Charles Dickens—A Lecture.

" But , ladies and gentlemen , " Dickens added , " such things need not be , and will not be , if this company , which is a drop of the life-blood of the great compassionate public heart , will only accept the means of rescue and prevention which it is mine to

offer . " Within a quarter of a mile of this place where I speak stands a once courtly old house , where blooming children were born and grew up to be men and women , and married , and brought their own blooming

children back to patter up the old oak staircase which stood but the other day , and to wonder at the . old oak carvings on the chimney-pieces . In the airy wards into which the old state drawing-rooms and family bed-chambers of that house are now converted , are lodged such small

patients that , the attendant nurses look like reclaimed giantesses , and the kind medical practitioner like an amiable Christian ogre . Grouped about the little low tables in the centre of the rooms are such tiny convalescents that they seem to be playing

at having been ill . On the dolls' beds are such diminutive creatures that each poor sufferer is supplied with its tray of toys ; and looking round , you may see how the little tired , flushed cheek has toppled over half the brute creation on their way into

the ark , or how one little dimpled arm has mowed down ( as I saw myself ) the whole tin soldiery of Europe . On the walls of these rooms are graceful , pleasant , bright , childish pictures . At the beds ' heads hang representations of the figure which is the universal embodiment of all

mercy and compassion , the figure of Him who was once a child Himself , and a poor one . But , alas ! reckoning up the number of beds that are there , the visitor to this child ' s hospital will find himself perforce obli ged to stop at very little over thirty , and will learn with sorrow and surprise

that even that small number , so forlornly , so miserably diminutive compared with this vast London , cannot possibly be maintained unless the hospital be better known . I limit myself to saying better known , because I will not believe that in a Christian

communit y of fathers and mothers and Mothers and sisters it can fail , being better Known , to be well and richly endowed . " It was a brave and true prediction , Forster adds . The Child ' s Hospital has never since known want . That nif / ht

alone added greatly more than £ 3 , 000 to its funds , and Dickens put the crown to his good work by reading on its behalf his famous Christmas Carol . It was from this date ( 1858 ) may be reckoned his taking to public reading .

Writing to Forster from York during the time of his readings , Dickens says : — " I was brought very near to what I sometimes dream may be my fame , when a lady , whose face 1 had never seen , stopped me yesterday in the street and said to me , ' Mr . Dickens , will you let me touch the hand that has filled my house with many friends ? ' "

The effect of his readings seems to have been most amazing , and the prices paid enormous . In Dublin he says , in a letter to his eldest daughter , they had offered frantic prices for stalls . Eleven Bank notes were thrust into a pay-box at one time for eleven

stalls . " Our men were flattened against walls and squeezed against beams . Ladies stood all night with their chins against my platform . Other ladies sat all night upon my steps . We turned-away people enough to make immense houses for a week . "

At Belfast the success was quite as great . He had enormous houses , and turned away half the town . Writing to his sister-inlaw , he says , " I wish you and the dear girls could have seen the people look at me in the street , or heard them ask me , as

I hurried to the hotel after the reading last night , to ' do me the honour to shake hands with Misthur Dickens , and God bless you , sir ; not ounly for the light you ' ve been to inee house , sir ( and God love your face ) this many a year !'"

He says he had never seen men go in to cry so undisguisedly as they did at the Dombey reading ; and as to the Boots and Mrs . Gamp , it was just one roar with me and them , for they made me laugh so that sometimes I could not compose my

face to go on . " A little incident illustrative of his worth in the eyes of perfect strangers ought not certainly to go unrecorded . In 1870 , not long before his death , a correspondent had written to him from

Liverpool describing himself as a selfraised man , attributing his prosperous career to what Dickens' writings had taught him at the outset of the wisdom of