Many of the letters addressed to me by Dickens concerned more or less my contributions to his periodical, and many more are not of a nature to interest the public even though they came from him.  But I may give a few extracts from three or four of them.[1]

[Footnote 1:  I wish it to be observed that any letters, or parts of letters, from Dickens here printed are published with the permission and authorisation of his sister-in-law, Miss Georgina Hogarth.]

Here is a passage from a letter dated 3rd December, 1861, which my vanity will not let me suppress.

“Yes; the Christmas number was intended as a conveyance of all friendly greetings in season and out of season.  As to its lesson, you need it almost as little as any man I know; for all your study and seclusion conduce to the general good, and disseminate truths that men cannot too earnestly take to heart.  Yes, a capital story that of ’The Two Seaborn Babbies,’ and wonderfully droll, I think.  I may say so without blushing, for it is not by me.  It was done by Wilkie Collins.”

Here is another short note, not a little gratifying to me personally, but not without interest of a larger kind to the reader:—­

* * * * *

“Tuesday, 15th November, 1859.

“MY DEAR TROLLOPE,—­I write this hasty word, just as the post leaves, to ask you this question, which this moment occurs to me.

“Montalembert, in his suppressed treatise, asks, ’What wrong has Pope Pius the Ninth done?’ Don’t you think you can very pointedly answer that question in these pages?  If you cannot, nobody in Europe can.  Very faithfully yours always,

“CHARLES DICKENS”

* * * * *

Some, some few, may remember the interest excited by the treatise to which the above letter refers.  No doubt I could, and doubtless did, though I forget all about it, answer the question propounded by the celebrated French writer.  But there was little hope of my doing it as “pointedly” as my correspondent would have done it himself.  The answer, which might well have consisted of a succinct statement of all the difficulties of the position with which Italy was then struggling, had to confine itself to the limits of an article in All The Year Round, and needed in truth to be pointed.  I have observed that, in all our many conversations on Italian matters, Dickens’s views and opinions coincided with my own, without, I think, any point of divergence.  Very specially was this the case as regards all that concerned the Vatican and the doings of the Curia.  How well I remember his arched eyebrows and laughing eyes when I told him of Garibaldi’s proposal that all priests should be summarily executed!  I think it modified his ideas of the possible utility of Garibaldi as a politician.

Then comes an invitation to “my Falstaff house at Gadshill.”

Here is a letter of the 17th February, 1866, which I will give in extenso, bribed again by the very flattering words in which the writer speaks of our friendship:—­