Although tolerably familiar with most of the writings of Dickens from our youth, and, like many readers, having our favourites which may have absorbed our attention to the exclusion of others, we are bound to say that our little visit to Rochester and its neighbourhood--our "Dickens-Land"--rendered famous all the world over in the novels and minor works, gives a freshness, a brightness, and a reality to our conceptions scarcely expected, and never before experienced. The faithful descriptions of scenery witnessed by us for the first time in and about the "quaint city" of Rochester, the delightful neighbourhood of Cobham, the glorious old city of Canterbury, the dreary marshes and other localities: the more detailed pictures of particular places, like the Castle, the Cathedral, its crypt and tower, the Bull Inn, the Vines, Richard Watts's Charity, and others--the point of the situation in many of these cannot be realized without personal inspection and verification. And further, as by a sort of reflex action, another feeling comes uppermost in our minds, apart from the mere amusement and enjoyment of Dickens's works: we mean the actual benefits to humanity which, directly or indirectly, arise out of his writings; and we endorse the noble lines of dedication which his friend, Walter Savage Landor, addressed to him in his _Imaginary Conversations of Greeks and Romans_ (1853):-- "Friends as we are, have long been, and ever shall be, I doubt whether I should have prefaced these pages with your name, were it not to register my judgment that, in breaking up and cultivating the unreclaimed wastes of Humanity, no labours have been so strenuous, so continuous, or half so successful, as yours. While the world admires in you an unlimited knowledge of mankind, deep thought, vivid imagination, and bursts of eloquence from unclouded heights, no less am I delighted when I see you at the school-room you have liberated from cruelty, and at the cottage you have purified from disease."