The Sun.
London, England, 1867-12-24 00:00:00

HER MAJESTY.

OSBORNE, Dec. 23.
The Queen, accompanied by Princess Louise and
Prince Arthur, drove out yesterday afternoon, at-
tended by the Equerry in Waiting upon horseback;
and her Majesty walked in the grounds this morn'
ing, accompanied by Prince Leopold and Princess
Beatrice.

Princess Louise and Prince Arthur also went out•

Charles Dickens at New York.

_
In the course of a rather vulgar rowdy article
descriptive of Mr. Dickens's second advent in Nevi'
York, and his first night in Steinway Hall, the Brett'
York Lierah/ has, among other remarks, the follow-
ing :—" Dickens (' Boz' that was), the graphic de"
lineator of his own fancy sketches, opened 1115
first course of readings last night at Stein-
way Hall, to one of those extraordinary assem-
blages which mark the presence of a veritable
lion and the effervescence of a great sensation.
The seats, some twenty-five hundred, were occupied;
the assemblage was as quiet and hushed as a Ply-
mouth church congregation on a Sunday morning,
awaiting the reader, when, punctual to the ap-
pointed time, he came in, a neat, dapper-
looking little gentleman, slightly sprinkled with
grey, slightly bald, and wearing a sandy moustache
and dusty-looking goatee combed down perpen-
dicularly from the chin. Without cerernonYt
after the welcoming applause had subsided/
for than was neither orchestra nor piano to
fill up the pauses (nothing but Dickens) and in as
easy, self-possessed manner, he proceeded at once
to business in the reading of the " ChristaLts
Carol, or Marley's Ghost." In the outset his
voice appeared a little weak and husky, but after
a few lines had been recited, and with the em"
phatic announcement that " Old Marley was 35
dead as a door nail," and that " Scrooge knew
he was dead," the reader began to warm uPe3
his work, and the house began to realise the fact
that the first comedian of the present generation
was before them, acting the various characters of one
of the prettiest of the domestic dramas of Dickens,
just as Dickens himself would wish it to be done.
The house first spontaneously responded to the
reading, as Mr. Dickens pictured the character of
Scrooge. And again there was a hearty round
when he repeated the Christmas Eve conversation
between Scrooge and his nephew ; and again
when the incredulous Scrooge was visited hY
Marley's ghost. Again there was a round
of approving hands and feet, with the read-
ing of old Fezziwig's jolly Christmas festival'
And there were repeated expressions of satisfaction
with the happy family of poor Cratchit over their
Christmas dinner, including Tiny Tim ; and over
the Christmas house warmintr, and most heartll9
over the joyous conclusion of the story, with the
complete conversion of old Scrooge to human ern:
pa,thies and good deeds, and the crowning glory °1
Tiny Tim, " God bless us, every one." This read'
ing was a beautiful play, and, as done by Dickens,
it is better than a play ; for he not only gives 11°
the voice and character of each individual, but 13
such fine relief that they all stand before ust
though only the solitary reader is in reality on the
ground. A blind man would see them all distinctly
The second reading of the evening's bid, the breach
of promise trial, Bardell v. Pickwick, was the fare!
after the tragedy or high comedy ; and though it 15
rather a commonplace sort of a lawsuit, Dickens
makes of it, by his nice touches of colouring and
lights and shades of English character in common
life, one of the most elegant and amusing of farces.
He is, in truth, a comedian of the first order, as
writer, reader, and actor. Compared with him Charles
Mathews, as we remember him here, was cold, SOT:
and conventional. Iu a word, it is almost a pity that'll
becoming the popular novelist he was lost to the stage'
Considering his genius in painting the living mai!.
ners of the age, we do think that in pre,:enting 111
the same reading what New York and America and
the Americans were as lie left them, and what they
are as he finds them, he would make the greatest
hit and the greatest sensation of any writer, reader,
or actor of modern times. Sothern's "Lord Dun'
dreary" in England would be utterly eclipsed hl
Dickens's representations in America of Andy John.
son, Old Thad Stevens, Ben Butler, Parson Brown'
low, Sambo iu convention, or Lucy Stone on tha
stump,with Mrs. Cady Stanton, and the tremendous
George Francis Train.