand that the necessary addition to the small
+library of books being difficult and expensive to make, the ladies
+have generally resolved to hold a fancy bazaar, and to devote the
+proceeds to this admirable purpose; and I learn with no less
+pleasure that her Majesty the Queen, in a graceful and womanly
+sense of the excellence of this design, has consented that the
+bazaar shall be held under her royal patronage.  I can only say,
+that if you do not find something very noble in your books after
+this, you are much duller students than I take you to be.  The
+ladies--the single ladies, at least--however disinterested I know
+they are by sex and nature, will, I hope, resolve to have some of
+the advantages of these books, by never marrying any but members of
+the Athenaeum.  It seems to me it ought to be the pleasantest
+library in the world.
+
+Hazlitt says, in speaking of some of the graceful fancies of some
+familiar writer of fiction, "How long since I first became
+acquainted with these characters; what old-fashioned friends they
+seem; and yet I am not tired of them like so many other friends,
+nor they of me."  In this case the books will not only possess all
+the attractions of their own friendships and charms, but also the
+manifold--I may say womanfold--associations connected with their
+donors.  I can imagine how, in fact, from these fanciful
+associations, some fair Glasgow widow may be taken for the remoter
+one whom Sir Roger de Coverley could not forget; I can imagine how
+Sophia's muff may be seen and loved, but not by Tom Jones, going
+down the High Street on any winter day; or I can imagine the
+student finding in every fair form the exact counterpart of the
+Glasgow Athenaeum, and taking into consideration the history of
+Europe without the consent of Sheriff Alison.  I can imagine, in
+short, how through all the facts and fictions of this library,
+these ladies will be always active, and that
+
+
+"Age will not wither them, nor custom stale
+Their infinite variety."
+
+
+It seems to me to be a moral, delightful, and happy chance, that
+this meeting has been held at this genial season of the year, when
+a new time is, as it were, opening before us, and when we celebrate
+the birth of that divine and blessed Teacher, who took the highest
+knowledge into the humblest places, and whose great system
+comprehended all mankind.  I hail it as a most auspicious omen, at
+this time of the year, when many scattered friends and families are
+re-assembled, for the members of this institution to be calling men
+together from all quarters, with a brotherly view to the general
+good, and a view to the general improvement; as I consider that
+such designs are practically worthy of the faith we hold, and a
+practical remembrance of the words, "On earth peace, and good will
+toward men."  I hope that every year which dawns on your
+Institution, will find it richer in its means of usefulness, and
+grayer-headed in the honour and respect it has gained.  It can
+hardly speak for itself more appropriately than in the words of an
+English writer, when contemplating the English emblem of this
+period of the year, the holly-tree:-
+
+
+[Mr. Dickens concluded by quoting the last three stanzas of
+Southey's poem, The Holly Tree.
+
+In acknowledging a vote of thanks proposed by Sir Archibald (then
+Mr.) Alison, Mr. Dickens said:]
+
+
+Ladies and Gentlemen,--I am no stranger--and I say it with the
+deepest gratitude--to the warmth of Scottish hearts; but the warmth
+of your present welcome almost deprives me of any hope of
+acknowledging it.  I will not detain you any longer at this late
+hour; let it suffice to assure you, that for taking the part with
+which I have been honoured in this festival, I have been repaid a
+thousand-fold by your abundant kindness, and by the unspeakable
+gratification it has afforded me.  I hope that, before many years
+are past, we may have another meeting in public, when we shall
+rejoice at the immense progress your institution will have made in
+the meantime, and look back upon this night with new pleasure and
+satisfaction.  I shall now, in conclusion, repeat most heartily and
+fervently the quotation of Dr. Ewing, the late Provost of Glasgow,
+which Bailie Nicol Jarvie, himself "a Glasgow body," observed was
+"elegantly putten round the town's arms."
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, APRIL 14, 1851.
+
+
+
+[The Sixth Annual Dinner of the General Theatrical Fund was held at
+the London Tavern on the above date.  Mr. Charles Dickens occupied
+the chair, and in giving the toast of the evening said:-]
+
+I have so often had the satisfaction of bearing my testimony, in
+this place, to the usefulness of the excellent Institution in whose
+behalf we are assembled, that I should be really sensible of the
+disadvantage of having now nothing to say in proposing the toast
+you all anticipate, if I were not well assured that there is really
+nothing which needs be said.  I have to appeal to you on the old
+grounds, and no ingenuity of mine could render those grounds of
+greater weight than they have hitherto successfully proved to you.
+
+Although the General Theatrical Fund Association, unlike many other
+public societies and endowments, is represented by no building,
+whether of stone, or brick, or glass, like that astonishing
+evidence of the skill and energy of my friend Mr. Paxton, which all
+the world is now called upon to admire, and the great merit of
+which, as you learn from the best authorities, is, that it ought to
+have fallen down long before it was built, and yet that it would by
+no means consent to doing so--although, I say, this Association
+possesses no architectural home, it is nevertheless as plain a
+fact, rests on as solid a foundation, and carries as erect a front,
+as any building, in the world.  And the best and the utmost that
+its exponent and its advocate can do, standing here, is to point it
+out to those who gather round it, and to say, "judge for
+yourselves."
+
+It may not, however, be improper for me to suggest to that portion
+of the company whose previous acquaintance with it may have been
+limited, what it is not.  It is not a theatrical association whose
+benefits are confined to a small and exclusive body of actors.  It
+is a society whose claims are always preferred in the name of the
+whole histrionic art.  It is not a theatrical association adapted
+to a state of theatrical things entirely past and gone, and no more
+suited to present theatrical requirements than a string of pack-
+horses would be suited to the conveyance of traffic between London
+and Birmingham.  It is not a rich old gentleman, with the gout in
+his vitals, brushed and got-up once a year to look as vigorous as
+possible, and brought out for a public airing by the few survivors
+of a large family of nephews and nieces, who afterwards double-lock
+the street-door upon the poor relations.  It is not a theatrical
+association which insists that no actor can share its bounty who
+has not walked so many years on those boards where the English
+tongue is never heard--between the little bars of music in an
+aviary of singing birds, to which the unwieldy Swan of Avon is
+never admitted--that bounty which was gathered in the name and for
+the elevation of an all-embracing art.
+
+No, if there be such things, this thing is not of that kind.  This
+is a theatrical association, expressly adapted to the wants and to
+the means of the whole theatrical profession all over England.  It
+is a society in which the word exclusiveness is wholly unknown.  It
+is a society which includes every actor, whether he be Benedict or
+Hamlet, or the Ghost, or the Bandit, or the court-physician, or, in
+the one person, the whole King's army.  He may do the "light
+business," or the "heavy," or the comic, or the eccentric.  He may
+be the captain who courts the young lady, whose uncle still
+unaccountably persists in dressing himself in a costume one hundred
+years older than his time.  Or he may be the young lady's brother
+in the white gloves and inexpressibles, whose duty in the family
+appears to be to listen to the female members of it whenever they
+sing, and to shake hands with everybody between all the verses.  Or
+he may be the baron who gives the fete, and who sits uneasily on
+the sofa under a canopy with the baroness while the fete is going
+on.  Or he may be the peasant at the fete who comes on the stage to
+swell the drinking chorus, and who, it may be observed, always
+turns his glass upside down before he begins to drink out of it.
+Or he may be the clown who takes away the doorstep of the house
+where the evening party is going on.  Or he may be the gentleman
+who issues out of the house on the false alarm, and is precipitated
+into the area.  Or, to come to the actresses, she may be the fairy
+who resides for ever in a revolving star with an occasional visit
+to a bower or a palace.  Or the actor may be the armed head of the
+witch's cauldron; or even that extraordinary witch, concerning whom
+I have observed in country places, that he is much less like the
+notion formed from the description of Hopkins than the Malcolm or
+Donalbain of the previous scenes.  This society, in short, says,
+"Be you what you may, be you actor or actress, be your path in your
+profession never so high, or never so low, never so haughty, or
+never so humble, we offer you the means of doing good to
+yourselves, and of doing good to your brethren."
+
+This society is essentially a provident institution, appealing to a
+class of men to take care of their own interests, and giving a
+continuous security only in return for a continuous sacrifice and
+effort.  The actor by the means of this society obtains his own
+right, to no man's wrong; and when, in old age, or in disastrous
+times, he makes his claim on the institution, he is enabled to say,
+"I am neither a beggar, nor a suppliant.  I am but reaping what I
+sowed long ago."  And therefore it is that I cannot hold out to you
+that in assisting this fund you are doing an act of charity in the
+common acceptation of that phrase.  Of all the abuses of that much
+abused term, none have more raised my indignation than what I have
+heard in this room in past times, in reference to this institution.
