Charles Dickens—A Lecture.

The Christmas Carol afterwards sold 15 , 000 copies , and brought him in £ 726 , but his aftei-Christmas numbers , of which this was the original , and which were sold for as many pence as this was shillingsthe numbers might be counted not by tens , but by hundreds of thousands . In November , 1865 , Dickens wrote to Forster to tell him that his Christmas tale for

that year , " Dr . Marigold s Prescription , had gone up in the first week 250 , 000 copies . There was fame with a vengeance ! In 1844 we find Dickens showing his great interest in such institutions as the Mechanics' Institute and Working Men ' s Colleges by taking the chair at two great

meetings at the Mechanics' Institution , Liverpool , and at the Polytechnic Institution , Birmingham , where he spoke ably and well , as was his wont ; for not only was he a great novelist , but he added the rare gift of being able to give expression to the power that was within him , and was alike a great reader , a great speaker , and a treat writer .

As a speaker Dickens was particularly effective , especially when he was soliciting aid for some excellent charity . Forster gives a very good example when he mentions the case of the Hospital for Sick Children , which was established in Great Orrnond Street at a

largeold-, fashioned mansion , with spacious garden , which had been fitted up with more than thirty beds . During the four or five years of its existence out-door and in-door relief had been afforded by it to nearly 50000 childrenof whom 30000 were

, , , under five years , but want of funds having threatened to arrest the merciful work , it was resolved to try a public dinner by way of charitable appeal , and for president the happy choice was made of one who had enchanted everybody with the joys and

sorrows of little children . Dickens threw himself into the service heart and soul . There was a simple pathos in his address from the chair quite startling in its effect at such a meeting , and he probably never moved any audience

so much as by the strong personal feeling with which he referred to the sacrifices made for the hospital by the very poor themselves , from whom a subscription of £ 50 , contributed in single pennies , had come to the treasurer during almost every year it had been open .

The whole speech , indeed , is the best of the kind spoken by him , and two little pictures from it , one of the misery he had witnessed , the other of the remedy he had found , should not be absent from the picture of his own life . Thus he spoke : — " Some years agobeing in ScotlandI

, , went with one of the most humane members of the most humane of professions on a morning tour among some of the worstlodged inhabitants of the old town of Edinburgh . Li the closes and wynds of that picturesque place—I am sorry to

remind you what fast friends picturesqueness and typhus often are—we saw more poverty and sickness in an hour than many people would believe in in a life . Our way lay from one to another of the most wretched dwellingsreeking with horrible

, odours , shut out from the sky and from the air—mere pits and dens . In a room in one of these places , where there was an empty porridge pot on the cold hearth , a ragged woman and some ragged children crouching on the bare ground near it—and

I remember as I speak , where the very lig ht , refracted from a high , damp-stained wall outside , came in trembling , as if the fever , which had shaken everything else , had shaken even it—there lay , in an old egg-box which the mother had begged from a shop , a little , feeble , wan , sick child , with his little wasted face , and his little hot . worn hands folded over his

breast , and his little bright , attentive eyes—I can see him now , as I have seen him for several years— looking steadily at us . There he lay , in his small , frail box , which was not at , all a bad emblem of tlie

small body from which he was slowly parting—there he lay , quite quiet , quite patient , saying never a word . He seldom cried , the mother said ; he seldom complained . ' He lay there seemin' to woonder what it was a' aboot . ' God knows , I thoughtas I stood looking at himhe had

, , his reasons for wondering . Many a poor child , sick and neglected , I have seen since that time in London ; many have I also seen most affectionately tended in unwholesome houses and hard circumstances where recovery was impossiblebut at all

, such times I have seen my little , droopmg friend in his egg-box , and he has always addressed his dumb wonder to me what it meant , and why , in the name of a gracious God , such things should be 1