sheer profit. "I came back last
Sunday," he wrote on the 30th of May, "with my last country piece of
work for this time done. Everywhere the success has been the same. St.
James's Hall last night was quite a splendid spectacle. Two more
Tuesdays there, and I shall retire into private life. I have only been
able to get to Gadshill once since I left it, and that was the day
before yesterday."

One memorable evening he had passed at my house in the interval, when he
saw Mrs. Carlyle for the last time. Her sudden death followed shortly
after, and near the close of April he had thus written to me from
Liverpool. "It was a terrible shock to me, and poor dear Carlyle has
been in my mind ever since. How often I have thought of the unfinished
novel. No one now to finish it. None of the writing women come near her
at all." This was an allusion to what had passed at their meeting. It
was on the second of April, the day when Mr. Carlyle had delivered his
inaugural address as Lord Rector of Edinburgh University, and a couple
of ardent words from Professor Tyndall had told her of the triumph just
before dinner. She came to us flourishing the telegram in her hand, and
the radiance of her enjoyment of it was upon her all the night. Among
other things she gave Dickens the subject for a novel, from what she had
herself observed at the outside of a house in her street; of which the
various incidents were drawn from the condition of its blinds and
curtains, the costumes visible at its windows, the cabs at its door, its
visitors admitted or rejected, its articles of furniture delivered or
carried away; and the subtle serious humour of it all, the truth in
trifling bits of character, and the gradual progress into a
half-romantic interest, had enchanted the skilled novelist. She was well
into the second volume of her small romance before she left, being as
far as her observation then had taken her; but in a few days exciting
incidents were expected, the denouement could not be far off, and
Dickens was to have it when they met again. Yet it was to something far
other than this amusing little fancy his thoughts had carried him, when
he wrote of no one being capable to finish what she might have begun. In
greater things this was still more true. No one could doubt it who had
come within the fascinating influence of that sweet and noble nature.
With some of the highest gifts of intellect, and the charm of a most
varied knowledge of books and thi