While ill, but when beginning to crave for some amusement or distraction, I asked that my dear old BOZ'S _Sketches_ should be read to me, to which in years gone by I had been indebted for many a hearty laugh. Alas! what a disappointment! Except for a little descriptive bit here and there, the fun of these _Sketches_ sounded as wearisome and old-fashioned as the humours of the now forgotten "Adelphi screamers" in which Messrs. WRIGHT and PAUL BEDFORD used to perform, and at which, as a boy, I used to scream with delight, when the strong-minded mistress of the house, speaking while the comic servant was laying the cloth for dinner, would say of her husband, "When I see him I'll give him----" "Pepper," says the comic servant, accidentally placing that condiment on the table. "He shan't," resumes the irate lady, "come over me with any----" "Butter," interrupts the comic servant, quite unconsciously, of course, as he deposits a pat of Dorset on the table. And so on. Later on, I tried THACKERAY'S _Esmond_. How tedious, how involved, and full of repetitions! It is enlivened here and there by the introduction of such real characters as _Dick Steele_, _Lord Mohun_, _Dean Atterbury_, and others, and by the mysterious melodramatic appearances and disappearances of _Father Holt_, a typical Jesuit of the "penny dreadful" style of literature. But the work had lost whatever charm it ever possessed for me, and, indeed, I had always considered it an over-rated book, not by any means to be compared with _Vanity Fair_, _Pendennis_, or even with _Barry Lyndon_, which last is repulsively clever. * * * * * Then I asked for a book that I never yet could get through, and to which I thought that now, with leisure and a craving for distraction, I might take a liking. This was _Little Dorrit_. I tried hard, but it made my head ache even more than _Esmond_ had done, and I laid it down, utterly unable to comprehend the mystery which takes such an amount of dreary, broken-up, tedious dialogue in the closing chapters to unravel. * * * * * I took down WASHINGTON IRVING'S _Sketch-book_, and read it with delight. Fresh as ever! It did me good. So did CHARLES LAMB'S Essays. And then guess what moved me to laughter, to tears, and to real heartfelt gratitude that we should have had a writer who could leave us such an immortal work? What? It is a gem. It is very small, but to my mind, and not excepting any one of all he ever wrote, the most precious in every way for its true humour, for its natural pathos, and for its large-hearted Christian teaching, is _The Christmas Carol_, by CHARLES DICKENS. Had this been his only book, it would have sufficed for his imperishable fame. * * * * *