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 25_s._ extending over a period of

five years, entitles a subscriber—if a male—to an annuity of £16 a-year,

and a female to £12 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.

XXIX.

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 freëst 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.

XXX.

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.

XXXI.

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.

XXXII.

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.”

XXXIII.

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, freër, 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.]

XXXIV.

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, 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 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; 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. 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.”

XXXV.

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.

XXXVI.

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.” {220} 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.”

XXXVII.

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.

XXXVIII.

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.

XXXIX.

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.

XL.

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.

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. {239} 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, {242} 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.

XLII.

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.”