“It was a beautiful and exhilarating sight to see the red-nosed man writhing in Mr. Weller’s grasp, and his whole frame quivering with anguish as kick followed kick in rapid succession; it was a still more exciting spectacle to behold Mr. Weller, after a powerful struggle, immersing Mr. Stiggins’s head in a horse-trough full of water, and holding it there until he was half-suffocated.” The old horse-trough, as depicted by “Phiz” in the original illustrated title-page of the book, has long since given place to local alteration and improvement; but “hereabouts it stood.” There are many pleasant and humorous associations connected with this old place of country entertainment, as duly set forth in the Pickwick annals; but it should be remembered that many years have passed since their publication (1837), and that men and manners have greatly changed and bettered. It is satisfactory to reflect that Mr. Stiggins and his brethren have altogether become obsolete in English middle-class society, and that the protest so embodied sixty years since is no longer necessary. In these happier days, earnestness and ability have, in the main, superseded laziness and cant. * * * * * DORKING TO PORTSMOUTH. The journey being resumed by railway, we travel southward and westward through the pleasant fields and pasture lands of Sussex, _viâ_ Horsham and Chichester, to the old town of Portsmouth, where, in Landport, Portsea, Charles Dickens was born, on Friday, the 7th of February 1812. He was the second son (in a family of eight, six surviving infancy) of Mr. John Dickens, a clerk in the Navy Pay Office at the Dockyard. The name of his mother, previous to her marriage, was Elizabeth Barrow. The baptismal record at Portsea registers him as CHARLES JOHN HUFFHAM DICKENS, but he very seldom used any other signature than the one with which we are all familiar. On arrival at the Portsmouth town station, we leave the railway, turning to the right, and proceed onwards, in the main thoroughfare of Commercial Road. Thus we shortly reach, in due course, The Birthplace of Dickens. The house (No. 387 Commercial Road, Landport) stands about half a mile northward (to the right) from the railway station, with a neat forecourt. It bears a tablet recording date of the event, as above. [Picture: Dickens’ Birthplace] South of the station (leftward), beyond the Town Hall, will be found, on the right, The Theatre Royal; but it should be noted that this is _not_ the establishment referred to in “Nicholas Nickleby.” That old theatre, at which Nicholas—adopting the professional _alias_ of “Johnson”—made his histrionic _début_ under the managerial auspices of Mr. Vincent Crummles, occupied, some eighty years since, the present site of The Cambridge Barracks, in the _High Street_, farther onwards.