through the opened roof of a chamber where he site, and letting down a sick person on a bed, with ropes; the same in a tempest, walking on the water to a ship; again, on a sea-shore, teaching a great multitude; again, with a child upon his knee, and other children round; again, restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame, knowledge to the ignorant; again, dying upon a cross, watched by armed soldiers, a thick darkness coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and only one voice heard,—­’Forgive them, for they know not what they do!’”

The writer of these pages begs to say here, most respectfully and emphatically, that he will not feel himself bound, in future, to reply to any inquiries, from however well-meaning correspondents, as to whether Charles Dickens was an “Unbeliever,” or a “Unitarian,” or an “Episcopalian,” or whether “he ever went to church in his life,” or “used improper language,” or “drank enough to hurt him.”  He was human, very human, but he was no scoffer or doubter.  His religion was of the heart, and his faith beyond questioning.  He taught the world, said Dean Stanley over his new-made grave in Westminster Abbey, great lessons of “the eternal value of generosity, of purity, of kindness, and of unselfishness,” and by his fruits he shall be known of all men.

Let me commend to the attention of my numerous nameless correspondents, who have attempted to soil the moral character of Dickens, the following little incident, related to me by himself, during a summer-evening walk among the Kentish meadows, a few months before he died.  I will try to tell the story, if possible, as simply and naturally as he told it to me.

“I chanced to be travelling some years ago,” he said, “in a railroad carriage between Liverpool and London.  Beside myself there were two ladies and a gentleman occupying the carriage.  We happened to be all strangers to each other, but I noticed at once that a clergyman was of the party.  I was occupied with a ponderous article in the ‘Times,’ when the sound of my own name drew my attention to the fact that a conversation was going forward among the three other persons in the carriage with reference to myself and my books.  One of the ladies was perusing ‘Bleak House,’ then lately published, and the clergyman had commenced a conversation with the ladies by asking what book they were reading.  On being told the author’s name and the title of the book, he expressed himself greatly grieved that any lady in England should be willing to take up the writings of so vile a character as Charles Dickens.  Both the ladies showed great surprise at the low estimate the clergyman put upon an author whom they had been accustomed to read, to say the least, with a certain degree of pleasure.  They were evidently much shocked at what the man said of the immoral tendency of these books, which they seemed never before to have suspected; but when he attacked