since we parted aboard the George Washington as next Tuesday.  Forster, Maclise, and I, and perhaps Stanfield, are then going aboard the Cunard steamer at Liverpool, to bid Macready good by, and bring his wife away.  It will be a very hard parting.  You will see and know him of course.  We gave him a splendid dinner last Saturday at Richmond, whereat I presided with my accustomed grace.  He is one of the noblest fellows in the world, and I would give a great deal that you and I should sit beside each other to see him play Virginius, Lear, or Werner, which I take to be, every way, the greatest piece of exquisite perfection that his lofty art is capable of attaining.  His Macbeth, especially the last act, is a tremendous reality; but so indeed is almost everything he does.  You recollect, perhaps, that he was the guardian of our children while we were away.  I love him dearly....

You asked me, long ago, about Maclise.  He is such a wayward fellow in his subjects, that it would be next to impossible to write such an article as you were thinking of about him.  I wish you could form an idea of his genius.  One of these days a book will come out, “Moore’s Irish Melodies,” entirely illustrated by him, on every page. When it comes, I’ll send it to you.  You will have some notion of him then.  He is in great favor with the queen, and paints secret pictures for her to put upon her husband’s table on the morning of his birthday, and the like.  But if he has a care, he will leave his mark on more enduring things than palace walls.

And so L——­ is married.  I remember her well, and could draw her portrait, in words, to the life.  A very beautiful and gentle creature, and a proper love for a poet.  My cordial remembrances and congratulations.  Do they live in the house where we breakfasted?....

I very often dream I am in America again; but, strange to say, I never dream of you.  I am always endeavoring to get home in disguise, and have a dreary sense of the distance. Apropos of dreams, is it not a strange thing if writers of fiction never dream of their own creations; recollecting, I suppose, even in their dreams, that they have no real existence? I never dreamed of any of my own characters, and I feel it so impossible that I would wager Scott never did of his, real as they are.  I had a good piece of absurdity in my head a night or two ago.  I dreamed that somebody was dead.  I don’t know who, but it’s not to the purpose.  It was a private gentleman, and a particular friend; and I was greatly overcome when the news was broken to me (very delicately) by a gentleman in a cocked hat, top boots, and a sheet.  Nothing else.  “Good God!” I said, “is he dead?” “He is as dead, sir,” rejoined the gentleman, “as a door-nail.  But we must all die, Mr. Dickens; sooner or later, my dear sir.”  “Ah!” I said.  “Yes, to be sure.  Very true.  But what did he die of?” The gentleman burst into a flood of tears, and said,