Birmingham--In Scotland--Exertion and its
Result--An Old Malady--Audiences at
Newcastle--Scene at Tynemouth--In Dublin--At
Cambridge--Close of the Third Series--Desire in
America to hear Dickens read--Sends Agent to
America--Warning unheeded--For and against
reading in America--Decision to go--Departure.

THE sudden death of Thackeray on the Christmas eve of 1863 was a painful
shock to Dickens. It would not become me to speak, when he has himself
spoken, of his relations with so great a writer and so old a friend.

"I saw him first, nearly twenty-eight years ago, when he proposed to
become the illustrator of my earliest book. I saw him last,[253] shortly
before Christmas, at the Athenaeum Club, when he told me that he had
been in bed three days . . . and that he had it in his mind to try a new
remedy which he laughingly described. He was cheerful, and looked very
bright. In the night of that day week, he died. The long interval
between these two periods is marked in my remembrance of him by many
occasions when he was extremely humorous, when he was irresistibly
extravagant, when he was softened and serious, when he was charming with
children. . . . No one can be surer than I, of the greatness and goodness
of his heart. . . . In no place should I take it upon myself at this time
to discourse of his books, of his refined knowledge of character, of his
subtle acquaintance with the weaknesses of human nature, of his
delightful playfulness as an essayist, of his quaint and touching
ballads, of his mastery over the English language. . . . But before me lies
all that he had written of his latest story . . . and the pain I have felt
in perusing it has not been deeper than the conviction that he was in
the healthiest vigour of his powers when he worked on this last
labour. . . . The last words he corrected in print were 'And my heart
throbbed with an exquisite bliss.' God grant that on that Christmas Eve
when he laid his head back on his pillow and threw up his arms as he had
been wont to do when very weary, some consciousness of duty done, and of
Christian hope throughout life humbly cherished, may have caused his
own heart so to throb, when he passed away to his Redeemer's rest. He
was found peacefully lying as above described, composed, undisturbed,
and to all appearance asleep."

Other griefs were with Dickens at this time, and close upon them came
the too certain evidenc