As you have proved these truths in your own experience or in your own

observation, and as it may be safely assumed that there can be very few

persons in Birmingham, of all places under heaven, who would contest the

position that the more cultivated the employed the better for the

employer, and the more cultivated the employer the better for the

employed; therefore, my references to what you do not want to know shall

here cease and determine.

Next, with reference to what your institution has done on my summary,

which shall be as concise and as correct as my information and my

remembrance of it may render possible, I desire to lay emphatic stress.

Your institution, sixteen years old, and in which masters and workmen

study together, has outgrown the ample edifice in which it receives its

2,500 or 2,600 members and students. It is a most cheering sign of its

vigorous vitality that of its industrial-students almost half are

artisans in the receipt of weekly wages. I think I am correct in saying

that 400 others are clerks, apprentices, tradesmen, or tradesmen’s sons.

I note with particular pleasure the adherence of a goodly number of the

gentler sex, without whom no institution whatever can truly claim to be

either a civilising or a civilised one. The increased attendance at your

educational classes is always greatest on the part of the artisans—the

class within my experience the least reached in any similar institutions

elsewhere, and whose name is the oftenest and the most constantly taken

in vain. But it is specially reached here, not improbably because it is,

as it should be, specially addressed in the foundation of the industrial

department, in the allotment of the direction of the society’s affairs,

and in the establishment of what are called its penny classes—a bold,

and, I am happy to say, a triumphantly successful experiment, which

enables the artisan to obtain sound evening instruction in subjects

directly bearing upon his daily usefulness or on his daily happiness, as

arithmetic (elementary and advanced), chemistry, physical geography, and

singing, on payment of the astoundingly low fee of a single penny every

time he attends the class. I beg emphatically to say that I look upon

this as one of the most remarkable schemes ever devised for the

educational behoof of the artisan, and if your institution had done

nothing else in all its life, I would take my stand by it on its having

done this.

Apart, however, from its industrial department, it has its general

department, offering all the advantages of a first-class literary

institution. It has its reading-rooms, its library, its chemical

laboratory, its museum, its art department, its lecture hall, and its

long list of lectures on subjects of various and comprehensive interest,

delivered by lecturers of the highest qualifications. Very well. But it

may be asked, what are the practical results of all these appliances?

Now, let us suppose a few. Suppose that your institution should have

educated those who are now its teachers. That would be a very remarkable

fact. Supposing, besides, it should, so to speak, have educated

education all around it, by sending forth numerous and efficient teachers

into many and divers schools. Suppose the young student, reared

exclusively in its laboratory, should be presently snapped up for the

laboratory of the great and famous hospitals. Suppose that in nine years

its industrial students should have carried off a round dozen of the much

competed for prizes awarded by the Society of Arts and the Government

department, besides two local prizes originating in the generosity of a

Birmingham man. Suppose that the Town Council, having it in trust to

find an artisan well fit to receive the Whitworth prizes, should find him

here. Suppose that one of the industrial students should turn his

chemical studies to the practical account of extracting gold from waste

colour water, and of taking it into custody, in the very act of running

away with hundreds of pounds down the town drains. Suppose another

should perceive in his books, in his studious evenings, what was amiss

with his master’s until then inscrutably defective furnace, and should go

straight—to the great annual saving of that master—and put it right.

Supposing another should puzzle out the means, until then quite unknown

in England, of making a certain description of coloured glass. Supposing

another should qualify himself to vanquish one by one, as they daily

arise, all the little difficulties incidental to his calling as an

electro-plater, and should be applied to by his companions in the shop in

all emergencies under the name of the “Encyclopædia.” Suppose a long

procession of such cases, and then consider that these are not

suppositions at all, but are plain, unvarnished facts, culminating in the

one special and significant fact that, with a single solitary exception,

every one of the institution’s industrial students who have taken its

prizes within ten years, have since climbed to higher situations in their

way of life.

As to the extent to which the institution encourages the artisan to

think, and so, for instance, to rise superior to the little shackling

prejudices and observances perchance existing in his trade when they will

not bear the test of inquiry, that is only to be equalled by the extent

to which it encourages him to feel. There is a certain tone of modest

manliness pervading all the little facts which I have looked through

which I found remarkably impressive. The decided objection on the part

of industrial students to attend classes in their working clothes,

breathes this tone, as being a graceful and at the same time perfectly

independent recognition of the place and of one another. And this tone

is admirably illustrated in a different way, in the case of a poor

bricklayer, who, being in temporary reverses through the illness of his

family, and having consequently been obliged to part with his best

clothes, and being therefore missed from his classes, in which he had

been noticed as a very hard worker, was persuaded to attend them in his

working clothes. He replied, “No, it was not possible. It must not be

thought of. It must not come into question for a moment. It would be

supposed, or it might be thought, that he did it to attract attention.”

And the same man being offered by one of the officers a loan of money to

enable him to rehabilitate his appearance, positively declined it, on the

ground that he came to the institution to learn and to know better how to

help himself, not otherwise to ask help, or to receive help from any man.

Now, I am justified in calling this the tone of the institution, because

it is no isolated instance, but is a fair and honourable sample of the

spirit of the place, and as such I put it at the conclusion—though last

certainly not least—of my references to what your institution has

indubitably done.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I come at length to what, in the humble

opinion of the evanescent officer before you, remains for the institution

to do, and not to do. As Mr. Carlyle has it towards the closing pages of

his grand history of the French Revolution, “This we are now with due

brevity to glance at; and then courage, oh listener, I see land!” {250}

I earnestly hope—and I firmly believe—that your institution will do

henceforth as it has done hitherto; it can hardly do better. I hope and

believe that it will know among its members no distinction of persons,

creed, or party, but that it will conserve its place of assemblage as a

high, pure ground, on which all such considerations shall merge into the

one universal, heaven-sent aspiration of the human soul to be wiser and

better. I hope and believe that it will always be expansive and elastic;

for ever seeking to devise new means of enlarging the circle of its

members, of attracting to itself the confidence of still greater and

greater numbers, and never evincing any more disposition to stand still

than time does, or life does, or the seasons do. And above all things, I

hope, and I feel confident from its antecedents, that it will never allow

any consideration on the face of the earth to induce it to patronise or

to be patronised, for I verily believe that the bestowal and receipt of

patronage in such wise has been a curse in England, and that it has done

more to prevent really good objects, and to lower really high character,

than the utmost efforts of the narrowest antagonism could have effected

in twice the time.

I have no fear that the walls of the Birmingham and Midland Institute

will ever tremble responsive to the croakings of the timid opponents of

intellectual progress; but in this connexion generally I cannot forbear

from offering a remark which is much upon my mind. It is commonly

assumed—much too commonly—that this age is a material age, and that a

material age is an irreligious age. I have been pained lately to see

this assumption repeated in certain influential quarters for which I have

a high respect, and desire to have a higher. I am afraid that by dint of

constantly being reiterated, and reiterated without protest, this

assumption—which I take leave altogether to deny—may be accepted by the

more unthinking part of the public as unquestionably true; just as

caricaturists and painters, professedly making a portrait of some public

man, which was not in the least like him to begin with, have gone on

repeating and repeating it until the public came to believe that it must

be exactly like him, simply because it was like itself, and really have

at last, in the fulness of time, grown almost disposed to resent upon him

their tardy discovery—really to resent upon him their late discovery—that

he was not like it. I confess, standing here in this responsible

situation, that I do not understand this much-used and much-abused

phrase—the “material age.” I cannot comprehend—if anybody can I very

much doubt—its logical signification. For instance, has electricity

become more material in the mind of any sane or moderately insane man,

woman, or child, because of the discovery that in the good providence of

God it could be made available for the service and use of man to an

immeasurably greater extent than for his destruction? Do I make a more

material journey to the bed-side of my dying parent or my dying child

when I travel there at the rate of sixty miles an hour, than when I

travel thither at the rate of six? Rather, in the swiftest case, does

not my agonised heart become over-fraught with gratitude to that Supreme

Beneficence from whom alone could have proceeded the wonderful means of

shortening my suspense? What is the materiality of the cable or the wire

compared with the materiality of the spark? What is the materiality of

certain chemical substances that we can weigh or measure, imprison or

release, compared with the materiality of their appointed affinities and

repulsions presented to them from the instant of their creation to the

day of judgment? When did this so-called material age begin? With the

use of clothing; with the discovery of the compass; with the invention of

the art of printing? Surely, it has been a long time about; and which is

the more material object, the farthing tallow candle that will not give

me light, or that flame of gas which will?

No, ladies and gentlemen, do not let us be discouraged or deceived by any

fine, vapid, empty words. The true material age is the stupid Chinese

age, in which no new or grand revelations of nature are granted, because

they are ignorantly and insolently repelled, instead of being diligently

and humbly sought. The difference between the ancient fiction of the mad

braggart defying the lightning and the modern historical picture of

Franklin drawing it towards his kite, in order that he might the more

profoundly study that which was set before him to be studied (or it would

not have been there), happily expresses to my mind the distinction

between the much-maligned material sages—material in one sense, I

suppose, but in another very immaterial sages—of the Celestial Empire

school. Consider whether it is likely or unlikely, natural or unnatural,

reasonable or unreasonable, that I, a being capable of thought, and

finding myself surrounded by such discovered wonders on every hand,

should sometimes ask myself the question—should put to myself the solemn

consideration—can these things be among those things which might have

been disclosed by divine lips nigh upon two thousand years ago, but that

the people of that time could not bear them? And whether this be so or

no, if I am so surrounded on every hand, is not my moral responsibility

tremendously increased thereby, and with it my intelligence and

submission as a child of Adam and of the dust, before that Shining Source

which equally of all that is granted and all that is withheld holds in

His mighty hands the unapproachable mysteries of life and death.

