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  again. The distinction you have conferred upon me is one which I

  never hoped for, and of which I never dared to dream. That it is

  one which I shall never forget, and that while I live I shall be

  proud of its remembrance, you must well know. I believe I shall

  never hear the name of this capital of Scotland without a thrill of

  gratitude and pleasure. I shall love while I have life her people,

  her hills, and her houses, and even the very stones of her streets.

  And if in the future works which may lie before me you should

  discern - God grant you may! - a brighter spirit and a clearer wit,

  I pray you to refer it back to this night, and point to that as a

  Scottish passage for evermore. I thank you again and again, with

  the energy of a thousand thanks in each one, and I drink to you

  with a heart as full as my glass, and far easier emptied, I do

  assure you.

  [Later in the evening, in proposing the health of Professor Wilson,

  Mr. Dickens said:-]

  I HAVE the honour to be entrusted with a toast, the very mention of

  which will recommend itself to you, I know, as one possessing no

  ordinary claims to your sympathy and approbation, and the proposing

  of which is as congenial to my wishes and feelings as its

  acceptance must be to yours. It is the health of our Chairman, and

  coupled with his name I have to propose the literature of Scotland

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  - a literature which he has done much to render famous through the

  world, and of which he has been for many years - as I hope and

  believe he will be for many more - a most brilliant and

  distinguished ornament. Who can revert to the literature of the

  land of Scott and of Burns without having directly in his mind, as

  inseparable from the subject and foremost in the picture, that old

  man of might, with his lion heart and sceptred crutch - Christopher

  North. I am glad to remember the time when I believed him to be a

  real, actual, veritable old gentleman, that might be seen any day

  hobbling along the High Street with the most brilliant eye - but

  that is no fiction - and the greyest hair in all the world - who

  wrote not because he cared to write, not because he cared for the

  wonder and admiration of his fellow-men, but who wrote because he

  could not help it, because there was always springing up in his

  mind a clear and sparkling stream of poetry which must have vent,

  and like the glittering fountain in the fairy tale, draw what you

  might, was ever at the full, and never languished even by a single

  drop or bubble. I had so figured him in my mind, and when I saw

  the Professor two days ago, striding along the Parliament House, I

  was disposed to take it as a personal offence - I was vexed to see

  him look so hearty. I drooped to see twenty Christophers in one.

  I began to think that Scottish life was all light and no shadows,

  and I began to doubt that beautiful book to which I have turned

  again and again, always to find new beauties and fresh sources of

  interest.

  [In proposing the memory of the late Sir David Wilkie, Mr. Dickens

  said:-]

  LESS fortunate than the two gentlemen who have preceded me, it is

  confided to me to mention a name which cannot be pronounced without

  sorrow, a name in which Scotland had a great triumph, and which

  England delighted to honour. One of the gifted of the earth has

  passed away, as it were, yesterday; one who was devoted to his art,

  and his art was nature - I mean David Wilkie. He was one who made

  the cottage hearth a graceful thing - of whom it might truly be

  said that he found "books in the running brooks," and who has left

  in all he did some breathing of the air which stirs the heather.

  But however desirous to enlarge on his genius as an artist, I would

  rather speak of him now as a friend who has gone from amongst us.

  There is his deserted studio - the empty easel lying idly by - the

  unfinished picture with its face turned to the wall, and there is

  that bereaved sister, who loved him with an affection which death

  cannot quench. He has left a name in fame clear as the bright sky;

  he has filled our minds with memories pure as the blue waves which

  roll over him. Let us hope that she who more than all others

  mourns his loss, may learn to reflect that he died in the fulness

  of his time, before age or sickness had dimmed his powers - and

  that she may yet associate with feelings as calm and pleasant as we

  do now the memory of Wilkie.

  SPEECH: JANUARY, 1842.

  [In presenting Captain Hewett, of the BRITANNIA, with a service of

  plate on behalf of the passengers, Mr. Dickens addressed him as

  follows:]

  CAPTAIN HEWETT, - I am very proud and happy to have been selected

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  as the instrument of conveying to you the heartfelt thanks of my

  fellow-passengers on board the ship entrusted to your charge, and

  of entreating your acceptance of this trifling present. The

  ingenious artists who work in silver do not always, I find, keep

  their promises, even in Boston. I regret that, instead of two

  goblets, which there should be here, there is, at present, only

  one. The deficiency, however, will soon be supplied; and, when it

  is, our little testimonial will be, so far, complete.

