ve given out last night, and could not call upon you. Will
you dine with us to-morrow at six sharp? I have been revolving plans in
my mind this morning for quitting the paper and going abroad again to
write a new book in shilling numbers. Shall we go to Rochester to-morrow
week (my birthday) if the weather be, as it surely must be, better?" To
Rochester accordingly we had gone, he and Mrs. Dickens and her sister,
with Maclise and Jerrold and myself; going over the old Castle, Watts's
Charity, and Chatham fortifications on the Saturday, passing Sunday in
Cobham church and Cobham park; having our quarters both days at the Bull
inn made famous in _Pickwick_; and thus, by indulgence of the desire
which was always strangely urgent in him, associating his new resolve in
life with those earliest scenes of his youthful time. On one point our
feeling had been in thorough agreement. If long continuance with the
paper was not likely, the earliest possible departure from it was
desirable. But as the letters descriptive of his Italian travel (turned
afterwards into _Pictures from Italy_) had begun with its first number,
his name could not at once be withdrawn; and for the time during which
they were still to appear, he consented to contribute other occasional
letters on important social questions. Public executions and Ragged
schools were among the subjects chosen by him, and all were handled with
conspicuous ability. But the interval they covered was a short one.

To the supreme control which he had quitted, I succeeded, retaining it
very reluctantly for the greater part of that weary, anxious, laborious
year; but in little more than four months from the day the paper
started, the whole of Dickens's connection with the _Daily News_, even
that of contributing letters with his signature, had ceased. As he said
in the preface to the republished _Pictures_, it was a mistake to have
disturbed the old relations between himself and his readers, in so
departing from his old pursuits. It had however been "a brief mistake;"
the departure had been only "for a moment;" and now those pursuits were
"joyfully" to be resumed in Switzerland. Upon the latter point we had
much discussion; but he was bent on again removing himself from London,
and his glimpse of the Swiss mountains on his coming from Italy had
given him a passion to visit them again. "I don't think," he wrote to
me, "I _could_ shut out the paper sufficiently, here, to write well. No
.