ps. It lies before the goal; the pursuit is
at an end. . . . Good-night, and heaven send our
journey may have a prosperous ending."--_The Old
Curiosity Shop._

IT is the morning of Saturday, the first of September, 1888, when our
wonderfully pleasant week's tramp in "Dickens-Land" comes to an end. We
have carried out every detail of our programme, without a single
_contretemps_ to mar the enjoyment of our delightful holiday; we have
visited not only the spots where the childhood and youth of Charles
Dickens were passed, and where the influence of the environment is
specially traceable in the tone of both his earlier and later writings,
but we have gone over and identified (as we proposed to do) a number of
places in which he delighted, and often described in those writings,
peopling them with airy characters (but to us most real), in whose
footsteps we have walked. We have seen the place where he was born; we
have seen nearly all the houses in which he lived in after life; and we
have been over the charming home occupied by him for fourteen years,
where his last moments passed away under the affectionate and
reverential solicitude of his sons and daughters, and of Miss Hogarth,
his sister-in-law, "the ever-useful, self-denying, and devoted friend."

And now we linger lovingly about a few of the streets and places in "the
ancient city," and especially in the precincts of the venerable
Cathedral, all sanctified by the memory of the mighty dead. We fain
would prolong our visit, but the "stern mandate of duty," as Immanuel
Kant called it, prevails, and we bow to the inevitable; or as Mr.
Herbert Spencer better puts it, "our duty is our pleasure, and our
greatest happiness consists in achieving the happiness of others." We
feel our departure to-day the more keenly, as everything tempts us to
stay. Listening for a moment at the open door--the beautiful west
door--of the Cathedral, in this glorious morning in early autumn, we
hear the harmonies of the organ and choir softly wafted to us from
within; we feel the delicious morning air, which comes over the old
Castle and burial-ground from the Kentish hills; we see the bright and
beautiful flowers and foliage of the lovely catalpa tree, through which
the sunlight glints; a solemn calm pervades the spot as the hum of the
city is hushed; and, although we have read them over and over again,
now, for the first time, do we adequately realize the exqui