t, until it assumes form and beauty, and
becomes instinct with life."

In society Dickens rarely referred to the traits and characteristics of
people he had known; but during a long walk in the country he delighted
to recall and describe the peculiarities, eccentric and otherwise, of
dead and gone as well as living friends. Then Sydney Smith and Jeffrey
and Christopher North and Talfourd and Hood and Rogers seemed to live
over again in his vivid reproductions, made so impressive by his
marvellous memory and imagination. As he walked rapidly along the road,
he appeared to enjoy the keen zest of his companion in the numerous
impersonations with which he was indulging him.

He always had much to say of animals as well as of men, and there were
certain dogs and horses he had met and known intimately which it was
specially interesting to him to remember and picture. There was a
particular dog in Washington which he was never tired of delineating.
The first night Dickens read in the Capital this dog attracted his
attention. "He came into the hall by himself," said he, "got a good
place before the reading began, and paid strict attention throughout. He
came the second night, and was ignominiously shown out by one of the
check-takers. On the third night he appeared again with another dog,
which he had evidently promised to pass in free; but you see," continued
Dickens, "upon the imposition being unmasked, the other dog apologized
by a howl and withdrew. His intentions, no doubt, were of the best, but
he afterwards rose to explain outside, with such inconvenient eloquence
to the reader and his audience, that they were obliged to put him down
stairs."

He was such a firm believer in the mental faculties of animals, that it
would have gone hard with a companion with whom he was talking, if a
doubt were thrown, however inadvertently, on the mental intelligence of
any four-footed friend that chanced to be at the time the subject of
conversation. All animals which he took under his especial patronage
seemed to have a marked affection for him. Quite a colony of dogs has
always been a feature at Gad's Hill.

In many walks and talks with Dickens, his conversation, now, alas! so
imperfectly recalled, frequently ran on the habits of birds, the raven,
of course, interesting him particularly. He always liked to have a raven
hopping about his grounds, and whoever has read the new Preface to
"Barnaby Rudge" must remember several of his ol