atire which is employed upon it in _Barnaby Rudge_.

FOOTNOTES:

[36] See _ante_, pp. 125 and 183.

CHAPTER XV.

PUBLIC DINNER IN EDINBURGH.

1841.

His Son Walter Landor--Dies in Calcutta
(1863)--C. D. and the New Poor-Law--Moore and
Rogers--Jeffrey's Praise of Little
Nell--Resolve to visit Scotland--Edinburgh
Dinner proposed--Sir David Wilkie's
Death--Peter Robertson--Professor Wilson--A
Fancy of Scott--Lionization made
tolerable--Thoughts of Home--The Dinner and
Speeches--His Reception--Wilson's Eulogy--Home
Yearnings--Freedom of City voted to
him--Speakers at the Dinner--Politics and Party
Influences--Whig Jealousies--At the
Theatre--Hospitalities--Moral of it
all--Proposed Visit to the Highlands--Maclise
and Macready--Guide to the Highlands--Mr. Angus
Fletcher (Kindheart).

AMONG the occurrences of the year, apart from the tale he was writing,
the birth of his fourth child and second son has been briefly mentioned.
"I mean to call the boy Edgar," he wrote, the day after he was born (9th
February), "a good honest Saxon name, I think." He changed his mind in a
few days, however, on resolving to ask Landor to be godfather. This
intention, as soon as formed, he announced to our excellent old friend,
telling him it would give the child something to boast of, to be called
Walter Landor, and that to call him so would do his own heart good. For,
as to himself, whatever realities had gone out of the ceremony of
christening, the meaning still remained in it of enabling him to form a
relationship with friends he most loved; and as to the boy, he held that
to give him a name to be proud of was to give him also another reason
for doing nothing unworthy or untrue when he came to be a man. Walter,
alas! only lived to manhood. He obtained a military cadetship through
the kindness of Miss Coutts, and died at Calcutta on the last day of
1863, in his twenty-third year.

The interest taken by this distinguished lady in him and in his had
begun, as I have said, at an earlier date than even this; and I
remember, while _Oliver Twist_ was going on, his pleasure because of her
father's mention of him in a speech at Birmingham, for his advocacy of
the cause of the poor. Whether to the new poor-law Sir Francis Burdett
objected as strongly as we have seen that Dickens did, as well as many
other