I think I now appre

peared to me, of 'scoundrel maxims.' 1 ciate Dr. Franklin as I ought; but, although I can see the utility of such publications as his almanac for a rising commercial state, and hold it useful as a memorandum to uncalculating persons like myself, who happen to live in an old one, I think there is no necessity for it in commercial nations long established, and that it has no business in others who do not found their happiness in that sort of power. Franklin, with all his abilities, is but at the head of those who think that man lives by bread alone.'

And again, in his "Journal," a few years ago, that gentleman, after narrating several agreeable hardships inflicted upon him, says: "A little before this, a friend in a manufacturing town was informed that I was a terrible speculator in the money markets! I who was never in a market of any kind but to buy an apple or a flower, and who could not dabble in money business if I would, from sheer ignorance of their language!"

GAD'S HILL PLACE.

Though not born at Rochester, Mr. Dickens spent some portion of his boyhood there; and was wont to tell how his father the late Mr. John Dickens, in the course of a country ramble, pointed out to him as a child the house at Gad's Hill Place, saying, “There, my boy; if you work and mind your book, you will, perhaps, one day live in a house like that." This speech sunk deep, and in after years, and in the course of his many long pedestrian rambles through the lanes and roads of the pleasant Kentish country, Mr. Dickens came to regard this Gad's Hill House lovingly, and to wish himself its possessor. This seemed an impossibility. The property was so held that there was no likelihood of its ever coming into the market; and so Gad's Hill came to be alluded to jocularly, as 1 Thomson's phrase in his Castle of Indolence, speaking of a miserly money. getter:

"A penny savèd is a penny got;'

Firm to this scoundrel maxim keepeth he,

Nor of its rigor will he bate a jot,

Till he hath quench'd his fire and banished his pot."

representing a fancy which was pleasant enough in dream-land, but would never be realized.

Meanwhile the years rolled on, and Gad's Hill became almost forgotten. Then a further lapse of time, and Mr. Dickens felt a strong wish to settle in the country, and de.termined to let Tavistock House. About this time, and by the strangest coincidences, his intimate friend and close ally, Mr. W. H. Wills, chanced to sit next to a lady at a London dinner-party, who remarked, in the course of conversation, that a house and grounds had come into her possession of which she wanted to dispose. The reader will guess the rest. The house was in Kent, was not far from Rochester, had this and that distinguishing feature which made it like Gad's Hill and like no other place; and the upshot of Mr. Wills's dinnertable chitchat with a lady whom he had never met before was, that Charles Dickens realized the dream of his youth, and became the possessor of Gad's Hill. The purchase was made in the spring of 1856.

In the "Uncommercial Traveller," under the head of Travelling Abroad," No. VII., Dickens makes this mention of it:

"So smooth was the old high-road, and so fresh were the horses, and so fast went I, that it was midway between Gravesend and Rochester, and the widening river was bearing the ships, white-sailed, or black-smoked, out to sea, when I noticed by the way-side a very queer small boy.

"Hallo!' said I to the very queer small boy, 'where do you live?'

"At Chatham,' says he.

"What do you do there?' says I.

"I go to school,' says he.

"I took him up in a moment, and we went on.

"Presently the very queer small boy says, 'This is Gad's Hill we are coming to, where Falstaff went out to rob those travellers and ran away.'

"You know something about Falstaff, eh?' said I. "All about him,' said the very queer small boy.

"I am old (I am nine) and I read all sorts of books. But do let us stop at the top of the hill and look at the house there, if you please!'

"You admire that house?' said I.

"Bless you, sir!' said the very queer small boy,' when I was not more than half as old as nine, it used to be a treat for me to be brought to look at it. And now I am nine, I come by myself to look at it. And ever since I can recollect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, has often said to me, "If you were to be very persevering and were to work hard, you might some day come to live in it." Though that's impossible!' said the very queer small boy, drawing a low breath, and now staring at the house out of window with all his might.

"I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer small boy, for that house happens to be my house, and I have reason to believe that what he said was true."

