ds of Sir Arthur Helps, an excellent judge.
"He was very refined in his conversation--at least, what I call
refined--for he was one of those persons in whose society one is
comfortable from the certainty that they will never say anything which
can shock other people, or hurt their feelings, be they ever so
fastidious or sensitive."

FOOTNOTES:

[26] His foolish quarrel with Bradbury and Evans had necessitated the
abandonment of _Household Words_.

[27] See his pamphlet, "The Artist and the Author." The matter is
fully discussed in his life by Mr. Blanchard Jerrold.

[28] Buss's illustrations were executed under great disadvantages, and
are bad. Those of Seymour are excellent.

[29] I am always sorry, however, that Cruikshank did not illustrate
the Christmas stories.

[30] See _Cornhill Magazine_ for February, 1864.

CHAPTER XIII.

But we are now, alas, nearing the point where the "rapid" of Dickens'
life began to "shoot to its fall." The year 1865, during which he
partly wrote "Our Mutual Friend," was a fatal one in his career. In
the month of February he had been very ill, with an affection of the
left foot, at first thought to be merely local, but which really
pointed to serious mischief, and never afterwards wholly left him.
Then, on June 9th, when returning from France, where he had gone to
recruit, he as nearly as possible lost his life in a railway accident
at Staplehurst. A bridge had broken in; some of the carriages fell
through, and were smashed; that in which Dickens was, hung down the
side of the chasm. Of courage and presence of mind he never showed any
lack. They were evinced, on one occasion, at the readings, when an
alarm of fire arose. They shone conspicuous here. He quieted two
ladies who were in the same compartment of the carriage; helped to
extricate them and others from their perilous position; gave such help
as he could to the wounded and dying; probably was the means of saving
the life of one man, whom he was the first to hear faintly groaning
under a heap of wreckage; and then, as he tells in the "postscript" to
the book, scrambled back into the carriage to find the crumpled MS.
of a portion of "Our Mutual Friend."[31] But even pluck is powerless
to prevent a ruinous shock to the nerves. Though Dickens had done so
manfully what he had to do at the time, he never fully recovered from
the blow. His daughter tells us how he would often, "when travelling
home from London, suddenl