al his home, working at _Little Dorrit_ during all those
months. Then, after a month's interval in Dover and London, he took up
his third summer residence in Boulogne, whither his younger children had
gone direct from Paris; and stayed until September, finishing _Little
Dorrit_ in London in the spring of 1857.

Of the first of these visits, a few lively notes of humour and character
out of his letters will tell the story sufficiently. The second and
third had points of more attractiveness. Those were the years of the
French-English alliance, of the great exposition of English paintings,
of the return of the troops from the Crimea, and of the visit of the
Prince Consort to the Emperor; such interest as Dickens took in these
several matters appearing in his letters with the usual vividness, and
the story of his continental life coming out with amusing distinctness
in the successive pictures they paint with so much warmth and colour.
Another chapter will be given to Paris. This deals only with Boulogne.

For his first summer residence, in June 1853, he had taken a house on
the high ground near the Calais road; an odd French place with the
strangest little rooms and halls, but standing in the midst of a large
garden, with wood and waterfall, a conservatory opening on a great bank
of roses, and paths and gates on one side to the ramparts, on the other
to the sea. Above all there was a capital proprietor and landlord, by
whom the cost of keeping up gardens and wood (which he called a forest)
was defrayed, while he gave his tenant the whole range of both and all
the flowers for nothing, sold him the garden produce as it was wanted,
and kept a cow on the estate to supply the family milk. "If this were
but 300 miles farther off," wrote Dickens, "how the English would rave
about it! I do assure you that there are picturesque people, and town,
and country, about this place, that quite fill up the eye and fancy. As
to the fishing people (whose dress can have changed neither in colour
nor in form for many many years), and their quarter of the town
cobweb-hung with great brown nets across the narrow up-hill streets,
they are as good as Naples, every bit." His description both of house
and landlord, of which I tested the exactness when I visited him, was in
the old pleasant vein; requiring no connection with himself to give it
interest, but, by the charm and ease with which everything picturesque
or characteristic was disclosed, place