To the students of your industrial classes generally I have had it in my

mind, first, to commend the short motto, in two words,

“Courage—Persevere.” This is the motto of a friend and worker. Not

because the eyes of Europe are upon them, for I don’t in the least

believe it; nor because the eyes of even England are upon them, for I

don’t in the least believe it; not because their doings will be

proclaimed with blast of trumpet at street corners, for no such musical

performances will take place; not because self-improvement is at all

certain to lead to worldly success, but simply because it is good and

right of itself, and because, being so, it does assuredly bring with it

its own resources and its own rewards. I would further commend to them a

very wise and witty piece of advice on the conduct of the understanding

which was given more than half a century ago by the Rev. Sydney

Smith—wisest and wittiest of the friends I have lost. He says—and he is

speaking, you will please understand, as I speak, to a school of

volunteer students—he says: “There is a piece of foppery which is to be

cautiously guarded against, the foppery of universality, of knowing all

sciences and excelling in all arts—chymistry, mathematics, algebra,

dancing, history, reasoning, riding, fencing, Low Dutch, High Dutch, and

natural philosophy. In short, the modern precept of education very often

is, ‘Take the Admirable Crichton for your model, I would have you

ignorant of nothing.’ Now,” says he, “my advice, on the contrary, is to

have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order

that you may avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.”

To this I would superadd a little truth, which holds equally good of my

own life and the life of every eminent man I have ever known. The one

serviceable, safe, certain, remunerative, attainable quality in every

study and in every pursuit is the quality of attention. My own invention

or imagination, such as it is, I can most truthfully assure you, would

never have served me as it has, but for the habit of commonplace, humble,

patient, daily, toiling, drudging attention. Genius, vivacity, quickness

of penetration, brilliancy in association of ideas—such mental qualities,

like the qualities of the apparition of the externally armed head in

_Macbeth_, will not be commanded; but attention, after due term of

submissive service, always will. Like certain plants which the poorest

peasant may grow in the poorest soil, it can be cultivated by any one,

and it is certain in its own good season to bring forth flowers and

fruit. I can most truthfully assure you by-the-by, that this eulogium on

attention is so far quite disinterested on my part as that it has not the

least reference whatever to the attention with which you have honoured

me.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have done. I cannot but reflect how often

you have probably heard within these walls one of the foremost men, and

certainly one of the very best speakers, if not the very best, in

England. I could not say to myself, when I began just now, in

Shakespeare’s line—

“I will be BRIGHT and shining gold,”

but I could say to myself, and I did say to myself, “I will be as natural

and easy as I possibly can,” because my heart has all been in my subject,

and I bear an old love towards Birmingham and Birmingham men. I have

said that I bear an old love towards Birmingham and Birmingham men; let

me amend a small omission, and add “and Birmingham women.” This ring I

wear on my finger now is an old Birmingham gift, and if by rubbing it I

could raise the spirit that was obedient to Aladdin’s ring, I heartily

assure you that my first instruction to that genius on the spot should be

to place himself at Birmingham’s disposal in the best of causes.

* * * * *

[In acknowledging the vote of thanks, Mr. Dickens said:—]

Ladies and gentlemen, as I hope it is more than possible that I shall

have the pleasure of meeting you again before Christmas is out, and shall

have the great interest of seeing the faces and touching the bands of the

successful competitors in your lists, I will not cast upon that

anticipated meeting the terrible foreshadowing of dread which must

inevitably result from a second speech. I thank you most heartily, and I

most sincerely and fervently say to you, “Good night, and God bless you.”

In reference to the appropriate and excellent remarks of Mr. Dixon, I

will now discharge my conscience of my political creed, which is

contained in two articles, and has no reference to any party or persons.

My faith in the people governing is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my

faith in the People governed is, on the whole, illimitable.

XLIII.

BIRMINGHAM, JANUARY 6, 1870.

[On the evening of the above date, Mr. Dickens, as President of the

Birmingham and Midland Institute, distributed the prizes and certificates

awarded to the most successful students in the first year. The

proceedings took place in the Town Hall: Mr. Dickens entered at eight

o’clock, accompanied by the officers of the Institute, and was received

with loud applause. After the lapse of a minute or two, he rose and

said:—]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—When I last had the honour to preside over a

meeting of the Institution which again brings us together, I took

occasion to remark upon a certain superabundance of public speaking which

seems to me to distinguish the present time. It will require very little

self-denial on my part to practise now what I preached then; firstly,

because I said my little say that night; and secondly, because we have

definite and highly interesting action before us to-night. We have now

to bestow the rewards which have been brilliantly won by the most

successful competitors in the society’s lists. I say the most

successful, because to-night we should particularly observe, I think,

that there is success in all honest endeavour, and that there is some

victory gained in every gallant struggle that is made. To strive at all

involves a victory achieved over sloth, inertness, and indifference; and

competition for these prizes involves, besides, in the vast majority of

cases, competition with and mastery asserted over circumstances adverse

to the effort made. Therefore, every losing competitor among my hearers

may be certain that he has still won much—very much—and that he can well

afford to swell the triumph of his rivals who have passed him in the

race.

I have applied the word “rewards” to these prizes, and I do so, not

because they represent any great intrinsic worth in silver or gold, but

precisely because they do not. They represent what is above all

price—what can be stated in no arithmetical figures, and what is one of

the great needs of the human soul—encouraging sympathy. They are an

assurance to every student present or to come in your institution, that

he does not work either neglected or unfriended, and that he is watched,

felt for, stimulated, and appreciated. Such an assurance, conveyed in

the presence of this large assembly, and striking to the breasts of the

recipients that thrill which is inseparable from any great united

utterance of feeling, is a reward, to my thinking, as purely worthy of

the labour as the labour itself is worthy of the reward; and by a

sensitive spirit can never be forgotten.

[One of the prize-takers was a Miss Winkle, a name suggestive of

“Pickwick,” which was received with laugher. Mr. Dickens made some

remarks to the lady in an undertone; and then observed to the audience,

“I have recommended Miss Winkle to change her name.” The prizes having

been distributed, Mr. Dickens made a second brief speech. He said:—]

The prizes are now all distributed, and I have discharged myself of the

delightful task you have entrusted to me; and if the recipients of these

prizes and certificates who have come upon this platform have had the

genuine pleasure in receiving their acknowledgments from my hands that I

have had in placing them in theirs, they are in a true Christian temper

to-night. I have the painful sense upon me, that it is reserved for some

one else to enjoy this great satisfaction of mind next time. It would be

useless for the few short moments longer to disguise the fact that I

happen to have drawn King this Twelfth Night, but that another Sovereign

will very soon sit upon my inconstant throne. To-night I abdicate, or,

what is much the same thing in the modern annals of Royalty—I am politely

dethroned. This melancholy reflection, ladies and gentlemen, brings me

to a very small point, personal to myself, upon which I will beg your

permission to say a closing word.

When I was here last autumn I made, in reference to some remarks of your

respected member, Mr. Dixon, a short confession of my political faith—or

perhaps I should better say want of faith. It imported that I have very

little confidence in the people who govern us—please to observe “people”

there will be with a small “p,”—but that I have great confidence in the

People whom they govern; please to observe “people” there with a large

“P.” This was shortly and elliptically stated, and was with no evil

intention, I am absolutely sure, in some quarters inversely explained.

Perhaps as the inventor of a certain extravagant fiction, but one which I

do see rather frequently quoted as if there were grains of truth at the

bottom of it—a fiction called the “Circumlocution Office,”—and perhaps

also as the writer of an idle book or two, whose public opinions are not

obscurely stated—perhaps in these respects I do not sufficiently bear in

mind Hamlet’s caution to speak by the card lest equivocation should undo

me.

Now I complain of nobody; but simply in order that there may be no

mistake as to what I did mean, and as to what I do mean, I will re-state

my meaning, and I will do so in the words of a great thinker, a great

writer, and a great scholar, {259} whose death, unfortunately for

mankind, cut short his “History of Civilization in England:”—“They may

talk as they will about reforms which Government has introduced and

improvements to be expected from legislation, but whoever will take a

wider and more commanding view of human affairs, will soon discover that

such hopes are chimerical. They will learn that lawgivers are nearly

always the obstructors of society instead of its helpers, and that in the

extremely few cases where their measures have turned out well their

success has been owing to the fact that, contrary to their usual custom,

they have implicitly obeyed the spirit of their time, and have been—as

they always should be—the mere servants of the people, to whose wishes

they are bound to give a public and legal sanction.”

XLIV.

LONDON, APRIL 6, 1846. {260}

[The first anniversary festival of the General Theatrical Fund

Association was held on the evening of the above date at the London

Tavern. The chair was taken by Mr. Dickens, who thus proposed the

principal toast:]

GENTLEMEN,—In offering to you a toast which has not as yet been publicly

drunk in any company, it becomes incumbent on me to offer a few words in

explanation: in the first place, premising that the toast will be “The

General Theatrical Fund.”

