o the old rules it had to begin as soon after
seven as possible. "Stay in the tea room and take your sixpennorths."
Mr. Dowler's advice was after a regulation "that everyone admitted to the
tea-rooms on dress nights shall pay _6d._ for tea." The M.C.'s visit to
Mr. Pickwick was a real carrying out of the spirit of the regulations, in
which it was requested that "all strangers will give the M.C. an
opportunity of being introduced to them before they themselves are
entitled to that attention and respect."

Nothing is more gratifying to the genuine Pickwickians than to find how
all these old memories of the book are fondly cherished in the good city.
All the Pickwickian localities are identified, and the inhabitants are
eager in every way to maintain that Mr. Pickwick belongs to them, and had
been with them. We should have had his room in the White Hart pointed
out, and "slept in" by Americans and others, had it still been left to
stand. Not long since, the writer went down to the good old city for the
pleasant duty of "preaching Pickwick," as he had done in a good many
places. There is an antique building or temple not far from where an old
society of the place--the Bath Literary and Scientific Institute--holds
its meetings, and here, to a crowded gathering under the presidency of
Mr. Austen King, the subject was gone into. It was delightful for the
Pickwickian stranger to meet so appreciative a response, and many curious
details were mentioned. At the close--such is the force of the
delusion--we were all discussing Mr. Pickwick and his movements here and
there, with the same _conviction_ as we would have had in the case of
Miss Burney, or Mrs. Thrale or Dr. Johnson. The whole atmosphere was
congenial, and there was an old-world, old-fashioned air over the rooms.
It was delightful to be talking of Mr. Pickwick's Bath adventures in
Bath.

Nor was there anything unreasonably fantastical in making such
speculations all but realities. Bantam lived, as we know, in St. James's
Square--that very effective enclosure, with its solemn house and rich
deep greenery, that recall our own Fitzroy. No. 14 was his house, and
this, it was ascertained, was the actual residence of the living M.C. How
bold, therefore, of Boz to send up Sam to the very Square! Everyone,
too, knew Mrs. Craddock's house in the Circus--at least it was one of
two. It was No. 15 or 16, because at the time there were only a couple
in the middle which w