. "I used," he says, "when I was at school, to take
in the _Terrific Register_, making myself unspeakably miserable, and
frightening my very wits out of my head, for the small charge of a penny
weekly; which, considering that there was an illustration to every
number in which there was always a pool of blood, and at least one body,
was cheap." An obliging correspondent writes to me upon my reference to
the Fox-under-the-hill, at p. 62: "Will you permit me to say that the
house, shut up and almost ruinous, is still to be found at the bottom of
a curious and most precipitous court, the entrance of which is just past
Salisbury Street. . . . It was once, I think, the approach to the halfpenny
boats. The house is now shut out from the water-side by the Embankment."

PALACE GATE HOUSE, KENSINGTON,
_23d December, 1871_.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

* * * * *

CHAPTER I. 1812-1822.

Pages 21-46.

CHILDHOOD. AET. 1-10.

PAGE
Birth at Landport in Portsea 21
Family of John Dickens 22
Powers of observation in children 23
Two years old 23
In London, aet. 2-3 23
In Chatham, aet. 4-9 23
Vision of boyhood 24
The queer small child 25
Mother's teaching 26
Day-school in Rome Lane 27
Retrospects of childhood 27
David Copperfield and Charles Dickens 28
Access to small but good library 29
Tragedy-writing 30
Comic-song singing 31
Cousin James Lamert 31
First taken to theatre 32
At Mr. Giles's school 32
Encored in the recitations 33
Boyish recollections 33
Birthplace of his fancy 35
Last night in Chatham 35
In Lon