nd Mrs. Charles Black, near connections by marriage of George
Cattermole, with whom there was intimate intercourse both before and
during the residence in Italy; Mr. Thompson, brother of Mrs. Smithson
formerly named, and his wife, whose sister Frederick Dickens married;
Mr. Mitton, his own early companion; and Mrs. Torrens, who had played
with the amateurs in Canada. These are all in my memory so connected
with Devonshire-terrace, as friends or familiar acquaintance, that they
claim this word before leaving it; and visitors from America, I may
remark, had always a grateful reception. Of the Bancrofts mention has
been made, and with them should be coupled the Abbot Lawrences,
Prescott, Hillard, George Curtis, and Felton's brother. Felton himself
did not visit England until the Tavistock-house time. In 1847 there was
a delightful day with the Coldens and the Wilkses, relatives by marriage
of Jeffrey; in the following year, I think at my rooms because of some
accident that closed Devonshire-terrace that day (25th of April),
Dickens, Carlyle, and myself foregathered with the admirable Emerson;
and M. Van de Weyer will probably remember a dinner where he took joyous
part with Dickens in running down a phrase which the learned in books,
Mr. Cogswell, on a mission here for the Astor library, had startled us
by denouncing as an uncouth Scotch barbarism--_open up_. You found it
constantly in Hume, he said, but hardly anywhere else; and he defied us
to find it more than once through the whole of the volumes of Gibbon.
Upon this, after brief wonder and doubt, we all thought it best to take
part in a general assault upon _open up_, by invention of phrases on the
same plan that should show it in exaggerated burlesque, and support Mr.
Cogswell's indictment. Then came a struggle who should carry the
absurdity farthest; and the victory remained with M. Van de Weyer until
Dickens surpassed even him, and "opened up" depths of almost frenzied
absurdity that would have delighted the heart of Leigh Hunt. It will
introduce the last and not least honoured name into my list of his
acquaintance and friends, if I mention his amusing little interruption
one day to Professor Owen's description of a telescope of huge
dimensions built by an enterprising clergyman who had taken to the study
of the stars; and who was eager, said Owen, to see farther into
heaven--he was going to say, than Lord Rosse; if Dickens had not drily
interposed, "than his profess