to you?  As an instance of how strangely something comic springs up in the midst of the direst misery, look to a succeeding Uncommercial, called “A Small Star in the East,” published to-day, by the by.  I have described, with exactness, the poor places into which I went, and how the people behaved, and what they said.  I was wretched, looking on; and yet the boiler-maker and the poor man with the legs filled me with a sense of drollery not to be kept down by any pressure.

The atmosphere of this place, compounded of mists from the highlands and smoke from the town factories, is crushing my eyebrows as I write, and it rains as it never does rain anywhere else, and always does rain here.  It is a dreadful place, though much improved and possessing a deal of public spirit.  Improvement is beginning to knock the old town of Edinburgh about, here and there; but the Canongate and the most picturesque of the horrible courts and wynds are not to be easily spoiled, or made fit for the poor wretches who people them to live in.  Edinburgh is so changed as to its notabilities, that I had the only three men left of the Wilson and Jeffrey time to dine with me there, last Saturday.

I read here to-night and to-morrow, go back to Edinburgh on Friday morning, read there on Saturday morning, and start southward by the mail that same night.  After the great experiment of the 5th,—­that is to say, on the morning of the 6th,—­we are off to Belfast and Dublin.  On every alternate Tuesday I am due in London, from wheresoever I may be, to read at St. James’s Hall.

I think you will find “Fatal Zero” (by Percy Fitzgerald) a very curious analysis of a mind, as the story advances.  A new beginner in A.Y.R. (Hon. Mrs. Clifford, Kinglake’s sister), who wrote a story in the series just finished, called “The Abbot’s Pool,” has just sent me another story.  I have a strong impression that, with care, she will step into Mrs. Graskell’s vacant place.  W——­ is no better, and I have work enough even in that direction.

God bless the woman with the black mittens, for making me laugh so this morning!  I take her to be a kind of public-spirited Mrs. Sparsit, and as such take her to my bosom.  God bless you both, my dear friends, in this Christmas and New Year time, and in all times, seasons, and places, and send you to Gad’s Hill with the next flowers!

    Ever your most affectionate

    C.D.

All who witnessed the reading of Dickens in the “Oliver Twist” murder scene unite in testifying to the wonderful effect he produced in it.  Old theatrical habitues have told me that, since the days of Edmund Kean and Cooper, no mimetic representation had been superior to it.  I became so much interested in all I heard about it, that I resolved early in the year 1869 to step across the water (it is only a stride of three thousand miles) and see it done.  The following is Dickens’s reply to my announcement of the intended voyage:—­