to a name
expressive of the power of a great nation, which, in happy alliance
with the gallantry and spirit of France will shake that name to its
centre? Certainly I will excuse it.--My General, take up the slate and
read. General reads: DAGOBERT, VICTORIA. The first in his friend's
writing; the second in a new hand. I never saw anything in the least
like this; or at all approaching to the absolute certainty, the
familiarity, quickness, absence of all machinery, and actual
face-to-face, hand-to-hand fairness between the conjuror and the
audience, with which it was done. I have not the slightest idea of the
secret.--One more. He was blinded with several table napkins, and then a
great cloth was bodily thrown over them and his head too, so that his
voice sounded as if he were under a bed. Perhaps half a dozen dates were
written on a slate. He takes the slate in his hand, and throws it
violently down on the floor as before, remains silent a minute, seems to
become agitated, and bursts out thus: 'What is this I see? A great city,
but of narrow streets and old-fashioned houses, many of which are of
wood, resolving itself into ruins! How is it falling into ruins? Hark! I
hear the crackling of a great conflagration, and, looking up, I behold a
vast cloud of flame and smoke. The ground is covered with hot cinders
too, and people are flying into the fields and endeavouring to save
their goods. This great fire, this great wind, this roaring noise! This
is the great fire of London, and the first date upon the slate must be
one, six, six, six--the year in which it happened!' And so on with all
the other dates. There! Now, if you will take a cab and impart these
mysteries to Rogers, I shall be very glad to have his opinion of them."
Rogers had taxed our credulity with some wonderful clairvoyant
experiences of his own in Paris to which here was a parallel at last!

When leaving Paris for his third visit to Boulogne, at the beginning of
June 1856, he had not written a word of the ninth number of his new
book, and did not expect for another month to "see land from the running
sea of _Little Dorrit_." He had resumed the house he first occupied, the
cottage or villa "des Moulineaux," and after dawdling about his garden
for a few days with surprising industry in a French farmer garb of blue
blouse, leathern belt, and military cap, which he had mounted as "the
only one for complete comfort," he wrote to me that he was getting "Now
to work