+I say, if you help this institution you will be helping the wagoner
+who has resolutely put his own shoulder to the wheel, and who has
+NOT stuck idle in the mud.  In giving this aid you will be doing an
+act of justice, and you will be performing an act of gratitude; and
+this is what I solicit from you; but I will not so far wrong those
+who are struggling manfully for their own independence as to
+pretend to entreat from you an act of charity.
+
+I have used the word gratitude; and let any man ask his own heart,
+and confess if he have not some grateful acknowledgments for the
+actor's art?  Not peculiarly because it is a profession often
+pursued, and as it were marked, by poverty and misfortune--for
+other callings, God knows, have their distresses--nor because the
+actor has sometimes to come from scenes of sickness, of suffering,
+ay, even of death itself, to play his part before us--for all of
+us, in our spheres, have as often to do violence to our feelings
+and to hide our hearts in fighting this great battle of life, and
+in discharging our duties and responsibilities.  But the art of the
+actor excites reflections, sombre or grotesque, awful or humorous,
+which we are all familiar with.  If any man were to tell me that he
+denied his acknowledgments to the stage, I would simply put to him
+one question--whether he remembered his first play?
+
+If you, gentlemen, will but carry back your recollection to that
+great night, and call to mind the bright and harmless world which
+then opened to your view, we shall, I think, hear favourably of the
+effect upon your liberality on this occasion from our Secretary.
+
+This is the sixth year of meetings of this kind--the sixth time we
+have had this fine child down after dinner.  His nurse, a very
+worthy person of the name of Buckstone, who has an excellent
+character from several places, will presently report to you that
+his chest is perfectly sound, and that his general health is in the
+most thriving condition.  Long may it be so; long may it thrive and
+grow; long may we meet (it is my sincere wish) to exchange our
+congratulations on its prosperity; and longer than the line of
+Banquo may be that line of figures which, as its patriotic share in
+the national debt, a century hence shall be stated by the Governor
+and Company of the Bank of England.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  THE ROYAL LITERARY FUND.  LONDON, MARCH 12, 1856.
+
+
+
+[The Corporation of the Royal Literary Fund was established in
+1790, its object being to administer assistance to authors of
+genius and learning, who may be reduced to distress by unavoidable
+calamities, or deprived, by enfeebled faculties or declining life,
+of the power of literary exertion.  At the annual general meeting
+held at the house of the society on the above date, the following
+speech was made by Mr. Charles Dickens:]
+
+Sir,--I shall not attempt to follow my friend Mr. Bell, who, in the
+profession of literature, represents upon this committee a separate
+and distinct branch of the profession, that, like
+
+
+"The last rose of summer
+Stands blooming alone,
+While all its companions
+Are faded and gone,"
+
+
+into the very prickly bramble-bush with which he has ingeniously
+contrived to beset this question.  In the remarks I have to make I
+shall confine myself to four points: --1.  That the committee find
+themselves in the painful condition of not spending enough money,
+and will presently apply themselves to the great reform of spending
+more.  2.  That with regard to the house, it is a positive matter
+of history, that the house for which Mr. Williams was so anxious
+was to be applied to uses to which it never has been applied, and
+which the administrators of the fund decline to recognise.  3.
+That, in Mr. Bell's endeavours to remove the Artists' Fund from the
+ground of analogy it unquestionably occupies with reference to this
+fund, by reason of their continuing periodical relief to the same
+persons, I beg to tell Mr. Bell what every gentleman at that table
+knows--that it is the business of this fund to relieve over and
+over again the same people.
+
+MR. BELL:  But fresh inquiry is always made first.
+
+MR. C. DICKENS:  I can only oppose to that statement my own
+experience when I sat on that committee, and when I have known
+persons relieved on many consecutive occasions without further
+inquiry being made.  As to the suggestion that we should select the
+items of expenditure that we complain of, I think it is according
+to all experience that we should first affirm the principle that
+the expenditure is too large.  If that be done by the meeting, then
+I will proceed to the selection of the separate items.  Now, in
+rising to support this resolution, I may state at once that I have
+scarcely any expectation of its being carried, and I am happy to
+think it will not.  Indeed, I consider it the strongest point of
+the resolution's case that it should not be carried, because it
+will show the determination of the fund's managers.  Nothing can
+possibly be stronger in favour of the resolution than that the
+statement should go forth to the world that twice within twelve
+months the attention of the committee has been called to this great
+expenditure, and twice the committee have considered that it was
+not unreasonable.  I cannot conceive a stronger case for the
+resolution than this statement of fact as to the expenditure going
+forth to the public accompanied by the committee's assertion that
+it is reasonable.  Now, to separate this question from details, let
+us remember what the committee and their supporters asserted last
+year, and, I hope, will re-assert this year.  It seems to be rather
+the model kind of thing than otherwise now that if you get 100
+pounds you are to spend 40 pounds in management; and if you get
+1000 pounds, of course you may spend 400 pounds in giving the rest
+away.  Now, in case there should be any ill-conditioned people here
+who may ask what occasion there can be for all this expenditure, I
+will give you my experience.  I went last year to a highly
+respectable place of resort, Willis's Rooms, in St. James's, to a
+meeting of this fund.  My original intention was to hear all I
+could, and say as little as possible.  Allowing for the absence of
+the younger and fairer portion of the creation, the general
+appearance of the place was something like Almack's in the morning.
+A number of stately old dowagers sat in a row on one side, and old
+gentlemen on the other.  The ball was opened with due solemnity by
+a real marquis, who walked a minuet with the secretary, at which
+the audience were much affected.  Then another party advanced, who,
+I am sorry to say, was only a member of the House of Commons, and
+he took possession of the floor.  To him, however, succeeded a
+lord, then a bishop, then the son of a distinguished lord, then one
+or two celebrities from the City and Stock Exchange, and at last a
+gentleman, who made a fortune by the success of "Candide,"
+sustained the part of Pangloss, and spoke much of what he evidently
+believed to be the very best management of this best of all
+possible funds.  Now it is in this fondness for being stupendously
+genteel, and keeping up fine appearances--this vulgar and common
+social vice of hanging on to great connexions at any price, that
+the money goes.  The last time you got a distinguished writer at a
+public meeting, and he was called on to address you somewhere
+amongst the small hours, he told you he felt like the man in plush
+who was permitted to sweep the stage down after all the other
+people had gone.  If the founder of this society were here, I
+should think he would feel like a sort of Rip van Winkle reversed,
+who had gone to sleep backwards for a hundred years and woke up to
+find his fund still lying under the feet of people who did nothing
+for it instead of being emancipated and standing alone long ago.
+This Bloomsbury house is another part of the same desire for show,
+and the officer who inhabits it.  (I mean, of course, in his
+official capacity, for, as an individual, I much respect him.)
+When one enters the house it appears to be haunted by a series of
+mysterious-looking ghosts, who glide about engaged in some
+extraordinary occupation, and, after the approved fashion of
+ghosts, but seldom condescend to disclose their business.  What are
+all these meetings and inquiries wanted for?  As for the authors, I
+say, as a writer by profession, that the long inquiry said to be
+necessary to ascertain whether an applicant deserves relief, is a
+preposterous pretence, and that working literary men would have a
+far better knowledge of the cases coming before the board than can
+ever be attained by that committee.  Further, I say openly and
+plainly, that this fund is pompously and unnaturally administered
+at great expense, instead of being quietly administered at small
+expense; and that the secrecy to which it lays claim as its
+greatest attribute, is not kept; for through those "two respectable
+householders," to whom reference must be made, the names of the
+most deserving applicants are to numbers of people perfectly well
+known.  The members have now got before them a plain statement of
+fact as to these charges; and it is for them to say whether they
+are justifiable, becoming, or decent.  I beg most earnestly and
+respectfully to put it to those gentlemen who belong to this
+institution, that must now decide, and cannot help deciding, what
+the Literary Fund is for, and what it is not for.  The question
+raised by the resolution is whether this is a public corporation
+for the relief of men of genius and learning, or whether it is a
+snug, traditional, and conventional party, bent upon maintaining
+its own usages with a vast amount of pride; upon its own annual
+puffery at costly dinner-tables, and upon a course of expensive
+toadying to a number of distinguished individuals.  This is the
+question which you cannot this day escape.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, NOVEMBER 5, 1857.
