CHARLES DICKENS. ^85 



yours and not mine. I come once more to thank you, and 

 here I am in a difficulty again. The distinction you have 

 conferred upon me is one which I never hoped for, and of 

 which I never dared to dream. That it is one which I shall 

 never forget, and that while I live I shall be proud of its 

 remembrance, you must well know. I believe I shall never 

 hear the name of this capital of Scotland without a thrill of 

 gratitude and pleasure. I shall love while I have life her 

 people, her hills, and her houses, and even the very stones of 

 her streets. And if in the future works which may lie before 

 me you should discern — God grant you may ! — a brighter 

 spirit and a clearer wit, I pray you to refer it back to this 

 night, and point to that as a Scottish passage for evermore. 

 I thank you again and again, with the energy of a thousand 

 thanks in each one, and I drink to you with a heart as full as 

 my glass, and far easier emptied, I do assure you.' 



Later in the evening, in proposing the health of Professor 

 Wilson, Mr. Dickens said : — 



* I have the honour to be entrusted with a toast, the very 

 mention of which will recommend itself to you, I know, as 

 one possessing no ordinary claims to your sympathy and 

 approbation, and the proposing of which is as congenial to my 

 wishes and feelings as its acceptance must be to yours. It 

 is the health of our chairman, and coupled with his name I 

 have to propose the Literature of Scotland — a literature which 

 he has done much to render famous through the world, and 

 of which he has been for many years, as I hope and believe 

 he will be for many more, a most brilliant and distinguished 

 ornament Who can revert to the literature of the land of 

 Scott and of Burns without having directly in his mind, as 

 inseparable from the subject and forernnst in the picture, that 



