In his speech, with great delicacy and feeling, Dickens alluded to some possible misunderstanding, now forever vanished, between him and his hosts, and declared his purpose of publicly recognizing that fact in future editions of his works. His words were greeted with great enthusiasm, and on the following Monday evening he read, at Steinway Hall, for the last time in this country, and sailed on Wednesday. He was still very lame, but he read with unusual vigor, and with deep feeling. As he ended, and slowly limped away, the applause was prodigious, and the whole audience rose and stood waiting. Reaching the steps of the platform he paused, and turned towards the hall; then, after a moment, he came slowly and painfully back again, and with a pale face and evidently profoundly moved, he gazed at the vast audience. The hall was hushed, and in a voice firm, but full of pathos, he spoke a few words of farewell. "I shall never recall you," he said, "as a mere public audience, but rather as a host of personal friends, and ever with the greatest gratitude, tenderness, and consideration. God bless you, and God bless the land in which I leave you!" The great audience waited respectfully, wistfully watching him as he slowly withdrew. The faithful Dolby, his friend and manager, helped him down the steps. For a moment he turned and looked at the crowded hall. It was full of hearts responding to his own. There was a common consciousness that it was a last parting, and his fervid benediction was silently reciprocated.--Then the door closed behind him. PHILLIS. There is one lady in literature and in life whom all men are said, not without gentle sarcasm if a woman says it, to wish especially to know. She is declared to be the vision that haunts the youth as his heart opens to the soft influences of love, and her figure, trim and debonair, that allures the older fancy of the man who sits "alone and merry at forty year," having seen his earlier Gillian and Marian and a score more happily married. She is, in fact, the domestic magician, the good fairy, the genius of home, the thoughtful, tactful, careful, intelligent house-keeper, the very she whom Milton sings, introducing us to "Herbs and other country messes Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses." Her name is Phillis--not exactly a romantic name, nor, indeed, is it meant by the poet to be a romantic name; for he has just before sketched another kind of woman: "Towers and battlements it sees Bosom'd high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some beauty lies, The cynosure of neighboring eyes."