office of _Household Words_) "and
walk off, but only works more industriously. I think he improves with
everything he does. He looks sharply at the alterations in his articles,
I observe; and takes the hint next time."

CHAPTER XX.

LAST YEARS IN DEVONSHIRE TERRACE.

1848-1851.

Sentiment about Places--Personal
Revelations--At his Sister's Sick-bed--Sister's
Death--Book to be written in First
Person--Visiting the Scene of a Tragedy--First
sees Yarmouth--Birth of Sixth Son--Title of
_Copperfield_ chosen--Difficulties of
Opening--Memorable Dinner--Rogers and
Benedict--Wit of Fonblanque--Procter and
Macready--The Sheridans--Dinner to Halevy and
Scribe--Expedition with Lord Mulgrave--The Duke
at Vauxhall--Carlyle and Thackeray--Marryat's
Delight with Children--Monckton Milnes and Lord
Lytton--Lords Dudley, Stuart, and
Nugent--Kemble, Harness, and Dyce--Mrs. Siddons
and John Kemble--Mazzini and Edinburgh
Friends--Artist Acquaintance--Friends from
America--M. Van de Weyer--Doubtful
Compliment--A Hint for London Citizens--Letter
against Public Executions--An American Observer
in England--Marvels of English Manners--Letter
from Rockingham--Private Theatricals--A Family
Scene--Death of Francis Jeffrey--Progress of
_Copperfield_--A Run to Paris--Third Daughter
born--At Great Malvern--Macready's
Farewell--The Home at Shepherd's-bush--Death of
John Dickens--Tribute by his
Son--Theatrical-fund Dinner--Plea for Small
Actors--Death of his Little
Daughter--Advocating Sanitary Reform--Lord
Shaftesbury--Realities of his Books to Dickens.

EXCEPTING always the haunts and associations of his childhood, Dickens
had no particular sentiment of locality, and any special regard for
houses he had lived in was not a thing noticeable in him. But he cared
most for Devonshire-terrace, perhaps for the bit of ground attached to
it; and it was with regret he suddenly discovered, at the close of
1847, that he should have to resign it "next lady-day three years. I had
thought the lease two years more." To that brief remaining time belong
some incidents of which I have still to give account; and I connect them
with the house in which he lived during the progress of what is
generally thought his gr