Dickens now established the weekly periodical, "Household Words," in which his "Child's History of England" (1852) and "Hard Times" (1854) were published. "Bleak House" (1852-53) and "Little Dorrit" (1856-57) appeared serially. In consequence of a dispute with the publishers "Household Words" was discontinued in 1859, and Dickens established another weekly publication, "All the Year Round," in which he published "A Tale of Two Cities" (1860), "Great Expectations" (1861), and “The Uncommercial Traveller." "Our Mutual Friend" (1864-65) was his last completed work, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," begun in April, 1870, being interrupted by his death in June of that year. During the last years of his life Dickens gave frequent readings from his own works, visiting the United States for that purpose in 1867-68, and giving his last reading in England in March, 1870.

STEERFORTH AND LITTLE EM'LY.

(From "David Copperfield.")

STEERFORTH told a story of a dismal shipwreck (which arose out of his talk with Mr. Peggotty), as if he saw it all before him and little Eml'y's eyes were fastened on him all the time, as if she saw it too. He told us a merry adventure of his own, as a relief to that, with as much gayety as if the narrative were as fresh to him as it was to us and little Em❜ly laughed until the boat rang with the musical sounds, and we all laughed (Steerforth too), in irresistible sympathy with what was so pleasant and light-hearted. He got Mr. Peggotty to sing, or rather to roar, "When the stormy winds do blow, do blow, do blow ;" and he sang a sailor's song himself, so pathetically and beautifully, that I could have almost fancied that the real wind creeping sorrowfully round the house, and murmuring low through our unbroken silence, was there to listen.

As to Mrs. Gummidge, he roused that victim of despondency with a success never attained by any one else (so Mr. Peggotty informed me), since the decease of the old one. He left her so little leisure for being miserable, that she said next day she thought she must have been bewitched.

But he set up no monopoly of the general attention, or the conversation. Then little Em'ly grew more courageous, and talked (but still bashfully) across the fire to me, of our old wanderings upon the beach, to pick up shells and pebbles; and when I asked her if she recollected how I used to be devoted to her, and when we both laughed and reddened, casting these looks back on the pleasant old times, so unreal to look at now,

he was silent and attentive, and observed us thoughtfully. She sat, at this time, and all the evening, on the old locker in her old little corner by the fire, with Ham beside her, where I used to sit. I could not satisfy myself whether it was in her own little tormenting way, or in a maidenly reserve before us, that she kept quite close to the wall, and away from him; but I observed that she did so all the evening.

As I remember, it was almost midnight when we took our leave. We had had some biscuit and dried fish for supper, and Steerforth had produced from his pocket a full flask of Hollands, which we men (I may say we men now, without a blush) had emptied. We parted merrily; and as they all stood crowded round the door to light us as far as they could upon our road, I saw the sweet blue eyes of little Em'ly peeping after us, from behind Ham, and heard her soft voice calling to us to be careful how we went.

"A most engaging little beauty!" said Steerforth, taking my "Well! it's a quaint place, and they are quaint company; and it's quite a new sensation to mix with them."

arm.

"How fortunate we are, too," I returned," to have arrived to witness their happiness in that intended marriage! I never saw people so happy. How delightful to see it, and to be made the sharers in their honest joy, as we have been!"

"That's rather a chuckle-headed fellow for the girl; is n't he?" said Steerforth.

He had been so hearty with me, and with them all, that I felt a shock in this unexpected and cold reply. But turning quickly upon him, and seeing a laugh in his eyes, I answered, much relieved:

"Ah, Steerforth! It's well for you to joke about the poor! You may skirmish with Miss Dartle, or try to hide your sympathies in jest from me, but I know better. When I see how perfectly you understand them, how exquisitely you can enter into happiness like this plain fisherman's, or humor a love like my old nurse's, I know that there is not a joy or sorrow, not an emotion, of such a people that can be indifferent to you. And I admire and love you for it, Steerforth, twenty times the more!"

He stopped, and looking in my face, said: "Daisy, I believe you are in earnest, and are good. I wish we all were!" Next moment he was gayly singing Mr. Peggotty's song, as we walked at a round pace back to Yarmouth.

Steerforth and I stayed for more than a fortnight in that part of the country. We were very much together, I need not say;

but occasionally we were asunder for some hours at a time. He was a good sailor, and I was but an indifferent one; and when we went out boating with Mr. Peggotty, which was a favorite amusement of his, I generally remained ashore. My occupation of Peggotty's spare-room, put a constraint upon me, from which he was free; for, knowing how assiduously she attended on Mr. Barkis all day, I did not like to remain out late at night: whereas Steerforth, lying at the Inn, had nothing to consult but his own humor. Thus it came about that I heard of his making little treats for the fishermen at Mr. Peggotty's house of call, “The Willing Mind," after I was in bed, and of his being afloat, wrapped in fisherman's clothes, whole moonlight nights, and coming back when the morning tide was at flood. By this time, however, I knew that his restless nature and bold spirits delighted to find a vent in rough toil and hard weather, as in any other means of excitement that presented itself freshly to him; so none of his proceedings surprised me.

