ompletion of the new story during the progress of
_Oliver_, whatever might be required to follow on the close of
_Pickwick_; and I doubted its wisdom. But it was accepted for the time.

He had meanwhile taken his wife abroad for a ten days' summer holiday,
accompanied by the shrewd observant young artist, Mr. Hablot Browne,
whose admirable illustrations to _Pickwick_ had more than supplied Mr.
Seymour's loss; and I had a letter from him on their landing at Calais
on the 2d of July:

"We have arranged for a post-coach to take us to Ghent, Brussels,
Antwerp, and a hundred other places, that I cannot recollect now and
couldn't spell if I did. We went this afternoon in a barouche to some
gardens where the people dance, and where they were footing it most
heartily,--especially the women, who in their short petticoats and light
caps look uncommonly agreeable. A gentleman in a blue surtout and silken
berlins accompanied us from the hotel, and acted as curator. He even
waltzed with a very smart lady (just to show us, condescendingly, how it
ought to be done), and waltzed elegantly, too. We rang for slippers
after we came back, and it turned out that this gentleman was the
Boots."

His later sea-side holiday was passed at Broadstairs, as were those of
many subsequent years, and the little watering-place has been made
memorable by his pleasant sketch of it. From his letters to myself a few
lines may be given of his first doings and impressions there.

Writing on the 3d of September, he reports himself just risen from an
attack of illness. "I am much better, and hope to begin _Pickwick No.
18_ to-morrow. You will imagine how queer I must have been when I tell
you that I have been compelled for four-and-twenty mortal hours to
abstain from porter or other malt liquor!!! I have done it
though--really. . . . I have discovered that the landlord of the Albion has
delicious hollands (but what is that to _you_? for you cannot sympathize
with my feelings), and that a cobbler who lives opposite to my bedroom
window is a Roman Catholic, and gives an hour and a half to his
devotions every morning behind his counter. I have walked upon the
sands at low-water from this place to Ramsgate, and sat upon the same at
high-ditto till I have been flayed with the cold. I have seen ladies and
gentlemen walking upon the earth in slippers of buff, and pickling
themselves in the sea in complete suits of the same. I have seen stout
gentlemen looking at