+
+
+
+[At the fourth anniversary dinner of the Warehousemen and Clerks
+Schools, which took place on Thursday evening, Nov. 5th, 1857, at
+the London Tavern, and was very numerously attended, Mr. Charles
+Dickens occupied the chair.  On the subject which had brought the
+company together Mr. Dickens spoke as follows:-]
+
+I must now solicit your attention for a few minutes to the cause of
+your assembling together--the main and real object of this
+evening's gathering; for I suppose we are all agreed that the motto
+of these tables is not "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we
+die;" but, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we live."  It is
+because a great and good work is to live to-morrow, and to-morrow,
+and to-morrow, and to live a greater and better life with every
+succeeding to-morrow, that we eat and drink here at all.
+Conspicuous on the card of admission to this dinner is the word
+"Schools."  This set me thinking this morning what are the sorts of
+schools that I don't like.  I found them on consideration, to be
+rather numerous.  I don't like to begin with, and to begin as
+charity does at home--I don't like the sort of school to which I
+once went myself--the respected proprietor of which was by far the
+most ignorant man I have ever had the pleasure to know; one of the
+worst-tempered men perhaps that ever lived, whose business it was
+to make as much out of us and put as little into us as possible,
+and who sold us at a figure which I remember we used to delight to
+estimate, as amounting to exactly 2 pounds 4s. 6d. per head.  I
+don't like that sort of school, because I don't see what business
+the master had to be at the top of it instead of the bottom, and
+because I never could understand the wholesomeness of the moral
+preached by the abject appearance and degraded condition of the
+teachers who plainly said to us by their looks every day of their
+lives, "Boys, never be learned; whatever you are, above all things
+be warned from that in time by our sunken cheeks, by our poor
+pimply noses, by our meagre diet, by our acid-beer, and by our
+extraordinary suits of clothes, of which no human being can say
+whether they are snuff-coloured turned black, or black turned
+snuff-coloured, a point upon which we ourselves are perfectly
+unable to offer any ray of enlightenment, it is so very long since
+they were undarned and new."  I do not like that sort of school,
+because I have never yet lost my ancient suspicion touching that
+curious coincidence that the boy with four brothers to come always
+got the prizes.  In fact, and short, I do not like that sort of
+school, which is a pernicious and abominable humbug, altogether.
+Again, ladies and gentlemen, I don't like that sort of school--a
+ladies' school--with which the other school used to dance on
+Wednesdays, where the young ladies, as I look back upon them now,
+seem to me always to have been in new stays and disgrace--the
+latter concerning a place of which I know nothing at this day, that
+bounds Timbuctoo on the north-east--and where memory always depicts
+the youthful enthraller of my first affection as for ever standing
+against a wall, in a curious machine of wood, which confined her
+innocent feet in the first dancing position, while those arms,
+which should have encircled my jacket, those precious arms, I say,
+were pinioned behind her by an instrument of torture called a
+backboard, fixed in the manner of a double direction post.  Again,
+I don't like that sort of school, of which we have a notable
+example in Kent, which was established ages ago by worthy scholars
+and good men long deceased, whose munificent endowments have been
+monstrously perverted from their original purpose, and which, in
+their distorted condition, are struggled for and fought over with
+the most indecent pertinacity.  Again, I don't like that sort of
+school--and I have seen a great many such in these latter times--
+where the bright childish imagination is utterly discouraged, and
+where those bright childish faces, which it is so very good for the
+wisest among us to remember in after life--when the world is too
+much with us, early and late {22}--are gloomily and grimly scared
+out of countenance; where I have never seen among the pupils,
+whether boys or girls, anything but little parrots and small
+calculating machines.  Again, I don't by any means like schools in
+leather breeches, and with mortified straw baskets for bonnets,
+which file along the streets in long melancholy rows under the
+escort of that surprising British monster--a beadle, whose system
+of instruction, I am afraid, too often presents that happy union of
+sound with sense, of which a very remarkable instance is given in a
+grave report of a trustworthy school inspector, to the effect that
+a boy in great repute at school for his learning, presented on his
+slate, as one of the ten commandments, the perplexing prohibition,
+"Thou shalt not commit doldrum."  Ladies and gentlemen, I confess,
+also, that I don't like those schools, even though the instruction
+given in them be gratuitous, where those sweet little voices which
+ought to be heard speaking in very different accents, anathematise
+by rote any human being who does not hold what is taught there.
+Lastly, I do not like, and I did not like some years ago, cheap
+distant schools, where neglected children pine from year to year
+under an amount of neglect, want, and youthful misery far too sad
+even to be glanced at in this cheerful assembly.
+
+And now, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps you will permit me to sketch
+in a few words the sort of school that I do like.  It is a school
+established by the members of an industrious and useful order,
+which supplies the comforts and graces of life at every familiar
+turning in the road of our existence; it is a school established by
+them for the Orphan and Necessitous Children of their own brethren
+and sisterhood; it is a place giving an education worthy of them--
+an education by them invented, by them conducted, by them watched
+over; it is a place of education where, while the beautiful history
+of the Christian religion is daily taught, and while the life of
+that Divine Teacher who Himself took little children on His knees
+is daily studied, no sectarian ill-will nor narrow human dogma is
+permitted to darken the face of the clear heaven which they
+disclose.  It is a children's school, which is at the same time no
+less a children's home, a home not to be confided to the care of
+cold or ignorant strangers, nor, by the nature of its foundation,
+in the course of ages to pass into hands that have as much natural
+right to deal with it as with the peaks of the highest mountains or
+with the depths of the sea, but to be from generation to generation
+administered by men living in precisely such homes as those poor
+children have lost; by men always bent upon making that
+replacement, such a home as their own dear children might find a
+happy refuge in if they themselves were taken early away.  And I
+fearlessly ask you, is this a design which has any claim to your
+sympathy?  Is this a sort of school which is deserving of your
+support?
+
+This is the design, this is the school, whose strong and simple
+claim I have to lay before you to-night.  I must particularly
+entreat you not to suppose that my fancy and unfortunate habit of
+fiction has anything to do with the picture I have just presented
+to you.  It is sober matter of fact.  The Warehousemen and Clerks'
+Schools, established for the maintaining, clothing, and educating
+of the Orphan and Necessitous Children of those employed in the
+wholesale trades and manufactures of the United Kingdom, are, in
+fact, what I have just described.  These schools for both sexes
+were originated only four years ago.  In the first six weeks of the
+undertaking the young men of themselves and quite unaided,
+subscribed the large sum of 3,000 pounds.  The schools have been
+opened only three years, they have now on their foundation thirty-
+nine children, and in a few days they will have six more, making a
+total of forty-five.  They have been most munificently assisted by
+the heads of great mercantile houses, numerously represented, I am
+happy to say, around me, and they have a funded capital of almost
+14,000 pounds.  This is wonderful progress, but the aim must still
+be upwards, the motto always "Excelsior."  You do not need to be
+told that five-and-forty children can form but a very small
+proportion of the Orphan and Necessitous Children of those who have
+been entrusted with the wholesale trades and manufactures of the
+United Kingdom:  you do not require to be informed that the house
+at New-cross, rented for a small term of years, in which the
+schools are at present established, can afford but most imperfect
+accommodation for such a breadth of design.  To carry this good
+work through the two remaining degrees of better and best there
+must be more work, more co-operation, more friends, more money.
+Then be the friends and give the money.  Before I conclude, there
+is one other feature in these schools which I would commend to your
+special attention and approval.  Their benefits are reserved for
+the children of subscribers; that is to say, it is an essential
+principle of the institution that it must help those whose parents
+have helped them, and that the unfortunate children whose father
+has been so lax, or so criminal, as to withhold a subscription so
+exceedingly small that when divided by weeks it amounts to only
+threepence weekly, cannot, in justice, be allowed to jostle out and
+shoulder away the happier children, whose father has had that
+little forethought, or done that little kindness which was
+requisite to secure for them the benefits of the institution.  I
+really cannot believe that there will long be any such defaulting
+parents.  I cannot believe that any of the intelligent young men
+who are engaged in the wholesale houses will long neglect this
+obvious, this easy duty.  If they suppose that the objects of their
+love, born or unborn, will never want the benefits of the charity,
+that may be a fatal and blind mistake--it can never be an excuse,
+for, supposing them to be right in their anticipation, they should
+do what is asked for the sake of their friends and comrades around
+them, assured that they will be the happier and the better for the
+deed.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, this little "labour of love" of mine is now
+done.  I most heartily wish that I could charm you now not to see
+me, not to think of me, not to hear me--I most heartily wish that I
+could make you see in my stead the multitude of innocent and
+bereaved children who are looking towards these schools, and
+entreating with uplifted hands to be let in.  A very famous
+advocate once said, in speaking of his fears of failure when he had
+first to speak in court, being very poor, that he felt his little
+children tugging at his skirts, and that recovered him.  Will you
+think of the number of little children who are tugging at my
+skirts, when I ask you, in their names, on their behalf, and in
+their little persons, and in no strength of my own, to encourage
+and assist this work?
