tle it is!" Nor had another
month quite passed before he lost, in Mrs. Macready, a very dear family
friend. "Ah me! ah me!" he wrote. "This tremendous sickle certainly does
cut deep into the surrounding corn, when one's own small blade has
ripened. But _this_ is all a Dream, may be, and death will wake us."

Able at last to settle to his work, he stayed in Dover three months; and
early in October, sending home his family caravan, crossed to Boulogne
to try it as a resort for seaside holiday. "I never saw a better
instance of our countrymen than this place. Because it is accessible it
is genteel to say it is of no character, quite English, nothing
continental about it, and so forth. It is as quaint, picturesque, good a
place as I know; the boatmen and fishing-people quite a race apart, and
some of their villages as good as the fishing-villages on the
Mediterranean. The Haute Ville, with a walk all round it on the
ramparts, charming. The country walks, delightful. It is the best
mixture of town and country (with sea air into the bargain) I ever saw;
everything cheap, everything good; and please God I shall be writing on
those said ramparts next July!"

Before the year closed, the time to which his publishing arrangements
with Messrs. Bradbury and Evans were limited had expired, but at his
suggestion the fourth share in such books as he might write, which they
had now received for eight years, was continued to them on the
understanding that the publishers' percentage should no longer be
charged in the partnership accounts, and with a power reserved to
himself to withdraw when he pleased. In the new year his first adventure
was an ovation in Birmingham, where a silver-gilt salver and a diamond
ring were presented to him, as well for eloquent service specially
rendered to the Institution, as in general testimony of "varied literary
acquirements, genial philosophy, and high moral teaching." A great
banquet followed on Twelfth Night, made memorable by an offer[171] to
give a couple of readings from his books at the following Christmas, in
aid of the new Midland Institute. It might seem to have been drawn from
him as a grateful return for the enthusiastic greeting of his
entertainers, but it was in his mind before he left London. It was his
first formal undertaking to read in public.

His eldest son had now left Eton, and, the boy's wishes pointing at the
time to a mercantile career, he was sent to Leipzig for completion of