ents) very much improved. I think it so. If there should
still be anything wanting, in your opinion, pray suggest it to me in
Paris. I am bent on having it right, if I can. . . . If in going over the
proofs you find the tendency to blank verse (I _cannot_ help it, when I
am very much in earnest) too strong, knock out a word's brains here and
there." (13th of November. Sending the proofs back.)

* * * * *

". . . Your Christmas book illustration-news makes me jump for joy. I will
write you at length to-morrow. I should like this dedication: This
Christmas Book is cordially inscribed To my English Friends in
Switzerland. Just those two lines, and nothing more. When I get the
proofs again I think I may manage another word or two about the
battle-field, with advantage. I am glad you like the alterations. I feel
that they make it complete, and that it would have been incomplete
without your suggestions." (21st of November. From Paris.)

I had managed, as a glad surprise for him, to enlist both Stanfield and
Maclise in the illustration of the story, in addition to the
distinguished artists whom the publishers had engaged for it, Leech and
Richard Doyle; and among the subjects contributed by Stanfield are three
morsels of English landscape which had a singular charm for Dickens at
the time, and seem to me still of their kind quite faultless. I may add
a curious fact, never mentioned until now. In the illustration which
closes the second part of the story, where the festivities to welcome
the bridegroom at the top of the page contrast with the flight of the
bride represented below, Leech made the mistake of supposing that
Michael Warden had taken part in the elopement, and has introduced his
figure with that of Marion. We did not discover this until too late for
remedy, the publication having then been delayed, for these drawings, to
the utmost limit; and it is highly characteristic of Dickens, and of the
true regard he had for this fine artist, that, knowing the pain he must
give in such circumstances by objection or complaint, he preferred to
pass it silently. Nobody made remark upon it, and there the illustration
still stands; but any one who reads the tale carefully will at once
perceive what havoc it makes of one of the most delicate turns in it.

"When I first saw it, it was with a horror and agony not to be
expressed. Of course I need not tell _you_, my dear fellow, Warden has
no busines