"I am very sorry that absence from home has prevented my replying to your note as to the tender for the Gad's Hill tunnel before. "I much regret that the amount of your tender is so much higher than my estimate, that I cannot recommend my brother to accept it. "I am, "Dear Sir, "Yours faithfully, "ALFRED L. DICKENS. "MR. BALL." Among the Dickens relics at Hillside, we are shown by Mr. Ball the pretty set of five silver bells presented by his friend Mr. F. Lehmann, to the novelist, who always used them when driving out in his basket pony-phaeton. They are fastened on to a leather pad, and make a pleasant musical sound when shaken. They are of graduated sizes, the largest being somewhat smaller than a tennis-ball, and appear to be in the key of C: comprising the Tonic, Third, Fifth, Octave, and Octave of the Third. There is also a hall clock with maker's name--"Bennett, Cheapside, London." This was the "werry identical" clock respecting which Dickens wrote the following characteristically humorous letter to Sir John Bennett:-- "MY DEAR SIR, "Since my hall clock was sent to your establishment to be cleaned it has gone (as indeed it always had) perfectly well, but has struck the hours with great reluctance, and after enduring internal agonies of a most distressing nature, it has now ceased striking altogether. Though a happy release for the clock, this is not convenient to the household. If you can send down any confidential person with whom the clock can confer, I think it may have something on its works that it would be glad to make a clean breast of. "Faithfully yours, "CHARLES DICKENS." Included among the relics are a very handsome mahogany fire-screen in three folds, of red morocco, with Grecian key-border, a musical Canterbury, and a bookcase. But the most interesting object from an art point of view is an India proof copy, "before letters," of Sir Edwin Landseer's beautiful picture of "King Charles's Spaniels," the original of which is said to have been painted for the late Mr. Vernon in two days, and is now in the National Gallery. The engraving of the picture is by Outram. It has the initials in pencil "E. L.," and a little ticket on the frame--"Lot 445," that being the number in the auctioneer's catalogue. The following is the story as recently told by Mr. W. P. Frith, R.A., in his most interesting and readable _Autobiography and Reminiscences_, 1887:--