To what use of a literary kind should he turn his Italian observations and experiences? In what form should he publish the notes made by the way? Events soon answered that question. The year 1845 stands in the history of Queen Victoria's reign as a time of intense political excitement. The Corn Law agitation raged somewhat furiously. Dickens felt strongly impelled to throw himself into the strife. Why should he not influence his fellow-men, and "battle for the true, the just," as the able editor of a daily newspaper? Accordingly, after all the negotiations which enterprises of this kind necessitate, he made the due arrangements for starting a new paper, _The Daily News_. It was to be edited by himself, to "be kept free," the prospectus said, "from personal influence or party bias," and to be "devoted to the advocacy of all rational and honest means by which wrong may be redressed, just rights maintained, and the happiness and welfare of society promoted." His salary, so I have seen it stated, was to be L2,000 a year; and the first number came out on the morning of the 21st of January, 1846. He held the post of editor three weeks. The world may, I think, on the whole, be congratulated that he did not hold it longer. Able editors are more easily found than such writers as Dickens. There were higher claims upon his time. But to return to the Italian Notes: it was in the columns of _The Daily News_ that they first saw the light. They were among the baby attractions and charms, if I may so speak, of the nascent paper, which is now, as I need not remind my readers, enjoying a hale and vigorous manhood. And admirable sketches they are. Much, very much has been written about Italy. The subject has been done to death by every variety of pen, and in every civilized tongue. But amid all this writing, Dickens' "Pictures from Italy" still holds a high and distinctive position. That the descriptions, whether of places and works of art, or of life's pageantry, and what may be called the social picturesque, should be graphic, vivid, animated, was almost a matter of course. But _a priori_, I think one might have feared lest he should "chaff" the place and its inhabitants overmuch, and yield to the temptation of making merriment over matters which hoar age and old associations had hallowed. We can all imagine the kind of observation that would occur to Sam Weller in strolling through St. Mark's at Venice, or the Vatican; and, guessing beforehand, guessing before the "Pictures" were produced, one might, I repeat, have been afraid lest Dickens should go through Italy as a kind of educated Sam Weller. Such prophecies would have been falsified by the event. The book as a whole is very free from banter or _persiflage_. Once and again the comic side of some situation strikes him, of course. Thus, after the ceremony of the Pope washing the feet of thirteen poor men, in memory of our Lord washing the feet of the Apostles, Dickens says: "The whole