The Association, whose anniversary we celebrate to-night, was founded

seven years ago, for the purpose of granting permanent pensions to such

of the _corps dramatique_ as had retired from the stage, either from a

decline in their years or a decay of their powers. Collected within the

scope of its benevolence are all actors and actresses, singers, or

dancers, of five years’ standing in the profession. To relieve their

necessities and to protect them from want is the great end of the

Society, and it is good to know that for seven years the members of it

have steadily, patiently, quietly, and perseveringly pursued this end,

advancing by regular contribution, moneys which many of them could ill

afford, and cheered by no external help or assistance of any kind

whatsoever. It has thus served a regular apprenticeship, but I trust

that we shall establish to-night that its time is out, and that

henceforth the Fund will enter upon a flourishing and brilliant career.

I have no doubt that you are all aware that there are, and were when this

institution was founded, two other institutions existing of a similar

nature—Covent Garden and Drury Lane—both of long standing, both richly

endowed. It cannot, however, be too distinctly understood, that the

present Institution is not in any way adverse to those. How can it be

when it is only a wide and broad extension of all that is most excellent

in the principles on which they are founded? That such an extension was

absolutely necessary was sufficiently proved by the fact that the great

body of the dramatic corps were excluded from the benefits conferred by a

membership of either of these institutions; for it was essential, in

order to become a member of the Drury Lane Society, that the applicant,

either he or she, should have been engaged for three consecutive seasons

as a performer. This was afterwards reduced, in the case of Covent

Garden, to a period of two years, but it really is as exclusive one way

as the other, for I need not tell you that Covent Garden is now but a

vision of the past. You might play the bottle conjuror with its dramatic

company and put them all into a pint bottle. The human voice is rarely

heard within its walls save in connexion with corn, or the ambidextrous

prestidigitation of the Wizard of the North. In like manner, Drury Lane

is conducted now with almost a sole view to the opera and ballet,

insomuch that the statue of Shakespeare over the door serves as

emphatically to point out his grave as his bust did in the church of

Stratford-upon-Avon. How can the profession generally hope to qualify

for the Drury Lane or Covent Garden institution, when the oldest and most

distinguished members have been driven from the boards on which they have

earned their reputations, to delight the town in theatres to which the

General Theatrical Fund alone extended?

I will again repeat that I attach no reproach to those other Funds, with

which I have had the honour of being connected at different periods of my

life. At the time those Associations were established, an engagement at

one of those theatres was almost a matter of course, and a successful

engagement would last a whole life; but an engagement of two months’

duration at Covent Garden would be a perfect Old Parr of an engagement

just now. It should never be forgotten that when those two funds were

established, the two great theatres were protected by patent, and that at

that time the minor theatres were condemned by law to the representation

of the most preposterous nonsense, and some gentlemen whom I see around

me could no more belong to the minor theatres of that day than they could

now belong to St. Bartholomew fair.

As I honour the two old funds for the great good which they have done, so

I honour this for the much greater good it is resolved to do. It is not

because I love them less, but because I love this more—because it

includes more in its operation.

Let us ever remember that there is no class of actors who stand so much

in need of a retiring fund as those who do not win the great prizes, but

who are nevertheless an essential part of the theatrical system, and by

consequence bear a part in contributing to our pleasures. We owe them a

debt which we ought to pay. The beds of such men are not of roses, but

of very artificial flowers indeed. Their lives are lives of care and

privation, and hard struggles with very stern realities. It is from

among the poor actors who drink wine from goblets, in colour marvellously

like toast and water, and who preside at Barmecide beasts with wonderful

appetites for steaks,—it is from their ranks that the most triumphant

favourites have sprung. And surely, besides this, the greater the

instruction and delight we derive from the rich English drama, the more

we are bound to succour and protect the humblest of those votaries of the

art who add to our instruction and amusement.

Hazlitt has well said that “There is no class of society whom so many

persons regard with affection as actors. We greet them on the stage, we

like to meet them in the streets; they almost always recal to us pleasant

associations.” {263} When they have strutted and fretted their hour upon

the stage, let them not be heard no more—but let them be heard sometimes

to say that they are happy in their old age. When they have passed for

the last time from behind that glittering row of lights with which we are

all familiar, let them not pass away into gloom and darkness,—but let

them pass into cheerfulness and light—into a contented and happy home.

This is the object for which we have met; and I am too familiar with the

English character not to know that it will be effected. When we come

suddenly in a crowded street upon the careworn features of a familiar

face—crossing us like the ghost of pleasant hours long forgotten—let us

not recal those features with pain, in sad remembrance of what they once

were, but let us in joy recognise it, and go back a pace or two to meet

it once again, as that of a friend who has beguiled us of a moment of

care, who has taught us to sympathize with virtuous grief, cheating us to

tears for sorrows not our own—and we all know how pleasant are such

tears. Let such a face be ever remembered as that of our benefactor and

our friend.

I tried to recollect, in coming here, whether I had ever been in any

theatre in my life from which I had not brought away some pleasant

association, however poor the theatre, and I protest, out of my varied

experience, I could not remember even one from which I had not brought

some favourable impression, and that, commencing with the period when I

believed the clown was a being born into the world with infinite pockets,

and ending with that in which I saw the other night, outside one of the

“Royal Saloons,” a playbill which showed me ships completely rigged,

carrying men, and careering over boundless and tempestuous oceans. And

now, bespeaking your kindest remembrance of our theatres and actors, I

beg to propose that you drink as heartily and freely as ever a toast was

drunk in this toast-drinking city “Prosperity to the General Theatrical

Fund.”

XLV.

LEEDS, DECEMBER 1, 1847.

[On the above evening a Soirée of the Leeds Mechanics’ Institution took

place, at which about 1200 persons were present. The chair was taken by

Mr. Dickens, who thus addressed the meeting:]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—Believe me, speaking to you with a most disastrous

cold, which makes my own voice sound very strangely in my ears—that if I

were not gratified and honoured beyond expression by your cordial

welcome, I should have considered the invitation to occupy my present

position in this brilliant assemblage in itself a distinction not easy to

be surpassed. The cause in which we are assembled and the objects we are

met to promote, I take, and always have taken to be, _the_ cause and

_the_ objects involving almost all others that are essential to the

welfare and happiness of mankind. And in a celebration like the present,

commemorating the birth and progress of a great educational

establishment, I recognise a something, not limited to the spectacle of

the moment, beautiful and radiant though it be—not limited even to the

success of the particular establishment in which we are more immediately

interested—but extending from this place and through swarms of toiling

men elsewhere, cheering and stimulating them in the onward, upward path

that lies before us all. Wherever hammers beat, or wherever factory

chimneys smoke, wherever hands are busy, or the clanking of machinery

resounds—wherever, in a word, there are masses of industrious human

beings whom their wise Creator did not see fit to constitute all body,

but into each and every one of whom He breathed a mind—there, I would

fain believe, some touch of sympathy and encouragement is felt from our

collective pulse now beating in this Hall.

Ladies and gentlemen, glancing with such feelings at the report of your

Institution for the present year sent to me by your respected

President—whom I cannot help feeling it, by-the-bye, a kind of crime to

depose, even thus peacefully, and for so short a time—I say, glancing

over this report, I found one statement of fact in the very opening which

gave me an uncommon satisfaction. It is, that a great number of the

members and subscribers are among that class of persons for whose

advantage Mechanics’ Institutions were originated, namely, persons

receiving weekly wages. This circumstance gives me the greatest delight.

I am sure that no better testimony could be borne to the merits and

usefulness of this Institution, and that no better guarantee could be

given for its continued prosperity and advancement.

To such Associations as this, in their darker hours, there may yet

reappear now and then the spectral shadow of a certain dead and buried

opposition; but before the light of a steady trust in them on the part of

the general people, bearing testimony to the virtuous influences of such

Institutions by their own intelligence and conduct, the ghost will melt

away like early vapour from the ground. Fear of such Institutions as

these! We have heard people sometimes speak with jealousy of them,—with

distrust of them! Imagine here, on either hand, two great towns like

Leeds, full of busy men, all of them feeling necessarily, and some of

them heavily, the burdens and inequalities inseparable from civilized

society. In this town there is ignorance, dense and dark; in that town,

education—the best of education; that which the grown man from day to day

and year to year furnishes for himself and maintains for himself, and in

right of which his education goes on all his life, instead of leaving

off, complacently, just when he begins to live in the social system.

Now, which of these two towns has a good man, or a good cause, reason to

distrust and dread? “The educated one,” does some timid politician, with

a marvellously weak sight, say (as I have heard such politicians say),

“because knowledge is power, and because it won’t do to have too much

power abroad.” Why, ladies and gentlemen, reflect whether ignorance be

not power, and a very dreadful power. Look where we will, do we not find

it powerful for every kind of wrong and evil? Powerful to take its

enemies to its heart, and strike its best friends down—powerful to fill

the prisons, the hospitals, and the graves—powerful for blind violence,

prejudice, and error, in all their gloomy and destructive shapes.

Whereas the power of knowledge, if I understand it, is, to bear and

forbear; to learn the path of duty and to tread it; to engender that

self-respect which does not stop at self, but cherishes the best respect

for the best objects—to turn an always enlarging acquaintance with the

joys and sorrows, capabilities and imperfections of our race to daily

account in mildness of life and gentleness of construction and humble

efforts for the improvement, stone by stone, of the whole social fabric.

