of his degradation.  We see how little inward change there is in the man himself when there comes a transformation scene in his fortunes, and he leaves the Marshalsea wealthy and prosperous.  It is all thoroughly worked out, perfect, a piece of really great art.  No wonder that Mr. Clennam pities the child of such a father; indeed, considering what a really admirable woman she is, one only wonders that his pity does not sooner turn to love.

“Little Dorrit” ran its course from December, 1855, to June, 1857, and within that space of time there occurred two or three incidents in Dickens’ career which should not pass unnoticed.  At the first of these dates he was in Paris, where he remained till the middle of May, 1856, greatly feted by the French world of letters and art; dining hither and thither; now enjoying an Arabian Nights sort of banquet given by Emile de Girardin, the popular journalist; now meeting George Sand, the great novelist, whom he describes as “just the sort of woman in appearance whom you might suppose to be the queen’s monthly nurse—­chubby, matronly, swarthy, black-eyed;” then studying French art, and contrasting it with English art, somewhat to the disadvantage of the latter; anon superintending the translation of his works into French, and working hard at “Little Dorrit;” and all the while frequenting the Paris theatres with great assiduity and admiration.  Meanwhile, too, on the 14th of March, 1856, a Friday, his lucky day as he considered it, he had written a cheque for the purchase of Gad’s Hill Place, at which he had so often looked when a little lad, living penuriously at Chatham—­the house which it had been the object of his childish ambition to win for his own.

So had merit proved to be not without its visible prize, literally a prize for good conduct.  He took possession of the house in the following February, and turned workmen into it, and finished “Little Dorrit” there.  At first the purchase was intended mainly as an investment, and he only purposed to spend some portion of his time at Gad’s Hill, letting it at other periods, and so recouping himself for the interest on the L1,790 which it had cost, and for the further sums which he expended on improvements.  But as time went on it became his hobby, the love of his advancing years.  He beautified here and beautified there, built a new drawing-room, added bedrooms, constructed a tunnel under the road, erected in the “wilderness” on the other side of the road a Swiss chalet, which had been presented to him by Fechter, the French-English actor, and in short indulged in all the thousand and one vagaries of a proprietor who is enamoured of his property.  The matter seems to have been one of the family jokes; and when, on the Sunday before his death, he showed the conservatory to his younger daughter, and said, “Well, Katey, now you see positively the last improvement at Gad’s Hill,” there was a general laugh.  But this is far on in the story; and very long before the building of the conservatory, long indeed before the main other changes had been made, the idea of an investment had been abandoned.  In 1860 he sold Tavistock House, in London, and made Gad’s Hill Place his final home.