There was one year spent in Italy, when the children were still very young, and another year in Switzerland, at Lausanne; but after Broadstairs, Boulogne became the favorite watering-place. It was here, in a charming villa, quite out of the town, that he and his youngest son, “The Plorn,” would wander about the garden together admiring the flowers, the little fellow being taught to show his admiration by holding up his tiny arms. It was a pretty sight to watch them down the long avenue, the baby looking so sweet in its white frock and blue ribbons, either carried in his father's arms, or toddling by his side with his little hand in his, and a most perfect understanding between them! There were always anecdotes to be told of the Plorn after these walks, when his father invariably wound up with the assertion that he was “a noble boy.” Being the youngest of the family, he was made a great pet of, especially by his father, and was kept longer at home than any of his brothers had been. Charles Dickens writes to his sister-in-law in the year 1856:—“Kiss the Plorn for me, and expound to him that I am always looking forward to meeting him again, among the birds and flowers in the garden on the side of the hill at Boulogne.” And when he had to part with this son in 1868, he says in a letter to a friend, “Poor Plorn is gone to Australia. It was a hard parting at the last. He seemed to me to become once more my youngest and favorite little child as the day drew near, and I did not think I could have been so shaken.” The housekeeper at his office, who saw him after he had taken leave of the boy, told “how she had never seen the master so upset, and that when she asked him how Mr. Edward went off he burst into tears, and couldn't answer her a word.”