nd, the Thames, with the sunset tingeing
the many-colored sails. We were not easily persuaded to descend from our
picturesque vantage-ground; but the master's hand led us gently on from
point to point, until we found ourselves, before we were aware, on the
grassy slope outside the castle wall. Besides, there was the cathedral
to be visited, and the tomb of Richard Watts, "with the effigy of worthy
Master Richard starting out of it like a ship's figurehead."

After seeing the cathedral, we went along the silent High Street, past
queer Elizabethan houses with endless gables and fences and
lattice-windows, until we came to Watts's Charity, the house of
entertainment for six poor travellers. The establishment is so familiar
to all lovers of Dickens through his description of it in the article
entitled "Seven Poor Travellers" among his "Uncommercial" papers, that
little is left to be said on that subject; except perhaps that no
autobiographic sketch ever gave a more faithful picture, a closer
portrait, than is there conveyed.

Dickens's fancy for Rochester, and his numberless associations with it,
have left traces of that city in almost everything he wrote. From the
time when Mr. Snodgrass first discovered the castle ruin from Rochester
Bridge, to the last chapter of Edwin Drood, we observe hints of the
city's quaintness or silence; the unending pavements, which go on and
on till the wisest head would be puzzled to know where Rochester ends
and where Chatham begins, the disposition of Father Time to have his own
unimpeded way therein, and of the gray cathedral towers which loom up in
the background of many a sketch and tale. Rochester, too, is on the way
to Canterbury, Dickens's best loved cathedral, the home of Agnes
Wickfield, the sunny spot in the life and memory of David Copperfield.
David was particularly small, as we are told, when he first saw
Canterbury, but he was already familiar with Roderick Random, Peregrine
Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, Don
Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, who came out, as he says, a
glorious host, to keep him company. Naturally, the calm old place, the
green nooks, the beauty of the cathedral, possessed a better chance with
him than with many others, and surely no one could have loved them more.
In the later years of his life the crowning-point of the summer holidays
was "a pilgrimage to Canterbury."

The sun shone merrily through the day when he chose t