Another cause of our being sometimes apart was, that I had naturally an interest in going over to Blunderstone, and revisiting the old familiar scenes of my childhood; while Steerforth, after being there once, had naturally no great interest in going there again. Hence, on three or four days that I can at once recall, we went our several ways after an early breakfast, and met again at a late dinner. I had no idea how he employed his time in the interval, beyond a general knowledge that he was very popular in the place, and had twenty means of actively diverting himself where another man might not have found one.

One dark evening, when I was later than usual for I had that day been making my parting visit to Blunderstone, as we were now about to return home - I found him alone in Mr. Peggotty's house, sitting thoughtfully before the fire. He was so intent upon his own reflections, that he was quite unconscious of my approach. This, indeed, he might easily have been if he had been less absorbed, for footsteps fell noiselessly on the sandy ground outside; but even my entrance failed to rouse him. I was standing close to him, looking at him; and still, with a heavy brow, he was lost in his meditations.

He gave such a start when I put my hand upon his shoulder, that he made me start too.

"You come upon me," he said, almost angrily, "like a reproachful ghost!"

"I was obliged to announce myself somehow," I replied. "Have I called you down from the stars?"

"No," he answered. "No."

"Up from anywhere, then?" said I, taking my seat near him. "I was looking at the pictures in the fire," he returned.

"But you are spoiling them for me," said I, as he stirred it quickly with a piece of burning wood, striking out of it a train of red-hot sparks that went careering up the little chimney, and roaring out into the air.

"You would not have seen them," he returned. "I detest this mongrel time, neither day nor night. How late you are! Where have you been?"

"I have been taking leave of my usual walk," said I.

"And I have been sitting here," said Steerforth, glancing round the room, "thinking that all the people we found so glad on the night of our coming down might to judge from the present wasted air of the place — be dispersed, or dead, or come to I don't know what harm. David, I wish to God I had had a judicious father these last twenty years."

"My dear Steerforth, what is the matter?"

"I wish with all my soul I had been better guided!" he exclaimed. "I wish with all my soul I could guide myself better!"

There was a passionate dejection in his manner that quite amazed me. He was more unlike himself than I could have supposed possible.

"It would be better to be this poor Peggotty, or his lout of a nephew," he said, getting up and leaning moodily against the chimney-piece, with his face toward the fire, "than to be myself, twenty times richer and twenty times wiser, and to be the torment to myself that I have been, in this Devil's bark of a boat, within the last half-hour!"

I was so confounded by the alteration in him, that at first I could only observe him in silence, as he stood leaning his head upon his hand, and looking gloomily down at the fire. At length I begged him, with all the earnestness I felt, to tell me what had occurred to cross him so unusually, and to let me sympathize with him, if I could not hope to advise him. Before I had well concluded, he began to laugh-fretfully at first, but soon with returning gayety.

"Tut, it's nothing, Daisy! nothing!" he replied. "I told you at the inn in London I am heavy company for myself sometimes. I have been a nightmare to myself just now must have had one, I think. At odd, dull times, nursery tales came up into the memory unrecognized for what they are. I believe

I have been confounding myself with the bad boy who did n't care,' and became food for lions — a grander kind of going to the dogs, I suppose. What old women call the horrors have been creeping over me from head to foot. I have been afraid of myself." "You are afraid of nothing else, I think," said I.

"Perhaps not, and yet may have enough to be afraid of too," he answered. "Well! So it goes by! I am not about to be hipped again, David; but I tell you, my good fellow, once more, that it would have been well for me (and for more than me) if I had had a steadfast and judicious father!"

His face was always full of expression, but I never saw it express such a dark kind of earnestness as when he said these words, with his glance bent on the fire.

"So much for that!" he said, making as if he tossed something light into the air with his hand.

"Why, being gone, I am a man again,'

like Macbeth. And now for dinner, if I have not (Macbethlike) broken up the feast with most admired disorder, Daisy." "But where are they all, I wonder?" said I.

"God knows," said Steerforth. "After strolling to the ferry looking for you, I strolled in here and found the place deserted. That set me thinking, and you found me thinking.”

The advent of Mrs. Gummidge with a basket explained how the house had happened to be empty. She had hurried out to buy something that was needed against Mr. Peggotty's return with the tide, and had left the door open in the meanwhile, lest Ham and little Em'ly, with whom it was an early night, should come home while she was gone. Steerforth, after very much improving Mrs. Gummidge's spirits by a cheerful salutation and a jocose embrace, took my arm, and hurried me away.

He had improved his own spirits no less than Mrs. Gummidge's, for they were again at their usual flow, and he was full of vivacious conversation as we went along.

"And so," he said, gayly, "we abandon this buccaneer life tomorrow, do we?"

"So we agreed," I returned. are taken, you know."

"And our places by the coach.

"Ay; there's no help for it, I suppose," said Steerforth. "I have almost forgotten that there is anything to do in the world but to go out tossing on the sea here. I wish there was not." "As long as the novelty should last," said I, laughing.