motto). EVERYTHING. But I rather think the VOICE is it." It was near indeed; but the following day came, "HOUSEHOLD WORDS. This is a very pretty name:" and the choice was made.

The first number appeared on Saturday the 30th of March 1850, and contained among other things the beginning of a story by a very original writer, Mrs. Gaskell, for whose powers he had a high admiration, and with whom he had friendly intercourse duringmany years. Other opportunities will arise for mention of those with whom this new labour brought him into personal communication, but I may at once say that of all the writers, before unknown, whom his journal helped to make familiar to a wide world of readers, he had the strongest personal interest in Mr. Sala, and placed at once in the highest rank his capabilities of help in such an enterprise.* An illustrative trait of what I have named as its cardinal point to him will fitly close my account of its establishment. Its first number, still unpublished, had not seemed to him quite to fulfil his promise, "tenderly to cherish the light of fancy inherent in all breasts;" and, as

* Mr. Sala's first paper appeared in September 1851, and in the same month of the following year I had an allusion in a letter from Dickens which I shall hope to have Mr. Sala's forgiveness for printing. "That was very good indeed of Sala's" (some essay he had written). "He was twenty guineas in advance, by the bye, and I told Wills delicately to make him a present of it. I find him a very conscientious fellow. When he gets money ahead, he is not like the imbecile youth who so often do the like in Wellington-street" (the office of Household Words) "and walk off, but only works more industriously. I think he improves with everything he does. He looks sharply at the altera. tions in his articles, I observe; and takes the hint next time."

soon as he received the proof of the second, I heard from him. "Looking over the suggested contents of number two at breakfast this morning" (Brighton: 14th of March 1850) “I felt an uneasy sense of there being a want of something tender, which would apply to some universal household knowledge. Coming down in the railroad the other night (always a wonderfully suggestive place to me when I am alone) I was looking at the stars, and revolving a little idea about them. Putting now these two things together, I wrote the enclosed little paper, straightway; and should like you to read it before you send it to the printers (it will not take you five minutes), and let me have a proof by return." This was the child's "dream of a star," which opened his second number; and, not appearing among his reprinted pieces, may justify a word or two of description. It is of a brother and sister, constant childcompanions, who used to make friends of a star, watching it together until they knew when and where it would rise, and always bidding it good-night; so that when the sister dies the lonely brother still connects her with the star, which he then sees opening as a world of light, and its rays making a shining pathway from earth to heaven; and he also sees angels waiting to receive travellers up that sparkling road, his little sister among them; and he thinks ever after that he belongs less to the earth than to the star where his sister is; and he grows up to youth and through manhood and old age, consoled still under the successive domestic bereavements that fall to his earthly lot by renewal of that vision of his childhood; until at last, lying on his own bed of death, he feels that he is moving as a child to

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his child-sister, and he thanks his heavenly father that the star had so often opened before to receive the dear ones who awaited him.

His sister Fanny and himself, he told me long before this paper was written, used to wander at night about a churchyard near their house, looking up at the stars; and her early death, of which I am now to speak, had vividly reawakened all the childish associations which made her memory dear to him.

CHAPTER XX.

LAST YEARS IN DEVONSHIRE TERRACE.

1848-1851.

Sentiment about Places-Personal Revelations-At his Sister's Sickbed-Sister's Death-Book to be written in First Person--Visiting the Scene of a Tragedy-First sees Yarmouth--Birth of Sixth Son -Title of Copperfield chosen--Difficulties of Opening-Memorable Dinner-Rogers and Benedict--Wit of Fonblanque-Procter and Macready-The Sheridans--Dinner to Halévy and Scribe— -Expedition with Lord Mulgrave-The Duke at Vauxhall-Carlyle and Thackeray - Marryat's Delight with Children - Monckton Milnes and Lord Lytton-Lords Dudley, Stuart, and Nugent— Kemble, Harness, and Dyce-Mrs. Siddons and John Kemble— Mazzini and Edinburgh Friends - Artist Acquaintance - Friends from America--M. Van de Weyer-Doubtful Compliment--A Hint for London Citizens-Letter against Public Executions-An American Observer in England-Marvels of English Manners-Letter from Rockingham-Private Theatricals-A Family Scene-Death of Francis Jeffrey-Progress of Copperfield—A Run to Paris--Third Daughter born-At Great Malvern-Macready's Farewell-The Home at Shepherd's-bush-Death of John Dickens-Tribute by his Son-Theatrical-fund Dinner-Plea for Small Actors-Death of his Little Daughter-Advocating Sanitary Reform-Lord ShaftesburyRealities of his Books to Dickens.

EXCEPTING always the haunts and associations of his childhood, Dickens had no particular sentiment of locality, and any special regard for houses he had lived in was not a thing noticeable in him. But he cared most for Devonshire-terrace, perhaps for the bit of ground attached to it; and it was with regret he sudVOL. II.-39

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denly discovered, at the close of 1847, that he should have to resign it "next lady-day three years. I had thought the lease two years more." To that brief remaining time belong some incidents of which I have still to give account; and I connect them with the house in which he lived during the progress of what is generally thought his greatest book, and of what I think were his happiest years.

We had never had such intimate confidences as in the interval since his return from Paris; but these have been used in my narrative of the childhood and boyish experiences, and what remain are incidental only. Of the fragment of autobiography there also given, the origin has been told; but the intention of leaving such a record had been in his mind, we now see, at an earlier date; and it was the very depth of our interest in the opening of his fragment that led to the larger design. in which it became absorbed. "I hardly know why I write this," was his own comment on one of his personal revelations, "but the more than friendship which has grown between us seems to force it on me in my present mood. We shall speak of it all, you and I, Heaven grant, wisely and wonderingly many and many a time in after years. In the meanwhile I am more at rest for having opened all my heart and mind to you. . . This day eleven years, poor dear Mary died.”’*

That was written on the seventh of May 1848, but

* I take the opportunity of saying that there was an omission of three words in the epitaph quoted on a former page (vol. i. p. 120). The headstone at the grave in Kensal-green bears this inscription: Young, beautiful, and good, God in His mercy numbered her among His angels at the early age of seventeen."