returning to town to-morrow by the
boat from Ramsgate, and going off to Weymouth or the Isle of Wight, or
both, early the next morning." A few days after, his choice was made.

He had taken a house at Bonchurch, attracted there by the friend who had
made it a place of interest for him during the last few years, the
Reverend James White, with whose name and its associations my mind
connects inseparably many of Dickens's happiest hours. To pay him
fitting tribute would not be easy, if here it were called for. In the
kindly shrewd Scotch face, a keen sensitiveness to pleasure and pain was
the first thing that struck any common observer. Cheerfulness and gloom
coursed over it so rapidly that no one could question the tale they
told. But the relish of his life had outlived its more than usual share
of sorrows; and quaint sly humour, love of jest and merriment, capital
knowledge of books, and sagacious quips at men, made his companionship
delightful. Like his life, his genius was made up of alternations of
mirth and melancholy. He would be immersed, at one time, in those
darkest Scottish annals from which he drew his tragedies; and
overflowing, at another, into Sir Frizzle Pumpkin's exuberant farce. The
tragic histories may probably perish with the actor's perishable art;
but three little abstracts of history written at a later time in prose,
with a sunny clearness of narration and a glow of picturesque interest
to my knowledge unequalled in books of such small pretension, will find,
I hope, a lasting place in literature. They are filled with felicities
of phrase, with breadth of understanding and judgment, with manful
honesty, quiet sagacity, and a constant cheerful piety, valuable for all
and priceless for the young. Another word I permit myself to add. With
Dickens, White was popular supremely for his eager good fellowship; and
few men brought him more of what he always liked to receive. But he
brought nothing so good as his wife. "He is excellent, but she is
better," is the pithy remark of his first Bonchurch letter; and the true
affection and respect that followed is happily still borne her by his
daughters.

Of course there is something strange to be recorded of the Bonchurch
holiday, but it does not come till nearer the ending; and, with more
attention to Mrs. Malaprop's advice to begin with a little aversion,
might probably not have come at all. He began with an excess of liking.
Of the Undercliff he was full of admi