to
week in _All the Year Round_. And it was a judicious rule with our
author--broken only at the last, and fatally, at the very end of his
twofold career as Writer and as Reader--never to give a series of
Readings while one of his serial stories was being produced. At length,
however, in the late summer, or early autumn of 1861, the novelist was
sufficiently free from literary pre-occupations for another tour, and
another series of Readings in London to be projected. The arrangements
for each were sketched out by Mr. Arthur Smith, as the one still
entrusted with the financial management of the undertaking. His health,
however, was so broken by that time, that it soon became apparent that
he could not reasonably hope to superintend in person the carrying out
of the new enterprise. It was decided, therefore, provisionally, that
Mr. Headland, who, upon the former occasion, had acted with him, should
now, under his direction and as his representative, undertake the
actual management. Before the projected tour of 1861 actually commenced,
however, Mr. Arthur Smith had died, in September. The simply provisional
arrangement lapsed in consequence, and upon Mr. Headland himself
devolved the responsibility of carrying out the plans sketched out by
his predecessor.

Although about the same time that had been allotted to the First Tour,
namely a whole quarter, had been set apart for the Second, the latter
included within it but very little more than half the number of Readings
given in the earlier and more rapid round of the provinces. The Second
Tour, in point of fact--beginning on Monday, the 28th of October, 1861,
at Norwich, and terminating on Thursday, the 30th of January, 1862, at
Chester--comprised within it Forty-Seven, instead of, as on the former
occasion, Eighty-Seven readings altogether. Many of the principal towns
and cities of England, not visited during the more comprehensive sweep
made in 1858, through the three kingdoms, were now reached--the tour,
this time, being restricted within the English boundaries. Lancaster and
Carlisle, for example, Hastings and Canterbury, Ipswich and Colchester,
were severally included in the new programme. Resorts of fashion, like
Torquay and Cheltenham, were no longer overlooked. Preston in the north,
Dover in the south, were each in turn the scene of a Reading. Bury St.
Edmund's, in 1861, was reached on the 30th of October, and on the 25th
of November an excursion was even made to th