  You are a sailor, Captain Hewett, in the truest sense of the word;

  and the devoted admiration of the ladies, God bless them, is a

  sailor's first boast. I need not enlarge upon the honour they have

  done you, I am sure, by their presence here. Judging of you by

  myself, I am certain that the recollection of their beautiful faces

  will cheer your lonely vigils upon the ocean for a long time to

  come.

  In all time to come, and in all your voyages upon the sea, I hope

  you will have a thought for those who wish to live in your memory

  by the help of these trifles. As they will often connect you with

  the pleasure of those homes and fire sides from which they once

  wandered, and which, but for you, they might never have regained,

  so they trust that you will sometimes associate them with your

  hours of festive enjoyment; and, that, when you drink from these

  cups, you will feel that the draught is commended to your lips by

  friends whose best wishes you have; and who earnestly and truly

  hope for your success, happiness, and prosperity, in all the

  undertakings of your life.

  SPEECH: FEBRUARY 1842.

  [At dinner given to Mr. Dickens by the young men of Boston. The

  company consisted of about two hundred, among whom were George

  Bancroft, Washington Allston, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. The toast

  of "Health, happiness, and a hearty welcome to Charles Dickens,"

  having been proposed by the chairman, Mr. Quincy, and received with

  great applause, Mr. Dickens responded with the following address:]

  GENTLEMEN, - If you had given this splendid entertainment to anyone

  else in the whole wide world - if I were to-night to exult in the

  triumph
of my dearest friend - if I stood here upon my defence, to

  repel any unjust attack - to appeal as a stranger to your

  generosity and kindness as the freest people on the earth - I

  could, putting some restraint upon myself, stand among you as selfpossessed

  and unmoved as I should be alone in my own room in

  England. But when I have the echoes of your cordial greeting

  ringing in my ears; when I see your kind faces beaming a welcome so

  warm and earnest as never man had - I feel, it is my nature, so

  vanquished and subdued, that I have hardly fortitude enough to

  thank you. If your President, instead of pouring forth that

  delightful mixture of humour and pathos which you have just heard,

  had been but a caustic, ill-natured man - if he had only been a

  dull one - if I could only have doubted or distrusted him or you, I

  should have had my wits at my fingers' ends, and, using them, could

  have held you at arm's-length. But you have given me no such

  opportunity; you take advantage of me in the tenderest point; you

  give me no chance of playing at company, or holding you at a

  distance, but flock about me like a host of brothers, and make this

  place like home. Indeed, gentlemen, indeed, if it be natural and

  allowable for each of us, on his own hearth, to express his

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  Dickens, Charles - Speeches, Literary & Social

  thoughts in the most homely fashion, and to appear in his plainest

  garb, I have a fair claim upon you to let me do so to-night, for

  you have made my home an Aladdin's Palace. You fold so tenderly

  within your breasts that common household lamp in which my feeble

  fire is all enshrined, and at which my flickering torch is lighted

  up, that straight my household gods take wing, and are transported

  there. And whereas it is written of that fairy structure that it

  never moved without two shocks - one when it rose, and one when it

  settled down - I can say of mine that, however sharp a tug it took

  to pluck it from its native ground, it struck at once an easy, and

  a deep and lasting root into this soil; and loved it as its own. I

  can say more of it, and say with truth, that long before it moved,

  or had a chance of moving, its master - perhaps from some secret

  sympathy between its timbers, and a certain stately tree that has

  its being hereabout, and spreads its broad branches far and wide -

  dreamed by day and night, for years, of setting foot upon this

  shore, and breathing this pure air. And, trust me, gentlemen,

  that, if I had wandered here, unknowing and unknown, I would - if I

  know my own heart - have come with all my sympathies clustering as

  richly about this land and people - with all my sense of justice as

  keenly alive to their high claims on every man who loves God's

  image - with all my energies as fully bent on judging for myself,

  and speaking out, and telling in my sphere the truth, as I do now,

  when you rain down your welcomes on my head.

  Our President has alluded to those writings which have been my

  occupation for some years past; and you have received his allusions

  in a manner which assures me - if I needed any such assurance -

  that we are old friends in the spirit, and have been in close

  communion for a long time.

