e present occupant, has been kind
enough to supply the following interesting information respecting No.
387, Mile End Terrace:--

"The celebrated novelist was born in the front bedroom of the above
house, which my sisters many years ago converted into a drawing-room,
and it is still used as such.

"Mr. John Dickens, the father of the novelist, and his wife came to
reside in the house directly after they were married. Mr. John Dickens
rented the house of my father at L35 a-year, from the 24th June, 1808,
until the 24th June, 1812, when he quitted, and moved into Hawke Street,
in the town of Portsea. Miss Fanny Dickens, the novelist's sister, was
the first child born in the house, and then the novelist.

"I was born on the 22nd February, 1814, and have often heard my mother
say that Mr. Gardner, the surgeon, and Mrs. Purkis, the monthly nurse
(both of whom attended my mother with me and her six other children),
attended Mrs. Dickens with her two children, Fanny and Charles, who were
both born in the above house; besides this, Mrs. Purkis has often called
on my sisters at the house in question, and alluded to the above
circumstances.

[Illustration: St. Mary's Church, Portsea.]

"Mr. Cobb (whom I recollect), a fellow-clerk of Mr. John Dickens in the
pay-office in the Portsmouth Dockyard, rented the same house of my
father after Mr. John Dickens left, and often alluded to the many happy
hours he spent in it while Mr. Dickens resided there."

We next visit the site of old Kingston Parish Church,--St. Mary's,
Portsea--where Charles Dickens was baptized on 4th March, 1812. A very
handsome and large new church, costing nearly forty thousand pounds, and
capable of seating over two thousand persons, has been erected, and
occupies the place of the old church, where the ceremony took place.
Mr. Langton has given a very pretty little drawing of the old church in
his book, so that its associations are preserved to lovers of Dickens.
The old church itself was the second edifice erected on the same spot,
and thus the present one is the third parish church which has been built
here. There is a large and crowded burial-ground attached to it; but a
cursory examination does not disclose any names on the gravestones to
indicate characters in the novels.

It is right to note here, that the kind people of Portsmouth were
desirous of inserting a stained-glass window in their beautiful new
church to the memory of one of their most famou