autiful poem will always be associated with the memory of
Hawthorne, and most fitting was it that his fellow-student, whom he so
loved and honored, should sing his requiem.

DICKENS

* * * * *

"_O friend with heart as gentle for distress,
As resolute with wise true thoughts to bind
The happiest with the unhappiest of our kind_"

John Forster.

_"All men are to an unspeakable degree brothers, each man's life a
strange emblem of every man's; and Human Portraits, faithfully drawn,
are of all pictures the welcomest on human walls."_--Carlyle.

IV. DICKENS.

I observe my favorite chair is placed to-day where the portraits of
Charles Dickens are easiest seen, and I take the hint accordingly. Those
are likenesses of him from the age of twenty-eight down to the year when
he passed through "the golden gate," as that wise mystic William Blake
calls death. One would hardly believe these pictures represented the
same man! See what a beautiful young person Maclise represents in this
early likeness of the great author, and then contrast the face with that
worn one in the photograph of 1869. The same man, but how different in
aspect! I sometimes think, while looking at those two portraits, I must
have known two individuals bearing the same name, at various periods of
my own life. Let me speak to-day of the younger Dickens. How well I
recall the bleak winter evening in 1842 when I first saw the handsome,
glowing face of the young man who was even then famous over half the
globe! He came bounding into the Tremont House, fresh from the steamer
that had brought him to our shores, and his cheery voice rang through
the hall, as he gave a quick glance at the new scenes opening upon him
in a strange land on first arriving at a Transatlantic hotel. "Here we
are!" he shouted, as the lights burst upon the merry party just entering
the house, and several gentlemen came forward to greet him. Ah, how
happy and buoyant he was then! Young, handsome, almost worshipped for
his genius, belted round by such troops of friends as rarely ever man
had, coming to a new country to make new conquests of fame and
honor,--surely it was a sight long to be remembered and never wholly to
be forgotten. The splendor of his endowments and the personal interest
he had won to himself called forth all the enthusiasm of old and young
America, and I am glad to have been amon