f the "filthy graveyard" of
"Bleak House." It has been variously placed in the churchyard of St.
Dunstan's-in-the-West, St. Bartholomew-the-Less, and again in Drury Lane
Court, now disappeared. Most likely it was the latter, if any of these
neighbourhoods, though it is all hearsay now, though formerly one of the
"stock sights" of the "Lady Guide Association," who undertook to gratify
any reasonable whim of the inquisitive American.

A recent foregathering of members of the "Boz Club" at Rochester, which
celebrated the thirty-first anniversary of the novelist's death on June 9,
1870, occurred in the homely "Bull Inn." This little band of devoted
"Dickensians" contained among them Mr. Henry Dickens, K. C., the son of
the novelist; Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, who had the honour of being intimately
associated with Dickens on _Household Words_; Mr. Luke Fildes, R. A.,
among whose many famous paintings is that pathetic story-telling canvas,
"The Empty Chair," being a reproduction of that portion of Dickens' study
at Gad's Hill, wherein stood the writer's desk and chair.

On such a day as that on which the immortal Pickwick "bent over the
balustrades of Rochester Bridge contemplating nature and waiting for
breakfast," the club (in June, 1903) had journeyed to Rochester to do
homage to the fame of their master. The mediaeval, cramped High Street,
"full of gables, with old beams and timbers carved into strange faces,"
seems to bask and grow sleepier than ever in the glaring sunlight. It is
all practically just as Dickens saw it for the last time three days before
his death, as he stood against the wooden palings near the Restoration
House contemplating the old Manor House--just the same even to "the queer
old clock that projects over the pavement out of a grave red-brick
building, as if Time carried on business there, and hung out his sign."
Those of the visitors so "dispoged" had lunch in the coffee-room of the
"Bull," unchanged since the days of the original Pickwickians, but it is
only in fancy and framed presentments that one now sees the "G. C. M. P.
C." and his disciples, Messrs. Tupman, Snodgrass, Winkle, and Jingle. So
closely, however, do we follow in the footsteps of Mr. Pickwick (wrote a
member of the party) that we look through the selfsame coffee-room blinds
at the passengers in the High Street, in which entertaining occupation we
were disturbed, as was Mr. Pickwick, by the coming of the waiter (perhaps
one should say a w