I never heard but one tangible position taken against educational

establishments for the people, and that was, that in this or that

instance, or in these or those instances, education for the people has

failed. And I have never traced even this to its source but I have found

that the term education, so employed, meant anything but

education—implied the mere imperfect application of old, ignorant,

preposterous spelling-book lessons to the meanest purposes—as if you

should teach a child that there is no higher end in electricity, for

example, than expressly to strike a mutton-pie out of the hand of a

greedy boy—and on which it is as unreasonable to found an objection to

education in a comprehensive sense, as it would be to object altogether

to the combing of youthful hair, because in a certain charity school they

had a practice of combing it into the pupils’ eyes.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I turn to the report of this Institution, on

whose behalf we are met; and I start with the education given there, and

I find that it really is an education that is deserving of the name. I

find that there are papers read and lectures delivered, on a variety of

subjects of interest and importance. I find that there are evening

classes formed for the acquisition of sound, useful English information,

and for the study of those two important languages, daily becoming more

important in the business of life,—the French and German. I find that

there is a class for drawing, a chemical class, subdivided into the

elementary branch and the manufacturing branch, most important here. I

find that there is a day-school at twelve shillings a quarter, which

small cost, besides including instruction in all that is useful to the

merchant and the man of business, admits to all the advantages of the

parent institution. I find that there is a School of Design established

in connexion with the Government School; and that there was in January

this year, a library of between six and seven thousand books. Ladies and

gentlemen, if any man would tell me that anything but good could come of

such knowledge as this, all I can say is, that I should consider him a

new and most lamentable proof of the necessity of such institutions, and

should regard him in his own person as a melancholy instance of what a

man may come to by never having belonged to one or sympathized with one.

There is one other paragraph in this report which struck my eye in

looking over it, and on which I cannot help offering a word of joyful

notice. It is the steady increase that appears to have taken place in

the number of lady members—among whom I hope I may presume are included

some of the bright fair faces that are clustered around me. Gentlemen, I

hold that it is not good for man to be alone—even in Mechanics’

Institutions; and I rank it as very far from among the last or least of

the merits of such places, that he need not be alone there, and that he

is not. I believe that the sympathy and society of those who are our

best and dearest friends in infancy, in childhood, in manhood, and in old

age, the most devoted and least selfish natures that we know on earth,

who turn to us always constant and unchanged, when others turn away,

should greet us here, if anywhere, and go on with us side by side.

I know, gentlemen, by the evidence of my own proper senses at this

moment, that there are charms and graces in such greetings, such as no

other greeting can possess. I know that in every beautiful work of the

Almighty hand, which is illustrated in your lectures, and in every real

or ideal portraiture of fortitude and goodness that you find in your

books, there is something that must bring you home again to them for its

brightest and best example. And therefore, gentlemen, I hope that you

will never be without them, or without an increasing number of them in

your studies and your commemorations; and that an immense number of new

marriages, and other domestic festivals naturally consequent upon those

marriages, may be traced back from time to time to the Leeds Mechanics’

Institution.

There are many gentlemen around me, distinguished by their public

position and service, or endeared to you by frequent intercourse, or by

their zealous efforts on behalf of the cause which brings us together;

and to them I shall beg leave to refer you for further observations on

this happy and interesting occasion; begging to congratulate you finally

upon the occasion itself; upon the prosperity and thriving prospects of

your institution; and upon our common and general good fortune in living

in these times, when the means of mental culture and improvement are

presented cheaply, socially, and cheerfully, and not in dismal cells or

lonely garrets. And lastly, I congratulate myself, I assure you most

heartily, upon the part with which I am honoured on an occasion so

congenial to my warmest feelings and sympathies, and I beg to thank you

for such evidences of your good-will, as I never can coldly remember and

never forget.

* * * * *

[In acknowledging the vote of thanks, Mr. Dickens said:—]

Ladies and Gentlemen,—It is a great satisfaction to me that this question

has been put by the Mayor, inasmuch as I hope I may receive it as a token

that he has forgiven me those extremely large letters, which I must say,

from the glimpse I caught of them when I arrived in the town, looked like

a leaf from the first primer of a very promising young giant.

I will only observe, in reference to the proceeding of this evening, that

after what I have seen, and the excellent speeches I have heard from

gentlemen of so many different callings and persuasions, meeting here as

on neutral ground, I do more strongly and sincerely believe than I ever

have in my life,—and that is saying a great deal,—that institutions such

as this will be the means of refining and improving that social edifice

which has been so often mentioned to-night, until,—unlike that Babel

tower that would have taken heaven by storm,—it shall end in sweet accord

and harmony amongst all classes of its builders.

Ladies and gentlemen, most respectfully and heartily I bid you good night

and good-bye, and I trust the next time we meet it will be in even

greater numbers, and in a larger room, and that we often shall meet

again, to recal this evening, then of the past, and remember it as one of

a series of increasing triumphs of your excellent institution.

XLVI.

GLASGOW, DECEMBER 28, 1847.

[The first Soirée, commemorative of the opening of the Glasgow Athenæum

took place on the above evening in the City Hall. Mr. Charles Dickens

presided, and made the following speech:]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN—Let me begin by endeavouring to convey to you the

assurance that not even the warmth of your reception can possibly exceed,

in simple earnestness, the cordiality of the feeling with which I come

amongst you. This beautiful scene and your generous greeting would

naturally awaken, under any circumstances, no common feeling within me;

but when I connect them with the high purpose of this brilliant

assembly—when I regard it as an educational example and encouragement to

the rest of Scotland—when I regard it no less as a recognition on the

part of everybody here of the right, indisputable and inalienable, of all

those who are actively engaged in the work and business of life to

elevate and improve themselves so far as in them lies, by all good

means—I feel as if I stand here to swear brotherhood to all the young men

in Glasgow;—and I may say to all the young women in Glasgow; being

unfortunately in no position to take any tenderer vows upon myself—and as

if we were pledged from this time henceforth to make common cause

together in one of the most laudable and worthy of human objects.

Ladies and gentlemen, a common cause must be made in such a design as

that which brings us together this night; for without it, nothing can be

done, but with it, everything. It is a common cause of right, God knows;

for it is idle to suppose that the advantages of such an institution as

the Glasgow Athenæum will stop within its own walls or be confined to its

own members. Through all the society of this great and important city,

upwards to the highest and downwards to the lowest, it must, I know, be

felt for good. Downward in a clearer perception of, and sympathy with,

those social miseries which can be alleviated, and those wide-open doors

to vice and crime that can be shut and barred; and upward in a greater

intelligence, increased efficiency, and higher knowledge, of all who

partake of its benefits themselves, or who communicate, as all must do,

in a greater or less degree, some portion to the circle of relatives or

friends in which they move.

Nor, ladies and gentlemen, would I say for any man, however high his

social position, or however great his attainments, that he might not find

something to be learnt even from immediate contact with such

institutions. If he only saw the goddess Knowledge coming out of her

secluded palaces and high places to mingle with the throng, and to give

them shining glimpses of the delights which were long kept hoarded up, he

might learn something. If he only saw the energy and the courage with

which those who earn their daily bread by the labour of their hands or

heads, come night after night, as to a recreation, to that which was,

perhaps, the whole absorbing business of his youth, there might still be

something very wholesome for him to learn. But when he could see in such

places their genial and reviving influences, their substituting of the

contemplation of the beauties of nature and art, and of the wisdom of

great men, for mere sensual enjoyment or stupid idleness—at any rate he

would learn this—that it is at once the duty and the interest of all good

members of society to encourage and protect them.

I took occasion to say at an Athenæum in Yorkshire a few weeks since,

{274} and I think it a point most important to be borne in mind on such

commemorations as these, that when such societies are objected to, or are

decried on the ground that in the views of the objectors, education among

the people has not succeeded, the term education is used with not the

least reference to its real meaning, and is wholly misunderstood. Mere

reading and writing is not education; it would be quite as reasonable to

call bricks and mortar architecture—oils and colours art—reeds and

cat-gut music—or the child’s spelling-books the works of Shakespeare,

Milton, or Bacon—as to call the lowest rudiments of education, education,

and to visit on that most abused and slandered word their failure in any

instance; and precisely because they were not education; because,

generally speaking, the word has been understood in that sense a great

deal too long; because education for the business of life, and for the

due cultivation of domestic virtues, is at least as important from day to

day to the grown person as to the child; because real education, in the

strife and contention for a livelihood, and the consequent necessity

incumbent on a great number of young persons to go into the world when

they are very young, is extremely difficult. It is because of these

things that I look upon mechanics’ institutions and athenæums as vitally

important to the well-being of society. It is because the rudiments of

education may there be turned to good account in the acquisition of sound

principles, and of the great virtues, hope, faith, and charity, to which

all our knowledge tends; it is because of that, I take it, that you have

met in education’s name to-night.

It is a great satisfaction to me to occupy the place I do in behalf of an

infant institution; a remarkably fine child enough, of a vigorous

constitution, but an infant still. I esteem myself singularly fortunate

in knowing it before its prime, in the hope that I may have the pleasure

of remembering in its prime, and when it has attained to its lusty

maturity, that I was a friend of its youth. It has already passed

through some of the disorders to which children are liable; it succeeded

to an elder brother of a very meritorious character, but of rather a weak

constitution, and which expired when about twelve months old, from, it is

said, a destructive habit of getting up early in the morning: it

succeeded this elder brother, and has fought manfully through a sea of

troubles. Its friends have often been much concerned for it; its pulse

has been exceedingly low, being only 1250, when it was expected to have

been 10,000; several relations and friends have even gone so far as to

walk off once or twice in the melancholy belief that it was dead.