  It is not easy for a man to speak of his own books. I daresay that

  few persons have been more interested in mine than I, and if it be

  a general principle in nature that a lover's love is blind, and

  that a mother's love is blind, I believe it may be said of an

  author's attachment to the creatures of his own imagination, that

  it is a perfect model of constancy and devotion, and is the

  blindest of all. But the objects and purposes I have had in view

  are very plain and simple, and may be easily told. I have always

  had, and always shall have, an earnest and true desire to

  contribute, as far as in me lies, to the common stock of healthful

  cheerfulness and enjoyment. I have always had, and always shall

  have, an invincible repugnance to that mole-eyed philosophy which

  loves the darkness, and winks and scowls in the light. I believe

  that Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches, as she does in

  purple and fine linen. I believe that she and every beautiful

  object in external nature, claims some sympathy in the breast of

  the poorest man who breaks his scanty loaf of daily bread. I

  believe that she goes barefoot as well as shod. I believe that she

  dwells rather oftener in alleys and by-ways than she does in courts

  and palaces, and that it is good, and pleasant, and profitable to

  track her out, and follow her. I believe that to lay one's hand

  upon some of those rejected ones whom the world has too long

  forgotten, and too often misused, and to say to the proudest and

  most thoughtless - "These creatures have the same elements and

  capacities of goodness as yourselves, they are moulded in the same

  form, and made of the same clay; and though ten times worse than

  you, may, in having retained anything of their original nature

  amidst the trials and distresses of their condition, be really ten

  times better;" I believe that to do this is to pursue a worthy and

  not useless vocation. Gentlemen, that you think so too, your

  fervent greeting sufficiently assures me. That this feeling is

  alive in the Old World as well as in the New, no man should know

  better than I - I, who have found such wide and ready sympathy in

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  Dickens, Charles - Speeches, Literary & Social

  my own dear land. That in expressing it, we are but treading in

  the steps of those great master-spirits who have gone before, we

  know by reference to all the bright examples in our literature,

  from Shakespeare downward.

  There is one other point connected with the labours (if I may call

  them so) that you hold in such generous esteem, to which I cannot

  help adverting. I cannot help expressing the delight, the more

  than happiness it was to me to find so strong an interest awakened

  on this side of the water, in favour of that little heroine of

  mine, to whom your president has made allusion, who died in her

  youth. I had letters about that child, in England, from the

  dwellers in log-houses among the morasses, and swamps, and densest

  forests, and deep solitudes of the far west. Many a sturdy hand,

  hard with the axe and spade, and browned by the summer's sun, has

  taken up the pen, and written to me a little history of domestic

  joy or sorrow, always coupled, I am proud to say, with something of

  interest in that little tale, or some comfort or happiness derived

  from it, and my correspondent has always addressed me, not as a

  writer of books for sale, resident some four or five thousand miles

  away, but as a friend to whom he might freely impart the joys and

  sorrows of his own fireside. Many a mother - I could reckon them

  now by dozens, not by units - has done the like, and has told me

  how she lost such a child at such a time, and where she lay buried,

  and how good she was, and how, in this or that respect, she

  resembles Nell. I do assure you
that no circumstance of my life

  has given me one hundredth part of the gratification I have derived

  from this source. I was wavering at the time whether or not to

  wind up my Clock, and come and see this country, and this decided

  me. I felt as if it were a positive duty, as if I were bound to

  pack up my clothes, and come and see my friends; and even now I

  have such an odd sensation in connexion with these things, that you

  have no chance of spoiling me. I feel as though we were agreeing -

  as indeed we are, if we substitute for fictitious characters the

  classes from which they are drawn - about third parties, in whom we

  had a common interest. At every new act of kindness on your part,

  I say to myself "That's for Oliver; I should not wonder if that was

  meant for Smike; I have no doubt that is intended for Nell;" and so

  I become a much happier, certainly, but a more sober and retiring

  man than ever I was before.

  Gentlemen, talking of my friends in America, brings me back,

  naturally and of course, to you. Coming back to you, and being

  thereby reminded of the pleasure we have in store in hearing the

  gentlemen who sit about me, I arrive by the easiest, though not by

  the shortest course in the world, at the end of what I have to say.

  But before I sit down, there is one topic on which I am desirous to

  lay particular stress. It has, or should have, a strong interest

  for us all, since to its literature every country must look for one

  great means of refining and improving its people, and one great

  source of national pride and honour. You have in America great

  writers - great writers - who will live in all time, and are as

  familiar to our lips as household words. Deriving (as they all do

  in a greater or less degree, in their several walks) their

  inspiration from the stupendous country that gave them birth, they

  diffuse a better knowledge of it, and a higher love for it, all

  over the civilized world. I take leave to say, in the presence of

  some of those gentleman, that I hope the time is not far distant

  when they, in America, will receive of right some substantial

  profit and return in England from their labours; and when we, in

  England, shall receive some substantial profit and return in

  America for ours. Pray do not misunderstand me. Securing to

  myself from day to day the means of an honourable subsistence, I