tributor to "Household Words" and "All the Year Round"). We have the
same hope with regard to letters addressed to Sir Henry Layard, at
present Ambassador at Constantinople, which, of course, for the same
reason, cannot be lent to us at the present time.

We give a letter to Mr. Forster on one of his books on the Commonwealth,
the "Impeachment of the Five Members;" which, as with other letters
which we are glad to publish on the subject of Mr. Forster's own works,
was not used by himself for obvious reasons.

A letter to his daughter Mamie (who, after her sister's marriage, paid a
visit with her dear friends the White family to Scotland, where she had
a serious illness) introduces a recent addition to the family, who
became an important member of it, and one to whom Charles Dickens was
very tenderly attached--her little white Pomeranian dog "Mrs. Bouncer"
(so called after the celebrated lady of that name in "Box and Cox"). It
is quite necessary to make this formal introduction of the little pet
animal (who lived to be a very old dog and died in 1874), because future
letters to his daughter contain constant references and messages to
"Mrs. Bouncer," which would be quite unintelligible without this
explanation. "Boy," also referred to in this letter, was his daughter's
horse. The little dog and the horse were gifts to Mamie Dickens from her
friends Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Smith, and the sister of the latter, Miss
Craufurd.

[Sidenote: Mr. W. C. Macready.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Monday, Jan. 2nd, 1860._

MY DEAREST MACREADY,

A happy New Year to you, and many happy years! I cannot tell you how
delighted I was to receive your Christmas letter, or with what pleasure
I have received Forster's emphatic accounts of your health and spirits.
But when was I ever wrong? And when did I not tell you that you were an
impostor in pretending to grow older as the rest of us do, and that you
had a secret of your own for reversing the usual process! It happened
that I read at Cheltenham a couple of months ago, and that I have rarely
seen a place that so attracted my fancy. I had never seen it before.
Also I believe the character of its people to have greatly changed for
the better. All sorts of long-visaged prophets had told me that they
were dull, stolid, slow, and I don't know what more that is
disagreeable. I found them exactly the reverse in all respects; and I
saw an amount of beauty there--well--that is no