+
+
+At a later period of the evening Mr. Dickens proposed the health of
+the President of the Institution, Lord John Russell.  He said he
+should do nothing so superfluous and so unnecessary as to descant
+upon his lordship's many faithful, long, and great public services,
+upon the honour and integrity with which he had pursued his
+straightforward public course through every difficulty, or upon the
+manly, gallant, and courageous character, which rendered him
+certain, in the eyes alike of friends and opponents, to rise with
+every rising occasion, and which, like the seal of Solomon, in the
+old Arabian story, enclosed in a not very large casket the soul of
+a giant.  In answer to loud cheers, he said he had felt perfectly
+certain, that that would be the response for in no English assembly
+that he had ever seen was it necessary to do more than mention the
+name of Lord John Russell to ensure a manifestation of personal
+respect and grateful remembrance.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  LONDON, MAY 8, 1858.
+
+
+
+[The forty-eighth Anniversary of the establishment of the Artists'
+Benevolent Fund took place on the above date at the Freemasons'
+Tavern.  The chair was taken by Mr. Charles Dickens, who, after
+having disposed of the preliminary toasts with his usual felicity,
+proceeded to advocate the claims of the Institution in whose
+interest the company had assembled, in the following terms:-]
+
+Ladies and gentlemen,--There is an absurd theatrical story which
+was once told to me by a dear and valued friend, who has now passed
+from this sublunary stage, and which is not without its moral as
+applied to myself, in my present presidential position.  In a
+certain theatrical company was included a man, who on occasions of
+emergency was capable of taking part in the whole round of the
+British drama, provided he was allowed to use his own language in
+getting through the dialogue.  It happened one night that Reginald,
+in the Castle Spectre, was taken ill, and this veteran of a hundred
+characters was, of course, called up for the vacant part.  He
+responded with his usual promptitude, although knowing nothing
+whatever of the character, but while they were getting him into the
+dress, he expressed a not unreasonable wish to know in some vague
+way what the part was about.  He was not particular as to details,
+but in order that he might properly pourtray his sufferings, he
+thought he should have some slight inkling as to what really had
+happened to him.  As, for example, what murders he had committed,
+whose father he was, of what misfortunes he was the victim,--in
+short, in a general way to know why he was in that place at all.
+They said to him, "Here you are, chained in a dungeon, an unhappy
+father; you have been here for seventeen years, during which time
+you have never seen your daughter; you have lived upon bread and
+water, and, in consequence, are extremely weak, and suffer from
+occasional lowness of spirits."--"All right," said the actor of
+universal capabilities, "ring up."  When he was discovered to the
+audience, he presented an extremely miserable appearance, was very
+favourably received, and gave every sign of going on well, until,
+through some mental confusion as to his instructions, he opened the
+business of the act by stating in pathetic terms, that he had been
+confined in that dungeon seventeen years, during which time he had
+not tasted a morsel of food, to which circumstance he was inclined
+to attribute the fact of his being at that moment very much out of
+condition.  The audience, thinking this statement exceedingly
+improbable, declined to receive it, and the weight of that speech
+hung round him until the end of his performance.
+
+Now I, too, have received instructions for the part I have the
+honour of performing before you, and it behoves both you and me to
+profit by the terrible warning I have detailed, while I endeavour
+to make the part I have undertaken as plain and intelligible as I
+possibly can.
+
+As I am going to propose to you that we should now begin to connect
+the business with the pleasure of the evening, by drinking
+prosperity to the Artists' Benevolent Fund, it becomes important
+that we should know what that fund is.  It is an Association
+supported by the voluntary gifts of those who entertain a critical
+and admiring estimation of art, and has for its object the granting
+of annuities to the widows and children of deceased artists--of
+artists who have been unable in their lives to make any provision
+for those dear objects of their love surviving themselves.  Now it
+is extremely important to observe that this institution of an
+Artists' Benevolent Fund, which I now call on you to pledge, has
+connected with it, and has arisen out of another artists'
+association, which does not ask you for a health, which never did,
+and never will ask you for a health, which is self-supporting, and
+which is entirely maintained by the prudence and providence of its
+three hundred artist members.  That fund, which is called the
+Artists' Annuity Fund, is, so to speak, a joint and mutual
+Assurance Company against infirmity, sickness, and age.  To the
+benefits it affords every one of its members has an absolute right,
+a right, be it remembered, produced by timely thrift and self-
+denial, and not assisted by appeals to the charity or compassion of
+any human being.  On that fund there are, if I remember a right,
+some seventeen annuitants who are in the receipt of eleven hundred
+a-year, the proceeds of their own self-supporting Institution.  In
+recommending to you this benevolent fund, which is not self-
+supporting, they address you, in effect, in these words:- "We ask
+you to help these widows and orphans, because we show you we have
+first helped ourselves.  These widows and orphans may be ours or
+they may not be ours; but in any case we will prove to you to a
+certainty that we are not so many wagoners calling upon Jupiter to
+do our work, because we do our own work; each has his shoulder to
+the wheel; each, from year to year, has had his shoulder set to the
+wheel, and the prayer we make to Jupiter and all the gods is simply
+this--that this fact may be remembered when the wagon has stopped
+for ever, and the spent and worn-out wagoner lies lifeless by the
+roadside.
+
+"Ladies and Gentlemen, I most particularly wish to impress on you
+the strength of this appeal.  I am a painter, a sculptor, or an
+engraver, of average success.  I study and work here for no immense
+return, while life and health, while hand and eye are mine.  I
+prudently belong to the Annuity Fund, which in sickness, old age,
+and infirmity, preserves me from want.  I do my duty to those who
+are depending on me while life remains; but when the grass grows
+above my grave there is no provision for them any longer."
+
+This is the case with the Artists' Benevolent Fund, and in stating
+this I am only the mouthpiece of three hundred of the trade, who in
+truth stands as independent before you as if they were three
+hundred Cockers all regulated by the Gospel according to
+themselves.  There are in existence three artists' funds, which
+ought never to be mentioned without respect.  I am an officer of
+one of them, and can speak from knowledge; but on this occasion I
+address myself to a case for which there is no provision.  I
+address you on behalf of those professors of the fine arts who have
+made provision during life, and in submitting to you their claims I
+am only advocating principles which I myself have always
+maintained.
+
+When I add that this Benevolent Fund makes no pretensions to
+gentility, squanders no treasure in keeping up appearances, that it
+considers that the money given for the widow and the orphan, should
+really be held for the widow and the orphan, I think I have
+exhausted the case, which I desire most strenuously to commend to
+you.
+
+Perhaps you will allow me to say one last word.  I will not consent
+to present to you the professors of Art as a set of helpless
+babies, who are to be held up by the chin; I present them as an
+energetic and persevering class of men, whose incomes depend on
+their own faculties and personal exertions; and I also make so bold
+as to present them as men who in their vocation render good service
+to the community.  I am strongly disposed to believe there are very
+few debates in Parliament so important to the public welfare as a
+really good picture.  I have also a notion that any number of
+bundles of the driest legal chaff that ever was chopped would be
+cheaply expended for one really meritorious engraving.  At a highly
+interesting annual festival at which I have the honour to assist,
+and which takes place behind two fountains, I sometimes observe
+that great ministers of state and other such exalted characters
+have a strange delight in rather ostentatiously declaring that they
+have no knowledge whatever of art, and particularly of impressing
+on the company that they have passed their lives in severe studies.
+It strikes me when I hear these things as if these great men looked
+upon the arts as a sort of dancing dogs, or Punch's show, to be
+turned to for amusement when one has nothing else to do.  Now I
+always take the opportunity on these occasions of entertaining my
+humble opinion that all this is complete "bosh;" and of asserting
+to myself my strong belief that the neighbourhoods of Trafalgar
+Square, or Suffolk Street, rightly understood, are quite as
+important to the welfare of the empire as those of Downing Street,
+or Westminster Hall.  Ladies and Gentlemen, on these grounds, and
+backed by the recommendation of three hundred artists in favour of
+the Benevolent Fund, I beg to propose its prosperity as a toast for
+your adoption.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  THE FAREWELL READING.  ST. JAMES'S HALL, MARCH 15, 1870.
+
+
+
+[With the "Christmas Carol" and "The Trial from Pickwick," Mr.
+Charles Dickens brought to a brilliant close the memorable series
+of public readings which have for sixteen years proved to audiences
+unexampled in numbers, the source of the highest intellectual
+enjoyment.  Every portion of available space in the building was,
+of course, last night occupied some time before the appointed hour;
+but could the St. James's Hall have been specially enlarged for the
+occasion to the dimensions of Salisbury Plain, it is doubtful
+whether sufficient room would even then have been provided for all
+anxious to seize the last chance of hearing the distinguished
+novelist give his own interpretation of the characters called into
+existence by his own creative pen.  As if determined to convince
+his auditors that, whatever reason had influenced his
+determination, physical exhaustion was not amongst them, Mr.
