e whole history is enchanting and full of
genius. I only wonder that, having such an opportunity of
illustrating the doctrine of visible judgments, he never remarks,
when Cortes and his men tumble the idols down the temple steps and
call upon the people to take notice that their gods are powerless to
help themselves, that possibly if some intelligent native had
tumbled down the image of the Virgin or patron saint after them
nothing very remarkable might have ensued in consequence.

Of course you like Macready. Your name's Felton. I wish you could
see him play Lear. It is stupendously terrible. But I suppose he
would be slow to act it with the Boston company.

Hearty remembrances to Sumner, Longfellow, Prescott, and all whom
you know I love to remember. Countless happy years to you and
yours, my dear Felton, and some instalment of them, however slight,
in England, in the loving company of

THE PROSCRIBED ONE.

O, breathe not his name.

* * * * *

Here is a portfolio of Dickens's letters, written to me from time to
time during the past ten years. As long ago as the spring of 1858 I
began to press him very hard to come to America and give us a course of
readings from his works. At that time I had never heard him read in
public, but the fame of his wonderful performances rendered me eager to
have my own country share in the enjoyment of them. Being in London in
the summer of 1859, and dining with him one day in his town residence,
Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, we had much talk in a corner of his
library about coming to America. I thought him over-sensitive with
regard to his reception here, and I tried to remove any obstructions
that might exist in his mind at that time against a second visit across
the Atlantic. I followed up our conversation with a note setting forth
the certainty of his success among his Transatlantic friends, and urging
him to decide on a visit during the year. He replied to me, dating from
"Gad's Hill Place, Higham by Rochester, Kent."

"I write to you from my little Kentish country house, on the very
spot where Falstaff ran away.

"I cannot tell you how very much obliged to you I feel for your kind
suggestion, and for the perfectly frank and unaffected manner in
which it is conveyed to me.

"It touches, I will admit to you frankly, a chord that has several
times so