, and with great satisfaction to immense
audiences, for upwards of twelve years. He appeared in all the leading
cities of Great Britain; and he was enormously popular as a reader in
America during his second and last visit in 1868.

As an after-dinner and occasional speaker Dickens was rarely equaled;
and as an actor upon the amateur stage, in plays of his own composition,
he was inimitable.

Of his attempts at verse, 'The Ivy Green' is the only one that is held
in remembrance.

A strong argument in favor of what may be called "the staying qualities"
of Dickens is the fact that his characters, even in a mutilated,
unsatisfactory form, have held the stage for half a century or more, and
still have power to attract and move great audiences, wherever is spoken
the language in which he wrote. The dramatization of the novel is
universally and justly regarded as the most ephemeral and worthless of
dramatic production; and the novels of Dickens, on account of their
length, of the great number of figures he introduces, of the variety and
occasional exaggeration of his dialogues and his situations, have been
peculiarly difficult of adaptation to theatrical purposes. Nevertheless
the world laughed and cried over Micawber, Captain Cuttle, Dan'l
Peggotty, and Caleb Plummer, behind the footlights, years after Dolly
Spanker, Aminadab Sleek, Timothy Toodles, Alfred Evelyn, and Geoffrey
Dalk, their contemporaries in the standard and legitimate drama, created
solely and particularly for dramatic representation, were absolutely
forgotten. And Sir Henry Irving, sixty years after the production of
'Pickwick,' drew great crowds to see his Alfred Jingle, while that
picturesque and ingenious swindler Robert Macaire, Jingle's once famous
and familiar confrere in plausible rascality, was never seen on the
boards, except as he was burlesqued and caricatured in comic opera.

It is pretty safe to say--and not in a Pickwickian sense--that Pecksniff
will live almost as long as hypocrisy lasts; that Heep will not be
forgotten while mock humility exists; that Mr. Dick will go down to
posterity arm-in-arm with Charles the First, whom he could not avoid in
his memorial; that Barkis will be quoted until men cease to be willin'.
And so long as cheap, rough coats cover faith, charity, and honest
hearts, the world will remember that Captain Cuttle and the Peggottys
were so clad.

[Illustration: Signature]

[Illustration: _GADSHILL, THE RESIDENCE OF C