ner a tout le monde. Mais quel homme,
quel ange, neanmoins! MON AMI, je trouve que j'aime tant la Republique,
qu'il me faut renoncer ma langue et ecrire seulement le langage de la
Republique de France--langage des Dieux et des Anges--langage, en un
mot, des Francais! Hier au soir je rencontrai a l'Athenaeum Monsieur Mack
Leese, qui me dit que MM. les Commissionnaires des Beaux Arts lui
avaient ecrit, par leur secretaire, un billet de remerciements a propos
de son tableau dans la Chambre des Deputes, et qu'ils lui avaient prie
de faire l'autre tableau en fresque, dont on y a besoin. Ce qu'il a
promis. Voici des nouvelles pour les champs de Lincoln's Inn! Vive la
gloire de France! Vive la Republique! Vive le Peuple! Plus de Royaute!
Plus des Bourbons! Plus de Guizot! Mort aux traitres! Faisons couler le
sang pour la liberte, la justice, la cause populaire! Jusqu'a cinq
heures et demie, adieu, mon brave! Recevez l'assurance de ma
consideration distinguee, et croyez-moi, CONCITOYEN! votre tout devoue,
CITOYEN CHARLES DICKENS." I proved to be not quite so wrong,
nevertheless, as my friend supposed.

Somewhat earlier than usual this summer, on the close of the
Shakespeare-house performances, he tried Broadstairs once more, having
no important writing in hand: but in the brief interval before leaving
he saw a thing of celebrity in those days, the Chinese Junk; and I had
all the details in so good a description that I could not resist the
temptation of using some parts of it at the time. "Drive down to the
Blackwall railway," he wrote to me, "and for a matter of eighteen-pence
you are at the Chinese Empire in no time. In half a score of minutes,
the tiles and chimney-pots, backs of squalid houses, frowsy pieces of
waste ground, narrow courts and streets, swamps, ditches, masts of
ships, gardens of dockweed, and unwholesome little bowers of scarlet
beans, whirl away in a flying dream, and nothing is left but China. How
the flowery region ever came into this latitude and longitude is the
first thing one asks; and it is not certainly the least of the marvel.
As Aladdin's palace was transported hither and thither by the rubbing of
a lamp, so the crew of Chinamen aboard the Keying devoutly believed that
their good ship would turn up, quite safe, at the desired port, if they
only tied red rags enough upon the mast, rudder, and cable. Somehow they
did not succeed. Perhaps they ran short of rag; at any rate they hadn't
enough on board