or condition.

Admirers of the great novelist have been well looked after in respect to
editions of his works. New ones follow each other nowadays in an
extraordinarily rapid succession, and no series of classics makes its
appearance without at least three or four of Dickens' works finding places
in its list.

In England alone there have been twenty-four complete copyright editions,
from "the cheap edition," first put upon the market in 1847, to the dainty
and charming India paper edition printed at the Oxford University Press in
1901.

"In the Athenaeum Club," says Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, "where many a pleasant
tradition is preserved, we may see at a window a table facing the United
Service Club at which Dickens was fond of having his lunch.... In the hall
by the coats (after their Garrick quarrel), Dickens and Thackeray met,
shortly before the latter's death. A moment's hesitation, and Thackeray
put out his hand ... and they were reconciled."

It has been said, and justly, that Thackeray--Dickens' contemporary, not
rival--had little of the topographical instinct which led to no small
degree of Dickens' fame. It has, too, been further claimed that Thackeray
was in debt to Dickens for having borrowed such expressions as "_the
opposite side of Goswell Street was over the way_." And such suggestions
as the "Two jackals of Lord Steyne and Mess. Wegg and Wenham, reminiscent
of Pike and Pluck, and Sedley's native servant, who was supposed to have
descended from Bagstock's menial." Much more of the same sort might be
recounted, all of which, if it is true, is perhaps no sin, but rather a
compliment.

The relics and remains of Dickens exist to a remarkable degree of numbers.
As is well known, the omnific American collector is yearly, nay daily,
acquiring many of those treasures of literature and art which the old
world has treasured for generations; to the gratification of himself and
the pride of his country, though, be it said, to the disconcern of the
Briton.

The American, according to his English cousin, it seems, has a pronounced
taste for acquiring the rarest of Dickens' books, and the choicest of
Dickens' holographs, and his most personal relics.

The committee of the "Dickens Fellowship," a newly founded institution to
perpetuate the novelist's name and fame, recently sought to bring together
in an exhibition held in Memorial Hall, London, as many of those souvenirs
as possible; and a very attractive and intere