ional studies had enabled him to
penetrate."

Some incidents that belong specially to the three years that closed his
residence in the home thus associated with not the least interesting
part of his career, will farther show what now were his occupations and
ways of life. In the summer of 1849 he came up from Broadstairs to
attend a Mansion-house dinner, which the lord mayor of that day had been
moved by a laudable ambition to give to "literature and art," which he
supposed would be adequately represented by the Royal Academy, the
contributors to _Punch_, Dickens, and one or two newspaper men. On the
whole the result was not cheering; the worthy chief magistrate, no
doubt quite undesignedly, expressing too much surprise at the
unaccustomed faces around him to be altogether complimentary. In general
(this was the tone) we are in the habit of having princes, dukes,
ministers, and what not for our guests, but what a delight, all the
greater for being unusual, to see gentlemen like you! In other words,
what could possibly be pleasanter than for people satiated with
greatness to get for a while by way of change into the butler's pantry?
This in substance was Dickens's account to me next day, and his reason
for having been very careful in his acknowledgment of the toast of "the
Novelists." He was nettled not a little therefore by a jesting allusion
to himself in the _Daily News_ in connection with the proceedings, and
asked me to forward a remonstrance. Having a strong dislike to all such
displays of sensitiveness, I suppressed the letter; but it is perhaps
worth printing now. Its date is Broadstairs, Wednesday 11th of July
1849. "I have no other interest in, or concern with, a most facetious
article on last Saturday's dinner at the Mansion-house, which appeared
in your paper of yesterday, and found its way here to-day, than that it
misrepresents me in what I said on the occasion. If you should not think
it at all damaging to the wit of that satire to state what I did say, I
shall be much obliged to you. It was this. . . . That I considered the
compliment of a recognition of Literature by the citizens of London the
more acceptable to us because it was unusual in that hall, and likely to
be an advantage and benefit to them in proportion as it became in future
less unusual. That, on behalf of the novelists, I accepted the tribute
as an appropriate one; inasmuch as we had sometimes reason to hope that
our imaginary worlds afford