Through all that, assisted by the indomitable energy of one or two

nurses, to whom it can never be sufficiently grateful, it came

triumphantly, and now, of all the youthful members of its family I ever

saw, it has the strongest attitude, the healthiest look, the brightest

and most cheerful air. I find the institution nobly lodged; I find it

with a reading-room, a coffee-room, and a news-room; I find it with

lectures given and in progress, in sound, useful and well-selected

subjects; I find it with morning and evening classes for mathematics,

logic, grammar, music, French, German, Spanish, and Italian, attended by

upwards of five hundred persons; but, best and first of all and what is

to me more satisfactory than anything else in the history of the

institution, I find that all, this has been mainly achieved by the young

men of Glasgow themselves, with very little assistance. And, ladies and

gentlemen, as the axiom, “Heaven helps those who help themselves,” is

truer in no case than it is in this, I look to the young men of Glasgow,

from such a past and such a present, to a noble future. Everything that

has been done in any other athenæum, I confidently expect to see done

here; and when that shall be the case, and when there shall be great

cheap schools in connexion with the institution, and when it has bound

together for ever all its friends, and brought over to itself all those

who look upon it as an objectionable institution,—then, and not till

then, I hope the young men of Glasgow will rest from their labours, and

think their study done.

If the young men of Glasgow want any stimulus or encouragement in this

wise, they have one beside them in the presence of their fair townswomen,

which is irresistible. It is a most delightful circumstance to me, and

one fraught with inestimable benefits to institutions of this kind, that

at a meeting of this nature those who in all things are our best

examples, encouragers, and friends, are not excluded. The abstract idea

of the Graces was in ancient times associated with those arts which

refine the human understanding; and it is pleasant to see now, in the

rolling of the world, the Graces popularising the practice of those arts

by their example, and adorning it with their presence.

I am happy to know that in the Glasgow Athenæum there is a peculiar bond

of union between the institution and the fairest part of creation. I

understand that the necessary addition to the small library of books

being difficult and expensive to make, the ladies have generally resolved

to hold a fancy bazaar, and to devote the proceeds to this admirable

purpose; and I learn with no less pleasure that her Majesty the Queen, in

a graceful and womanly sense of the excellence of this design, has

consented that the bazaar shall be held under her royal patronage. I can

only say, that if you do not find something very noble in your books

after this, you are much duller students than I take you to be. The

ladies—the single ladies, at least—however disinterested I know they are

by sex and nature, will, I hope, resolve to have some of the advantages

of these books, by never marrying any but members of the Athenæum. It

seems to me it ought to be the pleasantest library in the world.

Hazlitt says, in speaking of some of the graceful fancies of some

familiar writer of fiction, “How long since I first became acquainted

with these characters; what old-fashioned friends they seem; and yet I am

not tired of them like so many other friends, nor they of me.” In this

case the books will not only possess all the attractions of their own

friendships and charms, but also the manifold—I may say

womanfold—associations connected with their donors. I can imagine how,

in fact, from these fanciful associations, some fair Glasgow widow may be

taken for the remoter one whom Sir Roger de Coverley could not forget; I

can imagine how Sophia’s muff may be seen and loved, but not by Tom

Jones, going down the High Street on any winter day; or I can imagine the

student finding in every fair form the exact counterpart of the Glasgow

Athenæum, and taking into consideration the history of Europe without the

consent of Sheriff Alison. I can imagine, in short, how through all the

facts and fictions of this library, these ladies will be always active,

and that

“Age will not wither them, nor custom stale

Their infinite variety.”

It seems to me to be a moral, delightful, and happy chance, that this

meeting has been held at this genial season of the year, when a new time

is, as it were, opening before us, and when we celebrate the birth of

that divine and blessed Teacher, who took the highest knowledge into the

humblest places, and whose great system comprehended all mankind. I hail

it as a most auspicious omen, at this time of the year, when many

scattered friends and families are re-assembled, for the members of this

institution to be calling men together from all quarters, with a

brotherly view to the general good, and a view to the general

improvement; as I consider that such designs are practically worthy of

the faith we hold, and a practical remembrance of the words, “On earth

peace, and good will toward men.” I hope that every year which dawns on

your Institution, will find it richer in its means of usefulness, and

grayer-headed in the honour and respect it has gained. It can hardly

speak for itself more appropriately than in the words of an English

writer, when contemplating the English emblem of this period of the year,

the holly-tree:—

[Mr. Dickens concluded by quoting the last three stanzas of Southey’s

poem, _The Holly Tree_.]

* * * * *

[In acknowledging a vote of thanks proposed by Sir Archibald (then Mr.)

Alison, Mr. Dickens said:]

Ladies and Gentlemen,—I am no stranger—and I say it with the deepest

gratitude—to the warmth of Scottish hearts; but the warmth of your

present welcome almost deprives me of any hope of acknowledging it. I

will not detain you any longer at this late hour; let it suffice to

assure you, that for taking the part with which I have been honoured in

this festival, I have been repaid a thousand-fold by your abundant

kindness, and by the unspeakable gratification it has afforded me. I

hope that, before many years are past, we may have another meeting in

public, when we shall rejoice at the immense progress your institution

will have made in the meantime, and look back upon this night with new

pleasure and satisfaction. I shall now, in conclusion, repeat most

heartily and fervently the quotation of Dr. Ewing, the late Provost of

Glasgow, which Bailie Nicol Jarvie, himself “a Glasgow body,” observed

was “elegantly putten round the town’s arms.”

XLVII.

LONDON, APRIL 14, 1851.

[The Sixth Annual Dinner of the General Theatrical Fund was held at the

London Tavern on the above date. Mr. Charles Dickens occupied the chair,

and in giving the toast of the evening said:—]

I HAVE so often had the satisfaction of bearing my testimony, in this

place, to the usefulness of the excellent Institution in whose behalf we

are assembled, that I should be really sensible of the disadvantage of

having now nothing to say in proposing the toast you all anticipate, if I

were not well assured that there is really nothing which needs be said.

I have to appeal to you on the old grounds, and no ingenuity of mine

could render those grounds of greater weight than they have hitherto

successfully proved to you.

Although the General Theatrical Fund Association, unlike many other

public societies and endowments, is represented by no building, whether

of stone, or brick, or glass, like that astonishing evidence of the skill

and energy of my friend Mr. Paxton, which all the world is now called

upon to admire, and the great merit of which, as you learn from the best

authorities, is, that it ought to have fallen down long before it was

built, and yet that it would by no means consent to doing so—although, I

say, this Association possesses no architectural home, it is nevertheless

as plain a fact, rests on as solid a foundation, and carries as erect a

front, as any building, in the world. And the best and the utmost that

its exponent and its advocate can do, standing here, is to point it out

to those who gather round it, and to say, “judge for yourselves.”

It may not, however, be improper for me to suggest to that portion of the

company whose previous acquaintance with it may have been limited, what

it is not. It is not a theatrical association whose benefits are

confined to a small and exclusive body of actors. It is a society whose

claims are always preferred in the name of the whole histrionic art. It

is not a theatrical association adapted to a state of theatrical things

entirely past and gone, and no more suited to present theatrical

requirements than a string of pack-horses would be suited to the

conveyance of traffic between London and Birmingham. It is not a rich

old gentleman, with the gout in his vitals, brushed and got-up once a

year to look as vigorous as possible, and brought out for a public airing

by the few survivors of a large family of nephews and nieces, who

afterwards double-lock the street-door upon the poor relations. It is

not a theatrical association which insists that no actor can share its

bounty who has not walked so many years on those boards where the English

tongue is never heard—between the little bars of music in an aviary of

singing birds, to which the unwieldy Swan of Avon is never admitted—that

bounty which was gathered in the name and for the elevation of an

all-embracing art.

No, if there be such things, this thing is not of that kind. This is a

theatrical association, expressly adapted to the wants and to the means

of the whole theatrical profession all over England. It is a society in

which the word exclusiveness is wholly unknown. It is a society which

includes every actor, whether he be Benedict or Hamlet, or the Ghost, or

the Bandit, or the court-physician, or, in the one person, the whole

King’s army. He may do the “light business,” or the “heavy,” or the

comic, or the eccentric. He may be the captain who courts the young

lady, whose uncle still unaccountably persists in dressing himself in a

costume one hundred years older than his time. Or he may be the young

lady’s brother in the white gloves and inexpressibles, whose duty in the

family appears to be to listen to the female members of it whenever they

sing, and to shake hands with everybody between all the verses. Or he

may be the baron who gives the fête, and who sits uneasily on the sofa

under a canopy with the baroness while the fête is going on. Or he may

be the peasant at the fête who comes on the stage to swell the drinking

chorus, and who, it may be observed, always turns his glass upside down

before he begins to drink out of it. Or he may be the clown who takes

away the doorstep of the house where the evening party is going on. Or

he may be the gentleman who issues out of the house on the false alarm,

and is precipitated into the area. Or, to come to the actresses, she may

be the fairy who resides for ever in a revolving star with an occasional

visit to a bower or a palace. Or the actor may be the armed head of the

witch’s cauldron; or even that extraordinary witch, concerning whom I

have observed in country places, that he is much less like the notion

formed from the description of Hopkins than the Malcolm or Donalbain of

the previous scenes. This society, in short, says, “Be you what you may,

be you actor or actress, be your path in your profession never so high,

or never so low, never so haughty, or never so humble, we offer you the

means of doing good to yourselves, and of doing good to your brethren.”

