Robert Whiston, M.A., Mr. W. T. Wildish,
Mr. Humphrey Wood, Mr. C. K. Worsfold, and Mrs. Henry Wright. The late
Mr. Roach Smith, F.S.A., took much interest in my work and gave valuable
assistance. Mr. Luke Fildes, R.A., and Mrs. Lynn Linton generously
contributed very interesting information. The Right Honourable the Earl
of Darnley, Mr. Henry Fielding Dickens, Mr. W. P. Frith, R.A., and Lady
Head, also kindly answered enquiries.

Miss Hogarth has at my request very kindly consented to the publication
of the original letters of the Novelist--about a dozen--now printed for
the first time.

My sincere thanks are due to Mr. E. W. Badger, F.R.H.S., the friend of
many years, for valuable help.

To my old friend and fellow-tramp, Mr. F. G. Kitton, with whose memory
this delightful excursion will ever be pleasantly connected, my warmest
thanks are due for reading proofs and for much kind help in many ways.
"He wos werry good to me, he wos." As Pip wrote to another "Jo," "WOT
LARX" we did have.

Last, but not least, my cordial thanks are due to Mr. Charles Dickens
for much kind information and valuable criticism.

So long as readers continue to be, so long will our great English
trilogy of cognate authors, Shakespeare, Scott, and Dickens, continue to
be read. Indeed as regards Dickens, a writer in _Blackwood_, June, 1871
(and _Blackwood_ was not always a sympathetic critic), said:--"We may
apply to him, without doubt, the surest test to which the maker can be
subject: were all his books swept by some intellectual catastrophe out
of the world, there would still exist in the world some score at least
of people, with all whose ways and sayings we are more intimately
acquainted than with those of our brothers and sisters, who would owe to
him their being. While we live Sam Weller and Dick Swiveller, Mr.
Pecksniff and Mrs. Gamp, the Micawbers and the Squeerses, can never
die. . . . They are more real than we are ourselves, and will outlive
and outlast us, as they have outlived their creator. This is the one
proof of genius which no critic, not the most carping or dissatisfied,
can gainsay."

So long also, the author ventures to think, will pilgrimages continue to
be made to the shrines of Stratford-on-Avon, Abbotsford, and Gad's Hill
Place, and to their vicinities. The modest aim of this Volume is, that
it may add a humble unit in helping to keep _his_ memory green, and that
it may be a useful and acceptable companion to pil