rkling, heaving, swelling up with life and
beauty, this bright morning." ("Our Watering-Place.")

Another reference of Dickens to the Kent coast was in one of the
_Household Words_ articles, entitled "Out of Season." The Watering-Place
"out of season" was Dover, and the place without a cliff was Deal.

Writing to his wife of his stay there, he says:

"I did nothing at Dover (except for _Household Words_), and have not begun
'Little Dorrit,' No. 8, yet. But I took twenty-mile walks in the fresh
air, and perhaps in the long run did better than if I had been at work."

One can hardly think of Deal or Dover without calling to mind the French
coast opposite, often, of a clear day, in plain view.

In spite of Dickens' intimacies with the land of his birth, he had also a
fondness for foreign shores, as one infers from following the scope of his
writings.

Of Boulogne, he writes in "Our French Watering-Place" (_Household Words_,
November 4, 1854):

"Once solely known to us as a town with a very long street, beginning with
an abattoir and ending with a steamboat, which it seemed our fate to
behold only at daybreak on winter mornings, when (in the days before
continental railroads), just sufficiently awake to know that we were most
uncomfortably asleep, it was our destiny always to clatter through it, in
the coupe of the diligence from Paris, with a sea of mud behind, and a sea
of tumbling waves before."

An apt and true enough description that will be recognized by many.
Continuing, he says, also truly enough:

"But our French watering-place, when it is once got into, is a very
enjoyable place."

To those to whom these racy descriptions appeal, it is suggested that they
familiarize themselves with the "Reprinted Pieces," edited by Charles
Dickens the younger, and published in New York in 1896, a much more
complete edition, with explanatory notes, than that which was issued in
London.

THE RIVER THAMES

Glide gently, thus for ever glide,
O Thames! that other bards may see
As lovely visions by thy side
As now, fair river! come to me.
O glide, fair stream, for ever so,
Thy quiet soul on all bestowing,
Till all our minds for ever flow
As thy deep waters now are flowing.

WORDSWORTH...

Ever present in the minds and hearts of the true Londoner is the "majestic
Thames;" though, in truth, while it is a noble stream, it is not so
all-powerful and mighty a river as romance would have us beli