"These letters bespeak the character of the man. They are not open, fervid, eloquent epistles breathing nothing but the language of affectionate attachment. They are _covert_, _sly_, under-hand communications, but, fortunately, far more conclusive than if couched in the most glowing language. _Letters that must be viewed with a cautious and supicious eye_: _letters that were evidently intended at the time_, _by Pickwick_, _to mislead and delude any third parties into whose hands they might fall_." The gravity and persuasiveness of all this is really _impayable_. "Let me read the first: 'Garraway's, twelve o'clock. Dear Mrs. B., Chops and tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick.' Gentlemen, what does this mean? Chops and tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick. Chops! Gracious Heavens!--and tomato sauce! Gentlemen, is the happiness of a sensitive and confiding female _to be trifled_ away by such artifices as these? _The next has no date_ _whatever which is in itself suspicious_: 'Dear Mrs. B., I shall not be at home until to-morrow. Slow coach.' And then follows the very remarkable expression, 'Don't trouble yourself about the warming pan.'" There is a little bit of serious history connected with these letters which I was the first I think to discover. They were intended to satirise the trivial scraps brought forward in Mrs. Norton's matrimonial case--Norton _v._ Lord Melbourne. My late friend, "Charles Dickens the younger," as he used to call himself, in his notes on _Pickwick_, puts aside this theory altogether as a mere unfounded fancy; but it will be seen there cannot be a doubt in the matter. Sir W. Follett laid just as much stress on these scraps as Serjeant Buzfuz did on his: he even used the phrase, "it seems there may be latent love like latent heat, in these productions." We have also, "Yours Melbourne," like "Yours Pickwick," the latter signing as though he were a Peer. "There is another of these notes," went on Sir William, "How are you?" "Again there is no beginning you see." "The next has no date, which is in itself suspicious," Buzfuz would have added. Another ran--"I will call about half past four, Yours." "_These_ are the only notes that have been found," added the counsel, with due gravity, "_they seem to import much more than mere words convey_." After this can there be a doubt? This case was tried in June, 1836, and, it must be borne in mind, caused a prodigious sensation all over the Kingdom. The Pickwick part, containing the description, appeared about December, six months afterwards. Only old people may recall Norton _v._ Melbourne, the fair Caroline's wrongs have long been forgotten; but it is curious that the memory of it should have been kept alive in some sort by this farcical parody. Equally curious is it that the public should always have insisted that she was the heroine of yet another story, George Meredith's _Diana_, though the author has disclaimed it over and over again.