No doubt the varied bustling scenes of life witnessed by Charles Dickens in his early years, had an influence on his mind that gave him a taste for observing the manners and mental peculiarities of different classes of people engaged in the active pursuits of life, and quickened a naturally lively perception of the ridiculous, for which he was distinguished even in boyhood.

It is curious to observe how similar opportunities of becoming acquainted practically with life, and the busy actors on its varied scenes, in very early life, appear to influence the minds of thinking and imaginative men in after-years. Goldsmith’s pedestrian excursions on the Continent, Bulwer’s youthful rambles on foot in England, and equestrian expeditions in France, and Maclise’s extensive walks in boyhood over his native county, and the mountains and valleys of Wicklow a little later, were fraught with similar results.

Charles Dickens was intended by his father to be an attorney. Nature and Mr. John Dickens happily differed on that point. London law may have sustained little injury in losing Dickens for “a limb.” English literature would have met with an irreparable loss, had she been deprived of him whom she delights to own as a favourite son.

Dickens, having decided against the law, began his career in “the gallery,” as a reporter on The True Sun; and from the first made himself distinguished and distinguishable among “the corps,” for his ability, promptness, and punctuality.

Remaining for a short term on the staff of this periodical, he seceded to The Mirror of Parliament, which was started with the express object of furnishing verbatim reports of the debates. It only lived, however, for two sessions.

The influence of his father, who on settling in the metropolis, had become connected with the London press, procured for Charles Dickens an appointment as short-hand reporter on the Morning Chronicle. To this period of his life he has made some graceful and interesting allusions in a speech delivered at the Second Anniversary of the Newspaper Press Fund, about five years ago.

It was in The Monthly Magazine of January, 1834, before he had quite attained his twenty-second year, that Charles Dickens made his first appearance in print as a story-teller. [7] Neither the editor of the magazine, nor the readers, nor even the ardent and gratified young author himself (who has described in the preface to the “Pickwick Papers” his sensations on finding his little contribution accepted), then dreamt that he would become in five short years from that time one of the most popular and widely-read of English authors, that his name would shortly become familiar as a household word, and that his praise would be on every tongue on both sides of the Atlantic.

Encouraged by his success, Charles Dickens continued to send sketches in the same vein, and for the next twelve months was a tolerably constant contributor to the Magazine. All, or nearly all, of these little papers were reprinted in the collection of Sketches by Boz; but as it will perhaps be interesting to some of our readers to trace their original appearance in the magazine, we give a list of them here:—

February, 1834, Horatio Sparkins.
Marriage a-la-Mode.
April „ The Bloomsbury Christening.
May „ The Boarding-House.
August „ Ibid. (No II.) [8a]
September „ The Goings-on at Bramsby Hall.
October „ The Steam Excursion.
January, 1835. Passage in the Life of Mr. Watkins Tottle.
February „ Ib. Chapter Second.

A similar series was afterwards contributed to the evening edition of The Morning Chronicle, [8b] then edited by Mr. John Black, and on which Dickens was engaged as parliamentary reporter.