In the proof volumes with corrections in the handwriting of the author there is nothing which calls for especial note save an unimportant deletion in Bleak House, and a more interesting alteration in David Copperfield. In the former there is a passage marked 'out,' in which Sir Leicester Dedlock speaks to Mrs Rouncewell of her grandson in the following passage: 'If (he said) the boy could not settle down at Chesney Wold, in itself the most astonishing circumstance in the world, could he not serve his country in the ranks of her defenders, as his brother had done? Must he rush to her destruction at his early age and with his parricidal hand strike at her?'
In David Copperfield we find by a passage in which Mr Dick is referring to his Memorial that his original hallucination took the form of a 'bull in a china shop;' a rather trite idea, and it was not until after the proof had actually been submitted to him by the printers that Charles Dickens introduced the whimsical and happier notion of 'King Charles's Head.'
Before bringing our brief paper to a conclusion, we would venture to suggest to the gentleman or gentlemen to whom is intrusted the arrangement of these manuscripts, that the present positions of the manuscripts and printed volumes should be transposed, so that the manuscripts should occupy the lower half of the case, as in their present position it is rather difficult to decipher the caligraphy; and to any one below the ordinary height it must involve an amount of physical contortion as uncomfortable as it is inelegant. The manuscripts being of course of greater interest than the printed proofs, should certainly occupy the more prominent space, especially as the latter could be read without any difficulty if placed in the rear rank.
We have no doubt that many of those who read this short article will have seen the Dickens manuscripts for themselves; many more doubtless will see them; but there will still be a large number who will not have the opportunity; and while we think that our remarks will be endorsed by the first and second classes, we hope that they will prove interesting to the third less fortunate class, and will enable them to enjoy, at least in imagination, a somewhat closer intimacy than they have known before with that great and gifted man, whose books have effected so many beneficial changes both in society at large and in many an individual heart and life, uprooting and casting to the winds much that was base, worthless, and contemptible, and implanting in their stead the seeds of those gentler sympathies and nobler aspirations which find their fruition in a well-spent life.
[THE ADMIRAL'S SECOND WIFE.]
CHAPTER XII.—OTHER EVENTS OF THAT EVENING.
Lady Dillworth's reverie is doomed to be a short one. She feels a soft caressing touch on her arm, and looks up to see Miss Delmere close by her chair. Her long light hair is streaming over her shoulders, and an embroidered Indian dressing-gown covers her antique dress.
'Liddy, you quite frightened me! Why do you come creeping in like a mouse? You ought to be in bed.'
'I have something to tell you, Katie; something you will be so glad to hear, and something that makes me so happy. I cannot sleep till I tell you all about it.'