[These were the last public words of Charles Dickens.]

Footnotes:

{1} Sir David Wilkie died at sea, on board the Oriental, off Gibraltar, on the 1st of June, 1841, whilst on his way back to England. During the evening of the same day his body was committed to the deep. --ED.

{2} The Britannia was the vessel that conveyed Mr. Dickens across the Atlantic, on his first visit to America--ED.

{3} Master Humphrey's Clock, under which title the two novels of Barnaby Rudge and The Old Curiosity Shop originally appeared.--ED.

{4} "I shall always entertain a very pleasant and grateful recollection of Hartford. It is a lovely place, and I had many friends there, whom I can never remember with indifference. We left it with no little regret." American Notes (Lond. 1842). Vol. I, p. 182.

{5} See the Life and Letters of Washington Irving (Lond. 1863), p. 644, where Irving speaks of a letter he has received "from that glorious fellow Dickens, in reply to the one I wrote, expressing my heartfelt delight with his writings, and my yearnings toward himself." See also the letter itself, in the second division of this volume.--ED.

{6} TENNYSON, Lady Clara Vere de Vere, then newly published in collection of 1842.--ED

{7} "That this meeting, while conveying its cordial thanks to Charles Dickens, Esq., for his presence this evening, and for his able and courteous conduct as President, cannot separate without tendering the warmest expression of its gratitude and admiration to one whose writings have so loyally inculcated the lessons of benevolence and virtue, and so richly contributed to the stores of public pleasure and instructions."

{8} The Duke of Devonshire.

{9} Charlotte Corday going to Execution.

{10} The above is extracted from Mrs. Stowe's "Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands,", a book in which her eaves-dropping propensities were already developed in a sufficiently ugly form.--ED.

{11} Alas! the "many years" were to be barely six, when the speaker was himself destined to write some memorial pages commemorative of his illustrious friend (Cornhill Magazine, February, 1864.)--ED.

{12} Mr. Henry Dodd had proposed to give five acres of land in Berkshire, but, in consequence of his desiring to attach certain restrictions, after a long and unsatisfactory correspondence, the Committee, on 13th January following, rejected the offer. (Communicated.)

{13} Claude Melnotte in The Lady of Lyons, Act iii. sc. 2.

{14} Mr. B. Webster.

{15} Romeo and Juliet, Act III. Sc. 1.

{16} Robert Browning: Bells and Pomegranates.

{17} R. H.

{18} Carlyle's French Revolution. Book X., Chapter I.

{19} Henry Thomas Buckle.

{20} This and the Speeches which follow were accidentally omitted in their right places.

{21} Hazlitt's Round Table (Edinburgh, 1817, vol ii., p. 242), On Actors and Acting.

{22} An allusion to a well-known Sonnet of Wordsworth, beginning-- "The world is too much with us--late and soon," &c.--ED.

{23} Alluding to the forthcoming serial story of Edwin Drood.

{24} The Honourable John Lothrop Motley.

{25} February 26th, 1851. Mr. Macready's Farewell Benefit at Drury Lane Theatre, on which occasion he played the part of Macbeth.--ED.

{26} MACBETH, Act I., sc. 7.

{27} The Bishop of Ripon (Dr. Longley).