+Dickens never read with greater spirit and energy.  His voice to
+the last retained its distinctive clearness, and the transitions of
+tone, as each personage in the story, conjured up by a word, rose
+vividly before the eye, seemed to be more marvellous than ever.
+The vast assemblage, hushed into breathless attention, suffered not
+a syllable to escape the ear, and the rich humour and deep pathos
+of one of the most delightful books ever written found once again
+the fullest appreciation.  The usual burst of merriment responsive
+to the blithe description of Bob Cratchit's Christmas day, and the
+wonted sympathy with the crippled child "Tiny Tim," found prompt
+expression, and the general delight at hearing of Ebenezer
+Scrooge's reformation was only checked by the saddening remembrance
+that with it the last strain of the "carol" was dying away.  After
+the "Trial from Pickwick," in which the speeches of the opposing
+counsel, and the owlish gravity of the judge, seemed to be
+delivered and depicted with greater dramatic power than ever, the
+applause of the audience rang for several minutes through the hall,
+and when it had subsided, Mr. Dickens, with evidently strong
+emotion, but in his usual distinct and expressive manner, spoke as
+follows:-]
+
+Ladies and gentlemen,--It would be worse than idle--for it would be
+hypocritical and unfeeling--if I were to disguise that I close this
+episode in my life with feelings of very considerable pain.  For
+some fifteen years, in this hall and in many kindred places, I have
+had the honour of presenting my own cherished ideas before you for
+your recognition, and, in closely observing your reception of them,
+have enjoyed an amount of artistic delight and instruction which,
+perhaps, is given to few men to know.  In this task, and in every
+other I have ever undertaken, as a faithful servant of the public,
+always imbued with a sense of duty to them, and always striving to
+do his best, I have been uniformly cheered by the readiest
+response, the most generous sympathy, and the most stimulating
+support.  Nevertheless, I have thought it well, at the full flood-
+tide of your favour, to retire upon those older associations
+between us, which date from much further back than these, and
+henceforth to devote myself exclusively to the art that first
+brought us together.  Ladies and gentlemen, in but two short weeks
+from this time I hope that you may enter, in your own homes, on a
+new series of readings, at which my assistance will be
+indispensable; {23} but from these garish lights I vanish now for
+evermore, with a heartfelt, grateful, respectful, and affectionate
+farewell.
+
+[Amidst repeated acclamations of the most enthusiastic description,
+whilst hats and handkerchiefs were waving in every part of the
+hall, Mr. Charles Dickens retired, withdrawing with him one of the
+greatest intellectual treats the public ever enjoyed.]
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  THE NEWSVENDORS' INSTITUTION, LONDON, APRIL 5, 1870.
+
+
+
+[The annual dinner in aid of the funds of the Newsvendors'
+Benevolent and Provident Institution was held on the above evening,
+at the Freemason's Tavern.  Mr. Charles Dickens presided, and was
+supported by the Sheriffs of the City of London and Middlesex.
+
+After the usual toasts had been given and responded to,
+
+The Chairman said that if the approved order of their proceedings
+had been observed, the Corporation of the City of London would no
+doubt have considered themselves snubbed if they were not toasted
+by themselves.  He was sure that a distinguished member of the
+Corporation who was present would tell the company what the
+Corporation were going to do; and he had not the slightest doubt
+they were going to do something highly creditable to themselves,
+and something highly serviceable to the whole metropolis; and if
+the secret were not at present locked up in the blue chamber, they
+would be all deeply obliged to the gentleman who would immediately
+follow him, if he let them into it in the same confidence as he had
+observed with respect to the Corporation of the City of London
+being snubbed.  He begged to give the toast of "The Corporation of
+the City of London."
+
+Mr. Alderman Cotton, in replying to the toast, said for once, and
+once only, had their chairman said an unkind word about the
+Corporation of London.  He had always reckoned Mr. Dickens to be
+one of the warmest friends of the Corporation; and remembering that
+he (Mr.  Dickens) did really go through a Lord Mayor's Show in a
+Lord Mayor's carriage, if he had not felt himself quite a Lord
+Mayor, he must have at least considered himself next to one.
+
+In proposing the toast of the evening Mr, Dickens said:-]
+
+Ladies and gentlemen,--You receive me with so much cordiality that
+I fear you believe that I really did once sit in a Lord Mayor's
+state coach.  Permit me to assure you, in spite of the information
+received from Mr. Alderman Cotton, that I never had that honour.
+Furthermore, I beg to assure you that I never witnessed a Lord
+Mayor's show except from the point of view obtained by the other
+vagabonds upon the pavement.  Now, ladies and gentlemen, in spite
+of this great cordiality of yours, I doubt if you fully know yet
+what a blessing it is to you that I occupy this chair to-night,
+because, having filled it on several previous occasions for the
+society on whose behalf we are assembled, and having said
+everything that I could think of to say about it, and being,
+moreover, the president of the institution itself, I am placed to-
+night in the modest position of a host who is not so much to
+display himself as to call out his guests--perhaps even to try to
+induce some among them to occupy his place on another occasion.
+And, therefore, you may be safely sure that, like Falstaff, but
+with a modification almost as large as himself, I shall try rather
+to be the cause of speaking in others than to speak myself to-
+night.  Much in this manner they exhibit at the door of a snuff
+shop the effigy of a Highlander with an empty mull in his hand,
+who, having apparently taken all the snuff he can carry, and
+discharged all the sneezes of which he is capable, politely invites
+his friends and patrons to step in and try what they can do in the
+same line.
+
+It is an appropriate instance of the universality of the newsman's
+calling that no toast we have drunk to-night--and no toast we shall
+drink to-night--and no toast we might, could, should, or would
+drink to-night, is separable for a moment from that great inclusion
+of all possible subjects of human interest which he delivers at our
+doors every day.  Further, it may be worthy the consideration of
+everybody here who has talked cheerfully to his or her neighbour
+since we have sat down at the table, what in the name of Heaven
+should we have talked about, and how on earth could we have
+possibly got on, if our newsman had only for one single day
+forgotten us.  Now, ladies and gentlemen, as our newsman is not by
+any means in the habit of forgetting us, let us try to form a
+little habit of not forgetting our newsman.  Let us remember that
+his work is very arduous; that it occupies him early and late; that
+the profits he derives from us are at the best very small; that the
+services he renders to us are very great; that if he be a master,
+his little capital is exposed to all sorts of mischances,
+anxieties, and hazards; and if he be a journeyman, he himself is
+exposed to all manner of weathers, of tempers, and of difficult and
+unreasonable requirements.
+
+Let me illustrate this.  I was once present at a social discussion,
+which originated by chance.  The subject was, What was the most
+absorbing and longest-lived passion in the human breast?  What was
+the passion so powerful that it would almost induce the generous to
+be mean, the careless to be cautious, the guileless to be deeply
+designing, and the dove to emulate the serpent?  A daily editor of
+vast experience and great acuteness, who was one of the company,
+considerably surprised us by saying with the greatest confidence
+that the passion in question was the passion of getting orders for
+the play.
+
+There had recently been a terrible shipwreck, and very few of the
+surviving sailors had escaped in an open boat.  One of these on
+making land came straight to London, and straight to the newspaper
+office, with his story of how he had seen the ship go down before
+his eyes.  That young man had witnessed the most terrible
+contention between the powers of fire and water for the destruction
+of that ship and of every one on board.  He had rowed away among
+the floating, dying, and the sinking dead.  He had floated by day,
+and he had frozen by night, with no shelter and no food, and, as he
+told his dismal tale, he rolled his haggard eyes about the room.
+When he had finished, and the tale had been noted down from his
+lips, he was cheered and refreshed, and soothed, and asked if
+anything could be done for him.  Even within him that master
+passion was so strong that he immediately replied he should like an
+order for the play.  My friend the editor certainly thought that
+was rather a strong case; but he said that during his many years of
+experience he had witnessed an incurable amount of self-prostration
+and abasement having no outer object, and that almost invariably on
+the part of people who could well afford to pay.
