quis of Dufferin and Ava (since died), Lord Brompton,
Hamilton Aide, Alfred Austin, Sir Squire Bancroft, Arthur a Beckett,
Francesco Berger, Henry Fielding Dickens, K. C., Edward Dicy, C. B., W. P.
Frith, R. A., William Farrow, Otto Goldschmidt, John Hollingshead, the
Very Reverend Dean Hole, Sir Henry Irving, Frederick A. Inderwick, K. C.,
Sir Herbert Jerningham, K. C., M. G., Charles Kent, Fred'k G. Kitton, Moy
Thomas, Right Honourable Sir Arthur Otway, Bart., Joseph C. Parkinson,
George Storey, A. R. A., J. Ashby Sterry, and Right Honourable Sir H.
Drummond Wolfe.

Perhaps the most whole-souled endorsement of the esteem with which Dickens
was held among his friends and contemporaries was contributed to the
special Dickens' memorial number of _Household Words_ by Francesco Berger,
who composed the incidental music which accompanied Wilkie Collins' play,
"The Frozen Deep," in which Dickens himself appeared in 1857:

"I saw a great deal of Charles Dickens personally for many years. He was
always most genial and most hearty, a man whose friendship was of the
warmest possible character, and who put his whole soul into every pursuit.
He was most generous, and his household was conducted on a very liberal
scale.

"I consider that, if not the first, he was among the first, who went out
of the highways into the byways to discover virtue and merit of every kind
among the lower classes, and found romance in the lowest ranks of life.

"I regard Dickens as the greatest social reformer in England I have ever
known outside politics. His works have tended to revolutionize for the
better our law courts, our prisons, our hospitals, our schools, our
workhouses, our government offices, etc.

"He was a fearless exposer of cant in every direction,--religious, social,
and political."

Such was the broad-gauge estimate of one who knew Dickens well. It may
unquestionably be accepted as his greatest eulogy.

None of Dickens' contemporaries are more remembered and revered than the
illustrators of his stories. Admitting all that can possibly be said of
the types which we have come to recognize as being "Dickenesque," he would
be rash who would affirm that none of their success was due to their
pictorial delineation.

Dickens himself has said that he would have preferred that his stories
were not illustrated, but, on the other hand, he had more than usual
concern with regard thereto when the characters were taking form under the
pencils