inst."

CHAPTER XX.

THE END.

1869-1870.

Visit from Mr. and Mrs. Fields--Places shown to
Visitor--Last Paper in _All the Year
Round_--Son Henry's Scholarship--A Reading of
_Edwin Drood_--Medical Attendance at
Readings--Excitement after _Oliver Twist_
Scenes--Farewell Address--Results of Over
Excitement--Last Appearances in Public--Death
of Daniel Maclise--Temptations of
London--Another Attack in the Foot--Noteworthy
Incident--Tribute of Gratitude for his
Books--Last Letter from him--Last
Days--Thoughts on his Last Day of
Consciousness--The Close--General
Mourning--Wish to bury him in the Abbey--His
Own Wish--The Burial--Unbidden Mourners--The
Grave.

THE summer and autumn of 1869 were passed quietly at Gadshill. He
received there, in June, the American friends to whom he had been most
indebted for unwearying domestic kindness at his most trying time in the
States. In August, he was at the dinner of the International boat-race;
and, in a speech that might have gone far to reconcile the victors to
changing places with the vanquished, gave the healths of the Harvard and
the Oxford crews. He went to Birmingham, in September, to fulfil a
promise that he would open the session of the Institute; and there,
after telling his audience that his invention, such as it was, never
would have served him as it had done, but for the habit of commonplace,
patient, drudging attention, he declared his political creed to be
infinitesimal faith in the people governing and illimitable faith in the
People governed. In such engagements as these, with nothing of the kind
of strain he had most to dread, there was hardly more movement or change
than was necessary to his enjoyment of rest.

He had been able to show Mr. Fields something of the interest of London
as well as of his Kentish home. He went over its "general post-office"
with him, took him among its cheap theatres and poor lodging-houses, and
piloted him by night through its most notorious thieves' quarter. Its
localities that are pleasantest to a lover of books, such as Johnson's
Bolt-court and Goldsmith's Temple-chambers, he explored with him; and,
at his visitor's special request, mounted a staircase he had not
ascended for more than thirty years, to show the chambers in Furnival's
Inn where the first page of _Pickwick_ was written. One m