+
+This made a great impression on my mind, and I really lived in this
+faith until some years ago it happened upon a stormy night I was
+kindly escorted from a bleak railway station to the little out-of-
+the-way town it represented by a sprightly and vivacious newsman,
+to whom I propounded, as we went along under my umbrella--he being
+most excellent company--this old question, what was the one all-
+absorbing passion of the human soul?  He replied, without the
+slightest hesitation, that it certainly was the passion for getting
+your newspaper in advance of your fellow-creatures; also, if you
+only hired it, to get it delivered at your own door at exactly the
+same time as another man who hired the same copy four miles off;
+and, finally, the invincible determination on the part of both men
+not to believe the time was up when the boy called.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, I have not had an opportunity of verifying
+this experience with my friends of the managing committee, but I
+have no doubt from its reception to-night that my friend the
+newsman was perfectly right.  Well, as a sort of beacon in a
+sufficiently dark life, and as an assurance that among a little
+body of working men there is a feeling of brotherhood and sympathy-
+-which is worth much to all men, or they would herd with wolves--
+the newsvendors once upon a time established the Benevolent and
+Provident Institution, and here it is.  Under the Provident head,
+certain small annuities are granted to old and hard-working
+subscribers.  Under the Benevolent head, relief is afforded to
+temporary and proved distress.  Under both heads, I am bound to say
+the help rendered is very humble and very sparing, but if you like
+it to be handsomer you have it in your power to make it so.  Such
+as it is, it is most gratefully received, and does a deal of good.
+Such as it is, it is most discreetly and feelingly administered;
+and it is encumbered with no wasteful charges for management or
+patronage.
+
+You know upon an old authority, that you may believe anything
+except facts and figures, but you really may believe that during
+the last year we have granted 100 pounds in pensions, and some 70
+pounds in temporary relief, and we have invested in Government
+securities some 400 pounds.  But, touching this matter of
+investments, it was suggested at the anniversary dinner, on the
+high and kind authority of Sir Benjamin Phillips that we might
+grant more pensions and invest less money.  We urged, on the other
+hand, that we wished our pensions to be certain and unchangeable--
+which of course they must be if they are always paid out of our
+Government interest and never out of our capital.  However, so
+amiable is our nature, that we profess our desire to grant more
+pensions and to invest more money too.  The more you give us to-
+night again, so amiable is our nature, the more we promise to do in
+both departments.  That the newsman's work has greatly increased,
+and that it is far more wearing and tearing than it used to be, you
+may infer from one fact, not to mention that we live in railway
+times.  It is stated in Mitchell's "Newspaper Press Directory,"
+that during the last quarter of a century the number of newspapers
+which appeared in London had more than doubled, while the increase
+in the number of people among whom they were disseminated was
+probably beyond calculation.
+
+Ladies and gentlemen, I have stated the newsman's simple case.  I
+leave it in your hands.  Within the last year the institution has
+had the good fortune to attract the sympathy and gain the support
+of the eminent man of letters I am proud to call my friend, {24}
+who now represents the great Republic of America at the British
+Court.  Also it has the honour of enrolling upon its list of donors
+and vice-presidents the great name of Longfellow.  I beg to propose
+to you to drink "Prosperity to the Newsvendors' Benevolent and
+Provident Institution."
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  MACREADY.  LONDON, MARCH 1, 1851.
+
+
+
+[On the evening of the above day the friends and admirers of Mr.
+Macready entertained him at a public dinner.  Upwards of six
+hundred gentlemen assembled to do honour to the great actor on his
+retirement from the stage.  Sir E. B. Lytton took the chair.  Among
+the other speakers were Baron Bunsen, Sir Charles Eastlake, Mr.
+Thackeray, Mr. John Forster, Mr. W. J. Fox, and Mr. Charles
+Dickens, who proposed "The Health of the Chairman" in the following
+words:-]
+
+Gentlemen,--After all you have already heard, and so rapturously
+received, I assure you that not even the warmth of your kind
+welcome would embolden me to hope to interest you if I had not full
+confidence in the subject I have to offer to your notice.  But my
+reliance on the strength of this appeal to you is so strong that I
+am rather encouraged than daunted by the brightness of the track on
+which I have to throw my little shadow.
+
+Gentlemen, as it seems to me, there are three great requisites
+essential to the perfect realisation of a scene so unusual and so
+splendid as that in which we are now assembled.  The first, and I
+must say very difficult requisite, is a man possessing the
+stronghold in the general remembrance, the indisputable claim on
+the general regard and esteem, which is possessed by my dear and
+much valued friend our guest.  The second requisite is the presence
+of a body of entertainers,--a great multitude of hosts so cheerful
+and good-humoured (under, I am sorry to say, some personal
+inconvenience),--so warm-hearted and so nobly in earnest, as those
+whom I have the privilege of addressing.  The third, and certainly
+not the least of these requisites, is a president who, less by his
+social position, which he may claim by inheritance, or by fortune,
+which may have been adventitiously won, and may be again
+accidentally lost, than by his comprehensive genius, shall fitly
+represent the best part of him to whom honour is done, and the best
+part of those who unite in the doing of it.  Such a president I
+think we have found in our chairman of to-night, and I need
+scarcely add that our chairman's health is the toast I have to
+propose to you.
+
+Many of those who now hear me were present, I daresay, at that
+memorable scene on Wednesday night last, {25} when the great vision
+which had been a delight and a lesson,--very often, I daresay, a
+support and a comfort to you, which had for many years improved and
+charmed us, and to which we had looked for an elevated relief from
+the labours of our lives, faded from our sight for ever.  I will
+not stop to inquire whether our guest may or may not have looked
+backward, through rather too long a period for us, to some remote
+and distant time when he might possibly bear some far-off likeness
+to a certain Spanish archbishop whom Gil Blas once served.  Nor
+will I stop to inquire whether it was a reasonable disposition in
+the audience of Wednesday to seize upon the words -
+
+
+"And I have brought,
+Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
+Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
+Not cast aside so soon--" {26}
+
+
+but I will venture to intimate to those whom I am addressing how in
+my mind I mainly connect that occasion with the present.  When I
+looked round on the vast assemblage, and observed the huge pit
+hushed into stillness on the rising of the curtain, and that mighty
+surging gallery, where men in their shirt-sleeves had been striking
+out their arms like strong swimmers--when I saw that. boisterous
+human flood become still water in a moment, and remain so from the
+opening to the end of the play, it suggested to me something
+besides the trustworthiness of an English crowd, and the delusion
+under which those labour who are apt to disparage and malign it:
+it suggested to me that in meeting here to-night we undertook to
+represent something of the all-pervading feeling of that crowd,
+through all its intermediate degrees, from the full-dressed lady,
+with her diamonds sparkling upon her breast in the proscenium-box,
+to the half-undressed gentleman; who bides his time to take some
+refreshment in the back row of the gallery.  And I consider,
+gentlemen, that no one who could possibly be placed in this chair
+could so well head that comprehensive representation, and could so
+well give the crowning grace to our festivities, as one whose
+comprehensive genius has in his various works embraced them all,
+and who has, in his dramatic genius, enchanted and enthralled them
+all at once.
+
+Gentlemen, it is not for me here to recall, after what you have
+heard this night, what I have seen and known in the bygone times of
+Mr. Macready's management, of the strong friendship of Sir Bulwer
+Lytton for him, of the association of his pen with his earliest
+successes, or of Mr. Macready's zealous and untiring services; but
+it may be permitted me to say what, in any public mention of him I
+can never repress, that in the path we both tread I have uniformly
+found him from the first the most generous of men; quick to
+encourage, slow to disparage, ever anxious to assert the order of
+which he is so great an ornament; never condescending to shuffle it
+off, and leave it outside state rooms, as a Mussulman might leave
+his slippers outside a mosque.
+
+There is a popular prejudice, a kind of superstition to the effect
+that authors are not a particularly united body, that they are not
+invariably and inseparably attached to each other.  I am afraid I
+must concede half-a-grain or so of truth I to that superstition;
+but this I know, that there can hardly be--that there hardly can
+have been--among the followers of literature, a man of more high
+standing farther above these little grudging jealousies, which do
+sometimes disparage its brightness, than Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.
+
+And I have the strongest reason just at present to bear my
+testimony to his great consideration for those evils which are
+sometimes unfortunately attendant upon it, though not on him.  For,
+in conjunction with some other gentlemen now present, I have just
+embarked in a design with Sir Bulwer Lytton, to smoothe the rugged
+way of young labourers, both in literature and the fine arts, and
+to soften, but by no eleemosynary means, the declining years of
+meritorious age.  And if that project prosper as I hope it will,
+and as I know it ought, it will one day be an honour to England
+where there is now a reproach; originating in his sympathies, being
+brought into operation by his activity, and endowed from its very
+cradle by his generosity.  There are many among you who will have
+each his own favourite reason for drinking our chairman's health,
+resting his claim probably upon some of his diversified successes.
