od, as we subsequently learned), upon which he
breathed his last.

The drawing-room faces the front, and, like the dining-room, has been
lengthened, and opens into the conservatory. In fact, Dickens was always
improving Gad's Hill Place. There is a memorable reference to the
conservatory by Forster in the third vol. of the _Life_. He says:--

"This last addition had long been an object of desire with him, though
he would hardly, even now, have given himself the indulgence but for the
golden shower from America. He saw it first in a completed state on the
Sunday before his death, when his youngest daughter was on a visit to
him.

"'Well, Katey,' he said to her, 'now you see POSITIVELY the last
improvement at Gad's Hill,' and every one laughed at the joke against
himself. The success of the new conservatory was unquestionable. It was
the remark of all around him, that he was certainly, from this last of
his improvements, drawing more enjoyment than from any of its
predecessors, when the scene for ever closed!"

This room is a long one, and, in common with all the others, gives us,
under the auspices of the brilliantly fine day, some idea of the late
owner's love of light, air, and cheerfulness. That the situation is also
a healthy and bracing one is confirmed by the fact, that in a letter
written on board the _Russia_, bound for Liverpool, on the 26th April,
1868, after his second American tour, he speaks of having made a "Gad's
Hill breakfast."

Our most considerate cicerone next takes us into several of the
bedrooms, these being of large size, and having a little dressing-room
marked off with a partition, head-high, so that no cubic space is lost
to the main chamber. As illustrative of Charles Dickens's care for the
comfort of his friends, it is said that in the visitors' bedrooms there
was always hot water and a little tea-table set out, so that each one
could at any time make for himself a cup of the beverage "that cheers
but not inebriates." The views from these rooms are very charming. Mr.
W. T. Wildish afterwards told us, that during the novelist's life-time,
Mr. Trood, the landlord of the Sir John Falstaff, once took him over
Gad's Hill Place, and he was surprised to find Dickens's own bath-room
covered with cuttings from _Punch_ and other comic papers. I have since
learned that this was a screen of engravings which had originally been
given him.

The gardens, both flower and vegetable, are then pointed out