Phiz,"--Hablot
K. Browne,--the illustrator of "Pickwick," journeyed together abroad for a
brief time. On his return, Dickens first made acquaintance with the
seaside village of Broadstairs, where his memory still lives, preserved by
an ungainly structure yclept "Bleak House."

[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS, HIS WIFE, AND SISTER GEORGINA.

_From a pencil drawing by D. Maclise._]

It may be permissible here to make further mention of Broadstairs. The
town itself formed the subject of a paper which he wrote for _Household
Words_ in 1851, while as to the structure known as "Bleak House," it
formed, as beforesaid, his residence for a short time in 1843.

Writing to an American friend, Professor Felton, at that time, he said:

"In a bay-window in a 'one pair' sits, from nine o'clock to one, a
gentleman with rather long hair and no neckcloth, who writes and grins as
if he thought he were very funny indeed. His name is Boz.... He is brown
as a berry, and they _do_ say is a small fortune to the innkeeper who
sells beer and cold punch...."

Altogether a unique and impressive pen-portrait, and being from the hand
of one who knew his sitter, should be considered a truthful one.

In 1843 Maclise made that remarkable and winsome pencil sketch of Dickens,
his wife, and her sister Georgina, one of those fleeting impressions
which, for depicting character and sentiment, is worth square yards of
conventional portraiture, and which is reproduced here out of sheer
admiration for its beauty and power as a record _intime_. It has been
rather coarsely referred to in the past as Maclise's sketch of "Dickens
and his pair of petticoats," but we let that pass by virtue of its own
sweeping condemnation,--of its being anything more than a charming and
intimate record of a fleeting period in the novelist's life, too soon to
go--never to return.

Dickens' connection with the _Daily News_ was but of brief duration; true,
his partisans have tried to prove that it was under his leadership that it
was launched upon its career. This is true in a measure,--he was its first
editor,--but his tenure of office only lasted "_three short weeks_."

He was succeeded in the editorial chair by his biographer, Forster.

The first number came out on January 21, 1846,--a copy in the recent
"Dickens Fellowship Exhibition" (London. 1903) bore the following
inscription in Mrs. Dickens' autograph: "Brought home by Charles at two
o'clock in the morning.--Cath