well-known publishing office of
Messrs. Richard Bentley and Son, whose once celebrated magazine,
_Bentley's Miscellany_, Dickens edited for a period of two years and two
months, terminating, 1838, on his resignation of the editorship to Mr.
W. Harrison Ainsworth; and we also pass lower down, at the bottom of
Waterloo Place, that most select of clubs, "The Athenaeum," at the corner
of Pall Mall, of which Dickens was elected a member in 1838, and from
which, on the 20th May, 1870, he wrote his last letter to his son, Mr.
Alfred Tennyson Dickens, in Australia; and a tenderly loving letter it
is, indicating the harmonious relations between father and son. It
expresses the hope that the two (Alfred and "Plorn") "may become
proprietors," and "aspire to the first positions in the colony without
casting off the old connection," and thus concludes:--"From Mr. Bear I
had the best accounts of you. I told him that they did not surprise me,
for I had unbounded faith in you. For which take my love and blessing."
Sad to say, a note to this (the last in the series of published letters)
states:--"This letter did not reach Australia until after these two sons
of Charles Dickens had heard, by telegraph, the news of their father's
death."[3]

At Morley's we refresh ourselves with Mr. Sam Weller's idea of a nice
little dinner, consisting of "pair of fowls and a weal cutlet; French
beans, taturs, tart and tidiness;" and then depart for Victoria Station,
to take train by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway to Rochester.

The weather forecast issued by that most valuable institution, the
Meteorological Office (established since Mr. Pickwick's days, in which
doubtless as a scientist and traveller he would have taken great
interest), was verified to the letter, and we had "thunder locally." On
our way down Parliament Street, we pass Inigo Jones's once splendid
Whitehall--now looking very insignificant as compared with its grand
neighbours the Government Offices opposite--remembering Mr. Jingle's
joke about Whitehall, which seems to have been Dickens's first thought
of "King Charles's head":--"Looking at Whitehall, Sir--fine
place--little window--somebody else's head off there, eh, Sir?--he
didn't keep a sharp look out enough either--eh, Sir, eh?"

We also pass "The Red Lion," No. 48, Parliament Street, "at the corner
of the very short street leading into Cannon Row," where David
Copperfield ordered a glass of the very best ale--"The Genuine