Here is a humorous and graphic account which he sent to the leading newspaper of his sensations during the shock of earthquake that was felt all over England in October, 1863. It is doubly interesting, as giving a description of his country-house at Gad’s-hill, near Rochester:— “I was awakened by a violent swaying of my bedstead from side to side, accompanied by a singular heaving motion. It was exactly as if some great beast had been crouching asleep under the bedstead, and were now shaking itself and trying to rise. The time by my watch was twenty minutes past three, and I suppose the shock to have lasted nearly a minute. The bedstead, a large iron one, standing nearly north and south, appeared to me to be the only piece of furniture in the room that was heavily shaken. Neither the doors nor the windows rattled, though they rattle enough in windy weather, this house standing alone, on high ground, in the neighbourhood of two great rivers. There was no noise. The air was very still, and much warmer than it had been in the earlier part of the night. Although the previous afternoon had been wet, the glass had not fallen. I had mentioned my surprise at its standing near the letter ‘i’ in ‘Fair,’ and having a tendency to rise.” * * * * * But the thing which, above all others, has characterised Dickens throughout his career, that has made his world-wide fame, and rendered his name a household word, is his broad, genial sympathy with life in all its phases, and with those most who are manfully toiling towards a better day. To this “enthusiasm of humanity” John Forster has alluded in the Dedicatory Sonnet to Charles Dickens, prefixed to his “Life of Goldsmith,” (March, 1848), when he says:— “Come with me and behold, O friend with heart as gentle for distress, As resolute with wise true thoughts to bind The happiest to the unhappiest of our kind, That there is fiercer crowded misery In garret-toil and London loneliness Than in cruel islands ’mid the far-off sea.” The great heart of Dickens has beat in unison with his age and with the people, and his name will be dear to all English-speaking races long after this little island of ours, the old home, shall have become a summer resort—a curiosity to visit—for the children of the great Anglo-Saxon Republics that are now growing up in the New and the Southern Worlds. _December_, 1869. I. EDINBURGH, JUNE 25, 1841. [At a public dinner, given in honour of Mr. Dickens, and presided over by the late Professor Wilson, the Chairman having proposed his health in a long and eloquent speech, Mr. Dickens returned thanks as follows:—]