This society is essentially a provident institution, appealing to a class

of men to take care of their own interests, and giving a continuous

security only in return for a continuous sacrifice and effort. The actor

by the means of this society obtains his own right, to no man’s wrong;

and when, in old age, or in disastrous times, he makes his claim on the

institution, he is enabled to say, “I am neither a beggar, nor a

suppliant. I am but reaping what I sowed long ago.” And therefore it is

that I cannot hold out to you that in assisting this fund you are doing

an act of charity in the common acceptation of that phrase. Of all the

abuses of that much abused term, none have more raised my indignation

than what I have heard in this room in past times, in reference to this

institution. I say, if you help this institution you will be helping the

wagoner who has resolutely put his own shoulder to the wheel, and who has

_not_ stuck idle in the mud. In giving this aid you will be doing an act

of justice, and you will be performing an act of gratitude; and this is

what I solicit from you; but I will not so far wrong those who are

struggling manfully for their own independence as to pretend to entreat

from you an act of charity.

I have used the word gratitude; and let any man ask his own heart, and

confess if he have not some grateful acknowledgments for the actor’s art?

Not peculiarly because it is a profession often pursued, and as it were

marked, by poverty and misfortune—for other callings, God knows, have

their distresses—nor because the actor has sometimes to come from scenes

of sickness, of suffering, ay, even of death itself, to play his part

before us—for all of us, in our spheres, have as often to do violence to

our feelings and to hide our hearts in fighting this great battle of

life, and in discharging our duties and responsibilities. But the art of

the actor excites reflections, sombre or grotesque, awful or humorous,

which we are all familiar with. If any man were to tell me that he

denied his acknowledgments to the stage, I would simply put to him one

question—whether he remembered his first play?

If you, gentlemen, will but carry back your recollection to that great

night, and call to mind the bright and harmless world which then opened

to your view, we shall, I think, hear favourably of the effect upon your

liberality on this occasion from our Secretary.

This is the sixth year of meetings of this kind—the sixth time we have

had this fine child down after dinner. His nurse, a very worthy person

of the name of Buckstone, who has an excellent character from several

places, will presently report to you that his chest is perfectly sound,

and that his general health is in the most thriving condition. Long may

it be so; long may it thrive and grow; long may we meet (it is my sincere

wish) to exchange our congratulations on its prosperity; and longer than

the line of Banquo may be that line of figures which, as its patriotic

share in the national debt, a century hence shall be stated by the

Governor and Company of the Bank of England.

XLVIII.

THE ROYAL LITERARY FUND.

LONDON, MARCH 12, 1856.

[The Corporation of the Royal Literary Fund was established in 1790, its

object being to administer assistance to authors of genius and learning,

who may be reduced to distress by unavoidable calamities, or deprived, by

enfeebled faculties or declining life, of the power of literary exertion.

At the annual general meeting held at the house of the society on the

above date, the following speech was made by Mr. Charles Dickens:]

SIR,—I shall not attempt to follow my friend Mr. Bell, who, in the

profession of literature, represents upon this committee a separate and

distinct branch of the profession, that, like

“The last rose of summer

Stands blooming alone,

While all its companions

Are faded and gone,”

into the very prickly bramble-bush with which he has ingeniously

contrived to beset this question. In the remarks I have to make I shall

confine myself to four points:—1. That the committee find themselves in

the painful condition of not spending enough money, and will presently

apply themselves to the great reform of spending more. 2. That with

regard to the house, it is a positive matter of history, that the house

for which Mr. Williams was so anxious was to be applied to uses to which

it never has been applied, and which the administrators of the fund

decline to recognise. 3. That, in Mr. Bell’s endeavours to remove the

Artists’ Fund from the ground of analogy it unquestionably occupies with

reference to this fund, by reason of their continuing periodical relief

to the same persons, I beg to tell Mr. Bell what every gentleman at that

table knows—that it is the business of this fund to relieve over and over

again the same people.

MR. BELL: But fresh inquiry is always made first.

MR. C. DICKENS: I can only oppose to that statement my own experience

when I sat on that committee, and when I have known persons relieved on

many consecutive occasions without further inquiry being made. As to the

suggestion that we should select the items of expenditure that we

complain of, I think it is according to all experience that we should

first affirm the principle that the expenditure is too large. If that be

done by the meeting, then I will proceed to the selection of the separate

items. Now, in rising to support this resolution, I may state at once

that I have scarcely any expectation of its being carried, and I am happy

to think it will not. Indeed, I consider it the strongest point of the

resolution’s case that it should not be carried, because it will show the

determination of the fund’s managers. Nothing can possibly be stronger

in favour of the resolution than that the statement should go forth to

the world that twice within twelve months the attention of the committee

has been called to this great expenditure, and twice the committee have

considered that it was not unreasonable. I cannot conceive a stronger

case for the resolution than this statement of fact as to the expenditure

going forth to the public accompanied by the committee’s assertion that

it is reasonable. Now, to separate this question from details, let us

remember what the committee and their supporters asserted last year, and,

I hope, will re-assert this year. It seems to be rather the model kind

of thing than otherwise now that if you get £100 you are to spend £40 in

management; and if you get £1000, of course you may spend £400 in giving

the rest away. Now, in case there should be any ill-conditioned people

here who may ask what occasion there can be for all this expenditure, I

will give you my experience. I went last year to a highly respectable

place of resort, Willis’s Rooms, in St. James’s, to a meeting of this

fund. My original intention was to hear all I could, and say as little

as possible. Allowing for the absence of the younger and fairer portion

of the creation, the general appearance of the place was something like

Almack’s in the morning. A number of stately old dowagers sat in a row

on one side, and old gentlemen on the other. The ball was opened with

due solemnity by a real marquis, who walked a minuet with the secretary,

at which the audience were much affected. Then another party advanced,

who, I am sorry to say, was only a member of the House of Commons, and he

took possession of the floor. To him, however, succeeded a lord, then a

bishop, then the son of a distinguished lord, then one or two celebrities

from the City and Stock Exchange, and at last a gentleman, who made a

fortune by the success of “Candide,” sustained the part of Pangloss, and

spoke much of what he evidently believed to be the very best management

of this best of all possible funds. Now it is in this fondness for being

stupendously genteel, and keeping up fine appearances—this vulgar and

common social vice of hanging on to great connexions at any price, that

the money goes. The last time you got a distinguished writer at a public

meeting, and he was called on to address you somewhere amongst the small

hours, he told you he felt like the man in plush who was permitted to

sweep the stage down after all the other people had gone. If the founder

of this society were here, I should think he would feel like a sort of

Rip van Winkle reversed, who had gone to sleep backwards for a hundred

years and woke up to find his fund still lying under the feet of people

who did nothing for it instead of being emancipated and standing alone

long ago. This Bloomsbury house is another part of the same desire for

show, and the officer who inhabits it. (I mean, of course, in his

official capacity, for, as an individual, I much respect him.) When one

enters the house it appears to be haunted by a series of

mysterious-looking ghosts, who glide about engaged in some extraordinary

occupation, and, after the approved fashion of ghosts, but seldom

condescend to disclose their business. What are all these meetings and

inquiries wanted for? As for the authors, I say, as a writer by

profession, that the long inquiry said to be necessary to ascertain

whether an applicant deserves relief, is a preposterous pretence, and

that working literary men would have a far better knowledge of the cases

coming before the board than can ever be attained by that committee.

Further, I say openly and plainly, that this fund is pompously and

unnaturally administered at great expense, instead of being quietly

administered at small expense; and that the secrecy to which it lays

claim as its greatest attribute, is not kept; for through those “two

respectable householders,” to whom reference must be made, the names of

the most deserving applicants are to numbers of people perfectly well

known. The members have now got before them a plain statement of fact as

to these charges; and it is for them to say whether they are justifiable,

becoming, or decent. I beg most earnestly and respectfully to put it to

those gentlemen who belong to this institution, that must now decide, and

cannot help deciding, what the Literary Fund is for, and what it is not

for. The question raised by the resolution is whether this is a public

corporation for the relief of men of genius and learning, or whether it

is a snug, traditional, and conventional party, bent upon maintaining its

own usages with a vast amount of pride; upon its own annual puffery at

costly dinner-tables, and upon a course of expensive toadying to a number

of distinguished individuals. This is the question which you cannot this

day escape.

XLIX.

LONDON, NOVEMBER 5, 1857.

[At the fourth anniversary dinner of the Warehousemen and Clerks Schools,

which took place on Thursday evening, Nov. 5th, 1857, at the London

Tavern, and was very numerously attended, Mr. Charles Dickens occupied

the chair. On the subject which had brought the company together Mr.

Dickens spoke as follows:—]

I MUST now solicit your attention for a few minutes to the cause of your

assembling together—the main and real object of this evening’s gathering;

for I suppose we are all agreed that the motto of these tables is not

“Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die;” but, “Let us eat and drink,

for to-morrow we live.” It is because a great and good work is to live

to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to live a greater and better

life with every succeeding to-morrow, that we eat and drink here at all.

