This volume, then, is the pilgrim’s guide to Dickens’ Land—the loving topography of that fertile and very populous region. No far away foreign country is Dickens’ Land. It lies at our doors; we may explore it when we choose, with never a passport to purchase nor a Custom House to fear. The sojourner in London can scarce look from his windows without beholding scores of its interesting places. To parody that passage which describes Mr. Pickwick’s outlook into Goswell Street—Dickens’ Land is at our feet; Dickens’ Land is on our right hand as far as the eye can reach; Dickens’ Land extends on our left, and the opposite side of Dickens’ Land is over the way. Nor do the bounds of this genial territory confine themselves to London alone. Outlying portions spread north and south, east and west, over England. There is even, as Sala showed, a Dickens’ quarter in Paris; and we have unexpectedly encountered small colonies of Dickens’ Land across the wide Atlantic. But the best of it lies close to the great heart of the world—in London, or in the counties thereabout; and if “Rambles in Dickens’ Land” succeeds in guiding its readers with pleasure and profit over this storied ground, it will have faithfully fulfilled its mission. Trouble has not been spared to make this topography accurate as well as entertaining. Mr. Weller the younger, with all his “extensive and peculiar” knowledge of London—Mr. Weller the elder and his brothers of the whip, with _their_ knowledge of post-roads and coaching inns, could hardly have identified the various localities more clearly than the compiler has done. Wherever doubts and disputes arise—as in regard to the site of the “Old Curiosity Shop”—all sides of the case are given, and the reader is asked to sum up the arguments and judge for himself. In nearly every instance a quotation is offered from the author, by means of which the pilgrim is enabled to refresh his memory and bring his own recollections of the book to bear upon the question of the site. These quotations will be found to act admirably as aids to memory, and to obviate the necessity of carrying a whole library of Dickens about on one’s rambles. Take, for example, the excerpts from “David Copperfield” in connection with the visit to Dover. The facetious answers of the boatmen to David when, sitting ragged and forlorn in the Dover Market Place, he inquires for his aunt’s house, bring back at a single touch the whole sad story of the boy’s tramp from London to the coast. It does not require much imagination to picture him sitting there “on the step of an empty shop,” with his weary, pinched face and his “dusty sunburnt, half-clothed figure,” while the sea-faring folk (lineal forbears of those who frequent the place to-day) made mock of him with their clumsy japes, until at length happened by the friendly fly-driver, who showed him how to reach the residence of the old lady who “carries a bag—bag with a good