Nay, do not start and turn pale, gentle reader, when I tell you that “Boz,” the inimitable “Boz,” is the subject of the present sketch. It is indeed true that Charles Dickens, the great English author—he who lives in London amid the exciting scenes and struggles of this world’s great Metropolis, is now about to be “talked off,” by a backwoodsman—but he will do it with an _admiring_ reverence, and a _most partial_ discretion. I will not speak of his published works, for they have been numbered among our household gods,—nor of the genius of the mind that has made them such. So long as there is mind to appreciate the high conceptions of mind, and a taste to admire the purity of thought, so long will Charles Dickens live “the noblest work of God.” Charles Dickens as an author is too well known for me to say aught for or against him. It is only in his private capacity will I speak—only as Charles Dickens, the private man. Those social qualities of the nature so requisite in the making up of a good man, belong to him essentially and justly. He could not be Charles Dickens and have not those qualities of the soul which but few possess. Had all of us the true nobility of nature, all of us would be like him in spirit. There is in him a gentleness that commands our love as much as his genius has our admiration. The kindness of his nature is as great as his talent is pre-eminent. He could never be otherwise than “Boz” nor less than Charles Dickens—the being of all kindly feeling. Dwelling in a little hamlet that is scarcely known beyond the sound of its church bell—and in a place that a few years ago, resounded only to the winds of the magic woods, or the moccasin tread of the Indian on the dry leaves,—I, a creature less known by far than my village, addressed a letter to “Boz,” and, in answer from him, received the following letter: “1 Devonshire Terrace, York Gate. Regent’s Park, London. Tuesday, Twenty-third February, 1841. Dear Sir:—You are quite right in feeling assured that I should answer the letter you have addressed to me. If you had entertained a presentiment that it would afford me sincere pleasure and delight to hear from a warm-hearted and admiring reader of my books in the back-woods of America, you would not have been far wrong.