Conspicuous on the card of admission to this dinner is the word

“Schools.” This set me thinking this morning what are the sorts of

schools that I don’t like. I found them on consideration, to be rather

numerous. I don’t like to begin with, and to begin as charity does at

home—I don’t like the sort of school to which I once went myself—the

respected proprietor of which was by far the most ignorant man I have

ever had the pleasure to know; one of the worst-tempered men perhaps that

ever lived, whose business it was to make as much out of us and put as

little into us as possible, and who sold us at a figure which I remember

we used to delight to estimate, as amounting to exactly £2 4s. 6d. per

head. I don’t like that sort of school, because I don’t see what

business the master had to be at the top of it instead of the bottom, and

because I never could understand the wholesomeness of the moral preached

by the abject appearance and degraded condition of the teachers who

plainly said to us by their looks every day of their lives, “Boys, never

be learned; whatever you are, above all things be warned from that in

time by our sunken cheeks, by our poor pimply noses, by our meagre diet,

by our acid-beer, and by our extraordinary suits of clothes, of which no

human being can say whether they are snuff-coloured turned black, or

black turned snuff-coloured, a point upon which we ourselves are

perfectly unable to offer any ray of enlightenment, it is so very long

since they were undarned and new.” I do not like that sort of school,

because I have never yet lost my ancient suspicion touching that curious

coincidence that the boy with four brothers to come always got the

prizes. In fact, and short, I do not like that sort of school, which is

a pernicious and abominable humbug, altogether. Again, ladies and

gentlemen, I don’t like that sort of school—a ladies’ school—with which

the other school used to dance on Wednesdays, where the young ladies, as

I look back upon them now, seem to me always to have been in new stays

and disgrace—the latter concerning a place of which I know nothing at

this day, that bounds Timbuctoo on the north-east—and where memory always

depicts the youthful enthraller of my first affection as for ever

standing against a wall, in a curious machine of wood, which confined her

innocent feet in the first dancing position, while those arms, which

should have encircled my jacket, those precious arms, I say, were

pinioned behind her by an instrument of torture called a backboard, fixed

in the manner of a double direction post. Again, I don’t like that sort

of school, of which we have a notable example in Kent, which was

established ages ago by worthy scholars and good men long deceased, whose

munificent endowments have been monstrously perverted from their original

purpose, and which, in their distorted condition, are struggled for and

fought over with the most indecent pertinacity. Again, I don’t like that

sort of school—and I have seen a great many such in these latter

times—where the bright childish imagination is utterly discouraged, and

where those bright childish faces, which it is so very good for the

wisest among us to remember in after life—when the world is too much with

us, early and late {292}—are gloomily and grimly scared out of

countenance; where I have never seen among the pupils, whether boys or

girls, anything but little parrots and small calculating machines.

Again, I don’t by any means like schools in leather breeches, and with

mortified straw baskets for bonnets, which file along the streets in long

melancholy rows under the escort of that surprising British monster—a

beadle, whose system of instruction, I am afraid, too often presents that

happy union of sound with sense, of which a very remarkable instance is

given in a grave report of a trustworthy school inspector, to the effect

that a boy in great repute at school for his learning, presented on his

slate, as one of the ten commandments, the perplexing prohibition, “Thou

shalt not commit doldrum.” Ladies and gentlemen, I confess, also, that I

don’t like those schools, even though the instruction given in them be

gratuitous, where those sweet little voices which ought to be heard

speaking in very different accents, anathematise by rote any human being

who does not hold what is taught there. Lastly, I do not like, and I did

not like some years ago, cheap distant schools, where neglected children

pine from year to year under an amount of neglect, want, and youthful

misery far too sad even to be glanced at in this cheerful assembly.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, perhaps you will permit me to sketch in a

few words the sort of school that I do like. It is a school established

by the members of an industrious and useful order, which supplies the

comforts and graces of life at every familiar turning in the road of our

existence; it is a school established by them for the Orphan and

Necessitous Children of their own brethren and sisterhood; it is a place

giving an education worthy of them—an education by them invented, by them

conducted, by them watched over; it is a place of education where, while

the beautiful history of the Christian religion is daily taught, and

while the life of that Divine Teacher who Himself took little children on

His knees is daily studied, no sectarian ill-will nor narrow human dogma

is permitted to darken the face of the clear heaven which they disclose.

It is a children’s school, which is at the same time no less a children’s

home, a home not to be confided to the care of cold or ignorant

strangers, nor, by the nature of its foundation, in the course of ages to

pass into hands that have as much natural right to deal with it as with

the peaks of the highest mountains or with the depths of the sea, but to

be from generation to generation administered by men living in precisely

such homes as those poor children have lost; by men always bent upon

making that replacement, such a home as their own dear children might

find a happy refuge in if they themselves were taken early away. And I

fearlessly ask you, is this a design which has any claim to your

sympathy? Is this a sort of school which is deserving of your support?

This is the design, this is the school, whose strong and simple claim I

have to lay before you to-night. I must particularly entreat you not to

suppose that my fancy and unfortunate habit of fiction has anything to do

with the picture I have just presented to you. It is sober matter of

fact. The Warehousemen and Clerks’ Schools, established for the

maintaining, clothing, and educating of the Orphan and Necessitous

Children of those employed in the wholesale trades and manufactures of

the United Kingdom, are, in fact, what I have just described. These

schools for both sexes were originated only four years ago. In the first

six weeks of the undertaking the young men of themselves and quite

unaided, subscribed the large sum of £3,000. The schools have been

opened only three years, they have now on their foundation thirty-nine

children, and in a few days they will have six more, making a total of

forty-five. They have been most munificently assisted by the heads of

great mercantile houses, numerously represented, I am happy to say,

around me, and they have a funded capital of almost £14,000. This is

wonderful progress, but the aim must still be upwards, the motto always

“Excelsior.” You do not need to be told that five-and-forty children can

form but a very small proportion of the Orphan and Necessitous Children

of those who have been entrusted with the wholesale trades and

manufactures of the United Kingdom: you do not require to be informed

that the house at New-cross, rented for a small term of years, in which

the schools are at present established, can afford but most imperfect

accommodation for such a breadth of design. To carry this good work

through the two remaining degrees of better and best there must be more

work, more co-operation, more friends, more money. Then be the friends

and give the money. Before I conclude, there is one other feature in

these schools which I would commend to your special attention and

approval. Their benefits are reserved for the children of subscribers;

that is to say, it is an essential principle of the institution that it

must help those whose parents have helped them, and that the unfortunate

children whose father has been so lax, or so criminal, as to withhold a

subscription so exceedingly small that when divided by weeks it amounts

to only threepence weekly, cannot, in justice, be allowed to jostle out

and shoulder away the happier children, whose father has had that little

forethought, or done that little kindness which was requisite to secure

for them the benefits of the institution. I really cannot believe that

there will long be any such defaulting parents. I cannot believe that

any of the intelligent young men who are engaged in the wholesale houses

will long neglect this obvious, this easy duty. If they suppose that the

objects of their love, born or unborn, will never want the benefits of

the charity, that may be a fatal and blind mistake—it can never be an

excuse, for, supposing them to be right in their anticipation, they

should do what is asked for the sake of their friends and comrades around

them, assured that they will be the happier and the better for the deed.

Ladies and gentlemen, this little “labour of love” of mine is now done.

I most heartily wish that I could charm you now not to see me, not to

think of me, not to hear me—I most heartily wish that I could make you

see in my stead the multitude of innocent and bereaved children who are

looking towards these schools, and entreating with uplifted hands to be

let in. A very famous advocate once said, in speaking of his fears of

failure when he had first to speak in court, being very poor, that he

felt his little children tugging at his skirts, and that recovered him.

Will you think of the number of little children who are tugging at my

skirts, when I ask you, in their names, on their behalf, and in their

little persons, and in no strength of my own, to encourage and assist

this work?

* * * * *

At a later period of the evening Mr. Dickens proposed the health of the

President of the Institution, Lord John Russell. He said he should do

nothing so superfluous and so unnecessary as to descant upon his

lordship’s many faithful, long, and great public services, upon the

honour and integrity with which he had pursued his straightforward public

course through every difficulty, or upon the manly, gallant, and

courageous character, which rendered him certain, in the eyes alike of

friends and opponents, to rise with every rising occasion, and which,

like the seal of Solomon, in the old Arabian story, enclosed in a not

very large casket the soul of a giant. In answer to loud cheers, he said

he had felt perfectly certain, that that would be the response for in no

English assembly that he had ever seen was it necessary to do more than

mention the name of Lord John Russell to ensure a manifestation of

personal respect and grateful remembrance.

L.

LONDON, MAY 8, 1858.

[The forty-eighth Anniversary of the establishment of the Artists’

Benevolent Fund took place on the above date at the Freemasons’ Tavern.

The chair was taken by Mr. Charles Dickens, who, after having disposed of

the preliminary toasts with his usual felicity, proceeded to advocate the

claims of the Institution in whose interest the company had assembled, in

the following terms:—]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—There is an absurd theatrical story which was once

told to me by a dear and valued friend, who has now passed from this

sublunary stage, and which is not without its moral as applied to myself,

in my present presidential position. In a certain theatrical company was

included a man, who on occasions of emergency was capable of taking part

in the whole round of the British drama, provided he was allowed to use

his own language in getting through the dialogue. It happened one night

that Reginald, in the _Castle Spectre_, was taken ill, and this veteran

of a hundred characters was, of course, called up for the vacant part.

He responded with his usual promptitude, although knowing nothing

whatever of the character, but while they were getting him into the

dress, he expressed a not unreasonable wish to know in some vague way

what the part was about. He was not particular as to details, but in

order that he might properly pourtray his sufferings, he thought he

should have some slight inkling as to what really had happened to him.

As, for example, what murders he had committed, whose father he was, of

what misfortunes he was the victim,—in short, in a general way to know

why he was in that place at all. They said to him, “Here you are,

chained in a dungeon, an unhappy father; you have been here for seventeen

years, during which time you have never seen your daughter; you have

lived upon bread and water, and, in consequence, are extremely weak, and

suffer from occasional lowness of spirits.”—“All right,” said the actor

of universal capabilities, “ring up.” When he was discovered to the

audience, he presented an extremely miserable appearance, was very

favourably received, and gave every sign of going on well, until, through

some mental confusion as to his instructions, he opened the business of

the act by stating in pathetic terms, that he had been confined in that

dungeon seventeen years, during which time he had not tasted a morsel of

food, to which circumstance he was inclined to attribute the fact of his

being at that moment very much out of condition. The audience, thinking

this statement exceedingly improbable, declined to receive it, and the

weight of that speech hung round him until the end of his performance.

