ight among those portions of the population which outrage
law and defy its terrors all the days of their lives, the tramps and
thieves of London; when, under guidance and protection of the most
trusted officers of the two great metropolitan prisons afforded to us by
Mr. Chesterton and Lieut. Tracey, we went over the worst haunts of the
most dangerous classes. Nor will it be unworthy of remark, in proof that
attention is not drawn vainly to such scenes, that, upon Dickens going
over them a dozen years later when he wrote a paper about them for his
_Household Words_, he found important changes effected whereby these
human dens, if not less dangerous, were become certainly more decent. On
the night of our earlier visit, Maclise, who accompanied us, was struck
with such sickness on entering the first of the Mint lodging-houses in
the borough, that he had to remain, for the time we were in them, under
guardianship of the police outside. Longfellow returned home by the
Great Western from Bristol on the 21st of October, enjoying as he passed
through Bath the hospitality of Landor; and at the end of the following
week we started on our Cornish travel.

But what before this had occupied Dickens in the writing way must now be
told. Not long after his reappearance amongst us, his house being still
in the occupation of Sir John Wilson, he went to Broadstairs, taking
with him the letters from which I have quoted so largely to help him in
preparing his _American Notes_; and one of his first announcements to me
(18th of July) shows not only this labour in progress, but the story he
was under engagement to begin in November working in his mind. "The
subjects at the beginning of the book are of that kind that I can't
_dash_ at them, and now and then they fret me in consequence. When I
come to Washington, I am all right. The solitary prison at Philadelphia
is a good subject, though; I forgot that for the moment. Have you seen
the Boston chapter yet? . . . I have never been in Cornwall either. A mine
certainly; and a letter for that purpose shall be got from Southwood
Smith. I have some notion of opening the new book in the lantern of a
lighthouse!" A letter a couple of months later (16th of Sept.) recurs to
that proposed opening of his story which after all he laid aside; and
shows how rapidly he was getting his _American Notes_ into shape. "At
the Isle of Thanet races yesterday I saw--oh! who shall say what an
immense amount of character