I look back to the six years which I passed at the with very little pleasure. The headmaster, Dr. Dyne was a capable pedagogue enough, not more than … - Edmund Yates

I have heard Dickens described by those who knew him as aggressive, imperious, and intolerant, and I can comprehend the accusation; but to me his temper was always of the sweetest and kindest. He would, I doubt not, have been easily bored, and would not have scrupled to show it; but he never ran the risk. He was imperious in the sense that his life was conducted on the sic vole sic jubeo principle, and that everything gave way before him.

Gone is , with its very wide open pens and cattle-hutches; and gone with it is a good deal of the scandal of driving the wretched beasts through the streets, and whacking and torturing them in the most dreadful fashion. Enormous hordes of cattle for Smithfield Monday market, then—not as now, sent up by rail, bur driven long tedious journeys—used to arrive at on the Saturday, and pass the Sunday in the fields let out for the purpose.

In those days, too, we used to lunch at places which seem entirely to have disappeared. The is not so frequently met with as it was thirty years ago. The "alehouses" were, in fact, small shops fitted with a and a counter; they had been established by Mr. Crowley, a brewer of , on finding the difficulty of procuring ordinary public-houses for the sake of his beer; and at them was sold nothing but beer, es, bread and cheese, but all of the very best.