+According to the nature of your reading, some of you will connect
+him with prose, others will connect him with poetry.  One will
+connect him with comedy, and another with the romantic passions of
+the stage, and his assertion of worthy ambition and earnest
+struggle against those
+
+
+"twin gaolers of the human heart,
+Low birth and iron fortune."
+
+
+Again, another's taste will lead him to the contemplation of Rienzi
+and the streets of Rome; another's to the rebuilt and repeopled
+streets of Pompeii; another's to the touching history of the
+fireside where the Caxton family learned how to discipline their
+natures and tame their wild hopes down.  But, however various their
+feelings and reasons may be, I am sure that with one accord each
+will help the other, and all will swell the greeting, with which I
+shall now propose to you "The Health of our Chairman, Sir Edward
+Bulwer Lytton."
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  SANITARY REFORM.  LONDON, MAY 10, 1851.
+
+
+
+[The members and friends of the Metropolitan Sanitary Association
+dined together on the above evening at Gore House, Kensington.  The
+Earl of Carlisle occupied the chair.  Mr. Charles Dickens was
+present, and in proposing "The Board of Health," made the following
+speech:-]
+
+There are very few words for me to say upon the needfulness of
+sanitary reform, or the consequent usefulness of the Board of
+Health.  That no man can estimate the amount of mischief grown in
+dirt,--that no man can say the evil stops here or stops there,
+either in its moral or physical effects, or can deny that it begins
+in the cradle and is not at rest in the miserable grave, is as
+certain as it is that the air from Gin Lane will be carried by an
+easterly wind into Mayfair, or that the furious pestilence raging
+in St. Giles's no mortal list of lady patronesses can keep out of
+Almack's.  Fifteen years ago some of the valuable reports of Mr.
+Chadwick and Dr. Southwood Smith, strengthening and much enlarging
+my knowledge, made me earnest in this cause in my own sphere; and I
+can honestly declare that the use I have since that time made of my
+eyes and nose have only strengthened the conviction that certain
+sanitary reforms must precede all other social remedies, and that
+neither education nor religion can do anything useful until the way
+has been paved for their ministrations by cleanliness and decency.
+
+I do not want authority for this opinion:  you have heard the
+speech of the right reverend prelate {27} this evening--a speech
+which no sanitary reformer can have heard without emotion.  Of what
+avail is it to send missionaries to the miserable man condemned to
+work in a foetid court, with every sense bestowed upon him for his
+health and happiness turned into a torment, with every month of his
+life adding to the heap of evils under which he is condemned to
+exist?  What human sympathy within him is that instructor to
+address? what natural old chord within him is he to touch?  Is it
+the remembrance of his children?--a memory of destitution, of
+sickness, of fever, and of scrofula?  Is it his hopes, his latent
+hopes of immortality?  He is so surrounded by and embedded in
+material filth, that his soul cannot rise to the contemplation of
+the great truths of religion.  Or if the case is that of a
+miserable child bred and nurtured in some noisome, loathsome place,
+and tempted, in these better days, into the ragged school, what can
+a few hours' teaching effect against the ever-renewed lesson of a
+whole existence?  But give them a glimpse of heaven through a
+little of its light and air; give them water; help them to be
+clean; lighten that heavy atmosphere in which their spirits flag
+and in which they become the callous things they are; take the body
+of the dead relative from the close room in which the living live
+with it, and where death, being familiar, loses its awe; and then
+they will be brought willingly to hear of Him whose thoughts were
+so much with the poor, and who had compassion for all human
+suffering.
+
+The toast which I have to propose, The Board of Health, is entitled
+to all the honour which can be conferred upon it.  We have very
+near us, in Kensington, a transparent illustration that no very
+great thing can ever be accomplished without an immense amount of
+abuse being heaped upon it.  In connexion with the Board of Health
+we are always hearing a very large word which is always pronounced
+with a very great relish--the word centralization.  Now I submit
+that in the time of the cholera we had a pretty good opportunity of
+judging between this so called centralization and what I may, I
+think, call "vestrylisation."  I dare say the company present have
+read the reports of the Cholera Board of Health, and I daresay they
+have also read reports of certain vestries.  I have the honour of
+belonging to a constituency which elected that amazing body, the
+Marylebone vestry, and I think that if the company present will
+look to what was done by the Board of Health at Glasgow, and then
+contrast those proceedings with the wonderful cleverness with which
+affairs were managed at the same period by my vestry, there will be
+very little difficulty in judging between them.  My vestry even
+took upon itself to deny the existence of cholera as a weak
+invention of the enemy, and that denial had little or no effect in
+staying the progress of the disease.  We can now contrast what
+centralization is as represented by a few noisy and interested
+gentlemen, and what centralization is when worked out by a body
+combining business habits, sound medical and social knowledge, and
+an earnest sympathy with the sufferings of the working classes.
+
+Another objection to the Board of Health is conveyed in a word not
+so large as the other,--"Delay."  I would suggest, in respect to
+this, that it would be very unreasonable to complain that a first-
+rate chronometer didn't go when its master had not wound it up.
+The Board of Health may be excellently adapted for going and very
+willing and anxious to go, and yet may not be permitted to go by
+reason of its lawful master having fallen into a gentle slumber and
+forgotten to set it a going.  One of the speakers this evening has
+referred to Lord Castlereagh's caution "not to halloo until they
+were out of the wood."  As regards the Board of Trade I would
+suggest that they ought not to halloo until they are out of the
+Woods and Forests.  In that leafy region the Board of Health
+suffers all sorts of delays, and this should always be borne in
+mind.  With the toast of the Board of Health I will couple the name
+of a noble lord (Ashley), of whose earnestness in works of
+benevolence, no man can doubt, and who has the courage on all
+occasions to face the cant which is the worst and commonest of all-
+-the cant about the cant of philanthropy.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  GARDENING.  LONDON, JUNE 9, 1851.
+
+
+
+[At the anniversary dinner of the Gardeners' Benevolent
+Institution, held under the presidency of Mr., afterwards Sir
+Joseph Paxton, Mr. Charles Dickens made the following speech:-]
+
+I feel an unbounded and delightful interest in all the purposes and
+associations of gardening.  Probably there is no feeling in the
+human mind stronger than the love of gardening.  The prisoner will
+make a garden in his prison, and cultivate his solitary flower in
+the chink of a wall.  The poor mechanic will string his scarlet
+bean from one side of his window to the other, and watch it and
+tend it with unceasing interest.  It is a holy duty in foreign
+countries to decorate the graves of the dead with flowers, and
+here, too, the resting-places of those who have passed away from us
+will soon be gardens.  From that old time when the Lord walked in
+the garden in the cool of the evening, down to the day when a Poet-
+Laureate sang -
+
+
+"Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,
+From yon blue heaven above us bent
+The gardener Adam and his wife
+Smile at the claims of long descent,"
+
+
+at all times and in all ages gardens have been amongst the objects
+of the greatest interest to mankind.  There may be a few, but I
+believe they are but a few, who take no interest in the products of
+gardening, except perhaps in "London Pride," or a certain
+degenerate kind of "Stock," which is apt to grow hereabouts,
+cultivated by a species of frozen-out gardeners whom no thaw can
+ever penetrate:  except these, the gardeners' art has contributed
+to the delight of all men in their time.  That there ought to be a
+Benevolent Provident Institution for gardeners is in the fitness of
+things, and that such an institution ought to flourish and does
+flourish is still more so.
+
+I have risen to propose to you the health of a gentleman who is a
+great gardener, and not only a great gardener but a great man--the
+growth of a fine Saxon root cultivated up with a power of intellect
+to a plant that is at this time the talk of the civilized world--I
+allude, of course, to my friend the chairman of the day.  I took
+occasion to say at a public assembly hard-by, a month or two ago,
+in speaking of that wonderful building Mr. Paxton has designed for
+the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, that it ought to have fallen
+down, but that it refused to do so.  We were told that the glass
+ought to have been all broken, the gutters all choked up, and the
+building flooded, and that the roof and sides ought to have been
+blown away; in short that everything ought to have done what
+everything obstinately persisted in not doing.  Earth, air, fire,
+and water all appear to have conspired together in Mr. Paxton's
+favour--all have conspired together to one result, which, when the
+present generation is dust, will be an enduring temple to his
+honour, and to the energy, the talent, and the resources of
+Englishmen.
+
+"But," said a gentleman to me the other day, "no doubt Mr. Paxton
+is a great man, but there is one objection to him that you can
+never get over, that is, he is a gardener."  Now that is our case
+to-night, that he is a gardener, and we are extremely proud of it.
+This is a great age, with all its faults, when a man by the power
+of his own genius and good sense can scale such a daring height as
+Mr. Paxton has reached, and composedly place his form on the top.