Now I, too, have received instructions for the part I have the honour of

performing before you, and it behoves both you and me to profit by the

terrible warning I have detailed, while I endeavour to make the part I

have undertaken as plain and intelligible as I possibly can.

As I am going to propose to you that we should now begin to connect the

business with the pleasure of the evening, by drinking prosperity to the

Artists’ Benevolent Fund, it becomes important that we should know what

that fund is. It is an Association supported by the voluntary gifts of

those who entertain a critical and admiring estimation of art, and has

for its object the granting of annuities to the widows and children of

deceased artists—of artists who have been unable in their lives to make

any provision for those dear objects of their love surviving themselves.

Now it is extremely important to observe that this institution of an

Artists’ Benevolent Fund, which I now call on you to pledge, has

connected with it, and has arisen out of another artists’ association,

which does not ask you for a health, which never did, and never will ask

you for a health, which is self-supporting, and which is entirely

maintained by the prudence and providence of its three hundred artist

members. That fund, which is called the Artists’ Annuity Fund, is, so to

speak, a joint and mutual Assurance Company against infirmity, sickness,

and age. To the benefits it affords every one of its members has an

absolute right, a right, be it remembered, produced by timely thrift and

self-denial, and not assisted by appeals to the charity or compassion of

any human being. On that fund there are, if I remember a right, some

seventeen annuitants who are in the receipt of eleven hundred a-year, the

proceeds of their own self-supporting Institution. In recommending to

you this benevolent fund, which is not self-supporting, they address you,

in effect, in these words:—“We ask you to help these widows and orphans,

because we show you we have first helped ourselves. These widows and

orphans may be ours or they may not be ours; but in any case we will

prove to you to a certainty that we are not so many wagoners calling upon

Jupiter to do our work, because we do our own work; each has his shoulder

to the wheel; each, from year to year, has had his shoulder set to the

wheel, and the prayer we make to Jupiter and all the gods is simply

this—that this fact may be remembered when the wagon has stopped for

ever, and the spent and worn-out wagoner lies lifeless by the roadside.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I most particularly wish to impress on you the

strength of this appeal. I am a painter, a sculptor, or an engraver, of

average success. I study and work here for no immense return, while life

and health, while hand and eye are mine. I prudently belong to the

Annuity Fund, which in sickness, old age, and infirmity, preserves me

from want. I do my duty to those who are depending on me while life

remains; but when the grass grows above my grave there is no provision

for them any longer.”

This is the case with the Artists’ Benevolent Fund, and in stating this I

am only the mouthpiece of three hundred of the trade, who in truth stands

as independent before you as if they were three hundred Cockers all

regulated by the Gospel according to themselves. There are in existence

three artists’ funds, which ought never to be mentioned without respect.

I am an officer of one of them, and can speak from knowledge; but on this

occasion I address myself to a case for which there is no provision. I

address you on behalf of those professors of the fine arts who have made

provision during life, and in submitting to you their claims I am only

advocating principles which I myself have always maintained.

When I add that this Benevolent Fund makes no pretensions to gentility,

squanders no treasure in keeping up appearances, that it considers that

the money given for the widow and the orphan, should really be held for

the widow and the orphan, I think I have exhausted the case, which I

desire most strenuously to commend to you.

Perhaps you will allow me to say one last word. I will not consent to

present to you the professors of Art as a set of helpless babies, who are

to be held up by the chin; I present them as an energetic and persevering

class of men, whose incomes depend on their own faculties and personal

exertions; and I also make so bold as to present them as men who in their

vocation render good service to the community. I am strongly disposed to

believe there are very few debates in Parliament so important to the

public welfare as a really good picture. I have also a notion that any

number of bundles of the driest legal chaff that ever was chopped would

be cheaply expended for one really meritorious engraving. At a highly

interesting annual festival at which I have the honour to assist, and

which takes place behind two fountains, I sometimes observe that great

ministers of state and other such exalted characters have a strange

delight in rather ostentatiously declaring that they have no knowledge

whatever of art, and particularly of impressing on the company that they

have passed their lives in severe studies. It strikes me when I hear

these things as if these great men looked upon the arts as a sort of

dancing dogs, or Punch’s show, to be turned to for amusement when one has

nothing else to do. Now I always take the opportunity on these occasions

of entertaining my humble opinion that all this is complete “bosh;” and

of asserting to myself my strong belief that the neighbourhoods of

Trafalgar Square, or Suffolk Street, rightly understood, are quite as

important to the welfare of the empire as those of Downing Street, or

Westminster Hall. Ladies and Gentlemen, on these grounds, and backed by

the recommendation of three hundred artists in favour of the Benevolent

Fund, I beg to propose its prosperity as a toast for your adoption.

LI.

THE FAREWELL READING.

ST. JAMES’S HALL, MARCH 15, 1870.

[With the “Christmas Carol” and “The Trial from Pickwick,” Mr. Charles

Dickens brought to a brilliant close the memorable series of public

readings which have for sixteen years proved to audiences unexampled in

numbers, the source of the highest intellectual enjoyment. Every portion

of available space in the building was, of course, last night occupied

some time before the appointed hour; but could the St. James’s Hall have

been specially enlarged for the occasion to the dimensions of Salisbury

Plain, it is doubtful whether sufficient room would even then have been

provided for all anxious to seize the last chance of hearing the

distinguished novelist give his own interpretation of the characters

called into existence by his own creative pen. As if determined to

convince his auditors that, whatever reason had influenced his

determination, physical exhaustion was not amongst them, Mr. Dickens

never read with greater spirit and energy. His voice to the last

retained its distinctive clearness, and the transitions of tone, as each

personage in the story, conjured up by a word, rose vividly before the

eye, seemed to be more marvellous than ever. The vast assemblage, hushed

into breathless attention, suffered not a syllable to escape the ear, and

the rich humour and deep pathos of one of the most delightful books ever

written found once again the fullest appreciation. The usual burst of

merriment responsive to the blithe description of Bob Cratchit’s

Christmas day, and the wonted sympathy with the crippled child “Tiny

Tim,” found prompt expression, and the general delight at hearing of

Ebenezer Scrooge’s reformation was only checked by the saddening

remembrance that with it the last strain of the “carol” was dying away.

After the “Trial from Pickwick,” in which the speeches of the opposing

counsel, and the owlish gravity of the judge, seemed to be delivered and

depicted with greater dramatic power than ever, the applause of the

audience rang for several minutes through the hall, and when it had

subsided, Mr. Dickens, with evidently strong emotion, but in his usual

distinct and expressive manner, spoke as follows:—]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,—It would be worse than idle—for it would be

hypocritical and unfeeling—if I were to disguise that I close this

episode in my life with feelings of very considerable pain. For some

fifteen years, in this hall and in many kindred places, I have had the

honour of presenting my own cherished ideas before you for your

recognition, and, in closely observing your reception of them, have

enjoyed an amount of artistic delight and instruction which, perhaps, is

given to few men to know. In this task, and in every other I have ever

undertaken, as a faithful servant of the public, always imbued with a

sense of duty to them, and always striving to do his best, I have been

uniformly cheered by the readiest response, the most generous sympathy,

and the most stimulating support. Nevertheless, I have thought it well,

at the full flood-tide of your favour, to retire upon those older

associations between us, which date from much further back than these,

and henceforth to devote myself exclusively to the art that first brought

us together. Ladies and gentlemen, in but two short weeks from this time

I hope that you may enter, in your own homes, on a new series of

readings, at which my assistance will be indispensable; {303} but from

these garish lights I vanish now for evermore, with a heartfelt,

grateful, respectful, and affectionate farewell.

[Amidst repeated acclamations of the most enthusiastic description,

whilst hats and handkerchiefs were waving in every part of the hall, Mr.

Charles Dickens retired, withdrawing with him one of the greatest

intellectual treats the public ever enjoyed.]

LII.

THE NEWSVENDORS’ INSTITUTION.

LONDON, APRIL 5, 1870.

[The annual dinner in aid of the funds of the Newsvendors’ Benevolent and

Provident Institution was held on the above evening, at the Freemason’s

Tavern. Mr. Charles Dickens presided, and was supported by the Sheriffs

of the City of London and Middlesex.

After the usual toasts had been given and responded to,

The Chairman said that if the approved order of their proceedings had

been observed, the Corporation of the City of London would no doubt have

considered themselves snubbed if they were not toasted by themselves. He

was sure that a distinguished member of the Corporation who was present

would tell the company what the Corporation were going to do; and he had

not the slightest doubt they were going to do something highly creditable

to themselves, and something highly serviceable to the whole metropolis;

and if the secret were not at present locked up in the blue chamber, they

would be all deeply obliged to the gentleman who would immediately follow

him, if he let them into it in the same confidence as he had observed

with respect to the Corporation of the City of London being snubbed. He

begged to give the toast of “The Corporation of the City of London.”

Mr. Alderman Cotton, in replying to the toast, said for once, and once

only, had their chairman said an unkind word about the Corporation of

London. He had always reckoned Mr. Dickens to be one of the warmest

friends of the Corporation; and remembering that he (Mr. Dickens) did

really go through a Lord Mayor’s Show in a Lord Mayor’s carriage, if he

had not felt himself quite a Lord Mayor, he must have at least considered

himself next to one.