BIRDS OF A FEATHER.

Mr. Crabb Robinson has preserved in his diary some playful lines by Southey; but his editor has omitted to add a circumstance which would have increased their interest. They were written in the album of Mrs. S. C. Hall, and the opposite page contained the autographs of Joseph Bonaparte and Daniel O'Connell, a circumstance which suggested what the Laureate wrote:

"Birds of a feather flock together,

But vide the opposite page;

And thence you may gather I'm not of a feather

With some of the birds in this cage."

ROBERT SOUTHEY, 22d October, 1836.

Some years afterwards, Charles Dickens, good-humoredly referring to Southey's change of opinion, wrote in the album, immediately under Southey's lines, the following:

"Now, if I don't make

The completest mistake
That ever put man in a rage,

This bird of two weathers

Has moulted his feathers,

And left them in some other cage."- Boz

When these last lines first appeared in the " Art Journal," a friend of Southey's, resenting Boz's remark, retaliated by "good-humoredly referring" to the change of style between "Pickwick" and "Our Mutual Friend," and wrote in the margin of the periodical :

"Put his first work and last work together,
And learn from the groans of all men,
That if he's not alter'd his feather,

He's certainly alter'd his pen."

DICKENS AS A SMASHER.

A story is told that on one pedestrian occasion he was taken for a “smasher." He had retired to rest at Gad's Hill, but found he could not sleep, when he determined to turn out, dress, and walk up to London some thirty miles. He reached the suburbs in the gray morning, and applied at an ‘early” coffee-house for some refreshment tendering for the same a sovereign, the smallest coin he happened to have about him.

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"It's a bad 'un," said the man, biting at it, and trying to twist it in all directions, "and I shall give you in charge." Sure enough the coin did have a suspicious look. Mr. Dickens had carried some substance in his pocket which had oxydized it. Seeing that matters looked awkward, he at once said, "But I am Charles Dickens !

"Come, that won't do; any man could say he was 'Charles Dickens.' How do I know?" The man had been victimized only the week previously, and at length, at Mr. Dickens's suggestion, it was arranged that they should go to a chemist, to have the coin tested with aquafortis. In due course, when the shops opened, a chemist was found, who immediately recognized the great novelist notwithstanding his dusty appearance - and the coffee-house keeper was satisfactorily convinced that he had not been entertaining a “smasher."

DICKENS AND THE QUEEN.

Only since the death of Mr. Dickens is it that the high respect in which Her Majesty has always held the great novelist and his writings has become generally known, but for many years past our Queen has taken the liveliest interest in his literary labors, and has frequently expressed a desire for an interview with him. And here it may not be uninteresting to mention a circumstance in illustration of Her Majesty's regard for her late distinguished subject which came under the writer's personal notice. Six years ago, just before the library of Mr. Thackeray was sold off at Palace Green, Kensington, a catalogue of the books was sent to Her Majesty in all probability by her request. She desired some memorial of the great man, and preferred to make her own selection by purchase rather than ask the family for any memento by way of gift. There were books with odd drawings from Thackeray's pen and pencil; there were others crammed with MS. notes, but there was one lot thus described in the catalogue : DICKENS (C.) A CHRISTMAS CAROL, in prose, 1843:

Presentation Copy.

INSCRIBED

"W. M. Thackeray, from Charles Dickens (whom he made very
happy once a long way from home).”

Her Majesty expressed the strongest desire to possess this, and sent an unlimited commission to buy it. The original published price of the book was 5s. It became Her Majesty's property for £25 10s., and was at once taken to the palace.

The personal interview Her Majesty had long expressed a desire to have with Mr. Dickens took place on the 9th April, 1870, when he received her commands to attend her at Buckingham Palace, and accordingly did so, being introduced by his friend, Mr. Arthur Helps, the clerk of the Privy Council.

The interview was a lengthened one, and most satisfactory to both. In the course of it Her Majesty expressed to him her warm interest in, and admiration of his works; and, on parting, presented him with a copy of her own book, “Our