CHARLES DICKENS. 209 



his last visit to America, he wrote three other Christmas 

 pieces, " Barbox Brothers," " The Boy at Mugby Station," and 

 "No Thoroughfare." The latter piece was written conjointly 

 with Mr. Wilkie Collins.' 



The last visit made by Dickens to America, from November 

 1S67 to April 1868, was one long triumph. A farewell 

 banquet was held on 2d November, in the Freemasons' 

 Tavern, London ; the company numbered between four and 

 five hundred gentlemen. 



Lord Lytton presided, and in the course of an eulogium 

 upon the illustrious novelist said : — ' We are about to entrust 

 our honoured countryman to the hospitality of those kindred 

 shores in which his writings are as much household words as 

 they are in the homes of England. 



' If I may speak as a politician, I should say that no time 

 for his visit could be more happily chosen. For our American 

 kinsfolk have conceived, rightly or wrongly, that they have 

 some recent cause of complaint against ourselves ; and out of 

 all England, we could not have selected an envoy — speaking 

 not on behalf of our Government, but of our people — more 

 calculated to allay irritation and propitiate goodwill 



' How many hours in which pain and sickness have changed 

 into cheerfulness and mirth beneath the wand of that en- 

 chanter ! How many a hardy combatant, beaten down in the 

 battle of life — and nowhere on this earth is the battle of life 

 sharper than in the commonwealth of America — has taken 

 new hope, and new courage, and new force from the manly 

 lessons of that unobtrusive teacher.' 



He concluded by proposing ' A prosperous voyage, health, 

 and long life to our illustrious guest and countryman, Charles 