+This is a great age, when a man impressed with a useful idea can
+carry out his project without being imprisoned, or thumb-screwed,
+or persecuted in any form.  I can well understand that you, to whom
+the genius, the intelligence, the industry, and the achievements of
+our friend are well known, should be anxious to do him honour by
+placing him in the position he occupies to-night; and I assure you,
+you have conferred great gratification on one of his friends, in
+permitting him to have the opportunity of proposing his health,
+which that friend now does most cordially and with all the honours.
+
+
+
+SPEECH:  THE ROYAL ACADEMY DINNER.  LONDON, MAY 2, 1870.
+
+
+
+[On the occasion of the Second Exhibition of the Royal Academy in
+their new galleries in Piccadilly, the President, Sir F. Grant, and
+the council gave their usual inaugurative banquet, and a very
+distinguished company was present.  The dinner took place in the
+large central room, and covers were laid for 200 guests.  The
+Prince of Wales acknowledged the toast of his health and that of
+the Princess, the Duke of Cambridge responded to the toast of the
+army, Mr. Childers to the navy, Lord Elcho to the volunteers, Mr.
+Motley to "The Prosperity of the United States," Mr. Gladstone to
+"Her Majesty's Ministers," the Archbishop of York to, "The Guests,"
+and Mr. Dickens to "Literature."  The last toast having been
+proposed in a highly eulogistic speech, Mr. Dickens responded.]
+
+Mr. President, your Royal Highnesses, my Lords and Gentlemen,--I
+beg to acknowledge the toast with which you have done me the great
+honour of associating my name.  I beg to acknowledge it on behalf
+of the brotherhood of literature, present and absent, not
+forgetting an illustrious wanderer from the fold, whose tardy
+return to it we all hail with delight, and who now sits--or lately
+did sit--within a few chairs of or on your left hand.  I hope I may
+also claim to acknowledge the toast on behalf of the sisterhood of
+literature also, although that "better half of human nature," to
+which Mr. Gladstone rendered his graceful tribute, is unworthily
+represented here, in the present state of its rights and wrongs, by
+the devouring monster, man.
+
+All the arts, and many of the sciences, bear witness that women,
+even in their present oppressed condition, can attain to quite as
+great distinction, and can attain to quite as lofty names as men.
+Their emancipation (as I am given to understand) drawing very near,
+there is no saying how soon they may "push us from our stools" at
+these tables, or how soon our better half of human nature, standing
+in this place of mine, may eloquently depreciate mankind,
+addressing another better half of human nature sitting in the
+president's chair.
+
+The literary visitors of the Royal Academy to-night desire me to
+congratulate their hosts on a very interesting exhibition, in which
+risen excellence supremely asserts itself, and from which promise
+of a brilliant succession in time to come is not wanting.  They
+naturally see with especial interest the writings and persons of
+great men--historians, philosophers, poets, and novelists, vividly
+illustrated around them here.  And they hope that they may modestly
+claim to have rendered some little assistance towards the
+production of many of the pictures in this magnificent gallery.
+For without the patient labours of some among them unhistoric
+history might have long survived in this place, and but for the
+researches and wandering of others among them, the most
+preposterous countries, the most impossible peoples, and the
+absurdest superstitions, manners, and customs, might have usurped
+the place of truth upon these walls.  Nay, there is no knowing, Sir
+Francis Grant, what unlike portraits you yourself might have
+painted if you had been left, with your sitters, to idle pens,
+unchecked reckless rumours, and undenounced lying malevolence.
+
+I cannot forbear, before I resume my seat, adverting to a sad theme
+(the recent death of Daniel Maclise) to which his Royal Highness
+the Prince of Wales made allusion, and to which the president
+referred with the eloquence of genuine feeling.  Since I first
+entered the public lists, a very young man indeed, it has been my
+constant fortune to number amongst my nearest and dearest friends
+members of the Royal Academy who have been its grace and pride.
+They have so dropped from my side one by one that I already, begin
+to feel like the Spanish monk of whom Wilkie tells, who had grown
+to believe that the only realities around him were the pictures
+which he loved, and that all the moving life he saw, or ever had
+seen, was a shadow and a dream.
+
+For many years I was one of the two most intimate friends and most
+constant companions of the late Mr. Maclise.  Of his genius in his
+chosen art I will venture to say nothing here, but of his
+prodigious fertility of mind and wonderful wealth of intellect, I
+may confidently assert that they would have made him, if he had
+been so minded, at least as great a writer as he was a painter.
+The gentlest and most modest of men, the freshest as to his
+generous appreciation of young aspirants, and the frankest and
+largest-hearted as to his peers, incapable of a sordid or ignoble
+thought, gallantly sustaining the true dignity of his vocation,
+without one grain of self-ambition, wholesomely natural at the last
+as at the first, "in wit a man, simplicity a child," no artist, of
+whatsoever denomination, I make bold to say, ever went to his rest
+leaving a golden memory more pure from dross, or having devoted
+himself with a truer chivalry to the art goddess whom he
+worshipped.
+
+[These were the last public words of Charles Dickens.]
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+
+
+{1}  Sir David Wilkie died at sea, on board the Oriental, off
+Gibraltar, on the 1st of June, 1841, whilst on his way back to
+England.  During the evening of the same day his body was committed
+to the deep. --ED.
+
+{2}  The Britannia was the vessel that conveyed Mr. Dickens across
+the Atlantic, on his first visit to America--ED.
+
+{3}  Master Humphrey's Clock, under which title the two novels of
+Barnaby Rudge and The Old Curiosity Shop originally appeared.--ED.
+
+{4}  "I shall always entertain a very pleasant and grateful
+recollection of Hartford.  It is a lovely place, and I had many
+friends there, whom I can never remember with indifference.  We
+left it with no little regret."  American Notes (Lond. 1842).  Vol.
+I, p. 182.
+
+{5}  See the Life and Letters of Washington Irving (Lond. 1863), p.
+644, where Irving speaks of a letter he has received "from that
+glorious fellow Dickens, in reply to the one I wrote, expressing my
+heartfelt delight with his writings, and my yearnings toward
+himself."  See also the letter itself, in the second division of
+this volume.--ED.
+
+{6}  TENNYSON, Lady Clara Vere de Vere, then newly published in
+collection of 1842.--ED
+
+{7}  "That this meeting, while conveying its cordial thanks to
+Charles Dickens, Esq., for his presence this evening, and for his
+able and courteous conduct as President, cannot separate without
+tendering the warmest expression of its gratitude and admiration to
+one whose writings have so loyally inculcated the lessons of
+benevolence and virtue, and so richly contributed to the stores of
+public pleasure and instructions."
+
+{8}  The Duke of Devonshire.
+
+{9}  Charlotte Corday going to Execution.
+
+{10}  The above is extracted from Mrs. Stowe's "Sunny Memories of
+Foreign Lands,", a book in which her eaves-dropping propensities
+were already developed in a sufficiently ugly form.--ED.
+
+{11}  Alas! the "many years" were to be barely six, when the
+speaker was himself destined to write some memorial pages
+commemorative of his illustrious friend (Cornhill Magazine,
+February, 1864.)--ED.
+
+{12}  Mr. Henry Dodd had proposed to give five acres of land in
+Berkshire, but, in consequence of his desiring to attach certain
+restrictions, after a long and unsatisfactory correspondence, the
+Committee, on 13th January following, rejected the offer.
+(Communicated.)
+
+{13}  Claude Melnotte in The Lady of Lyons, Act iii. sc. 2.
+
+{14}  Mr. B. Webster.
+
+{15}  Romeo and Juliet, Act III.  Sc. 1.
+
+{16}  Robert Browning:  Bells and Pomegranates.
+
+{17}  R. H.
+
+{18}  Carlyle's French Revolution.  Book X., Chapter I.
+
+{19}  Henry Thomas Buckle.
+
+{20}  This and the Speeches which follow were accidentally omitted
+in their right places.
+
+{21}  Hazlitt's Round Table (Edinburgh, 1817, vol ii., p. 242), On
+Actors and Acting.
+
+{22}  An allusion to a well-known Sonnet of Wordsworth, beginning--
+"The world is too much with us--late and soon," &c.--ED.
+
+{23}  Alluding to the forthcoming serial story of Edwin Drood.
+
+{24}  The Honourable John Lothrop Motley.
+
+{25}  February 26th, 1851.  Mr. Macready's Farewell Benefit at
+Drury Lane Theatre, on which occasion he played the part of
+Macbeth.--ED.
+
+{26}  MACBETH, Act I., sc. 7.
+
+{27}  The Bishop of Ripon (Dr. Longley).
+
+
+
+
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