The Sun.
London, England, 1842-04-25 00:00:00

THE DICKENS' DINNER.

(Abridged from the New England Weekly Review.)
The dinner given to Charles Dickens, Esq., by the
citizens of Hartford, took place at the City Hotel, on
Tuesday evening, the Bth instant. It was a splendid
affair, and gave the highest satisfaction, both to the
illustrious guest, and to those who assembled on the
occasion to pay him a tribute of respect. William J.
llamersley, Esq., in thetChair.
On the entrance of Mr. Dickens the company rose,
and remained standing: until a blessing was asked by
the Rev. Bishop Brownell.

After dinner the following toasts were given :-
1. The President of the United States.

2. The Queen of England.
3. England and the United States.—The ties of
kindred, of social Mid commercial intercourse, of ,a
common language, and a common literature, link
them indissolubly to the cause of civilisation.
4. The Noblemen of Nature.—Those, whose great-
ness is created by the hand of God, we welcome them
from every class, and everylland.
5. The Poor and the Oppressed.—Let them rejoice
that genius and talent now advocate their cause.
6. Literature.—That neutral ground on which
men of every clime meet in peaceful homage to the
intellect.

The regular toasts were received with great en-
thusiasm ; after which,
Mr. HAMERSLEY rose, and addressed the company
as follows :—Gentlemen, we 'are justly proud of our
own young and vigorous literature, and in the indul-
gence of a commendable national feeling, are desirous
of using every honourable effort to cherish and pro-
mote its growth ; but we are not therefore the less
conscious that for some of our keenest intellectual en-
joyments we are indebted to the literature of Eng-
land; her poets, her orators, her historians, and her
philosophers, have instructed and improved us, and
that "bright particular star" of her literary firma-
ment, William Shakspere, exercises an influence as
abiding and unlimited among us, as in the land which
gave him birth—
" Deep in the west, as Independence roves,
His banners planting 'round the land he ldves,
Where nature sleeps, in Eden's infant grace.
In time's full hour shall spring a glorious race ;
His n'ame, his fame, his language, shall they bear
And rear for him the vaulted temple there

* *
Again in him, shall Albion's seGptro wave,
And what her mighty Lion lost, her mightier SWAN
shall save." •
—(Applause.) But, Gentlemen, the intellectual in-
fluence of England is not confined to those writers
who have finished their earthly career, the vitality of
their works being yet unimpaired—her living authors
have furnished a Peirian spring, from which we have
drank and been refreshed ; among those authors are
many who have acquired an exalted reputation in the
various departments of literature ; but. I am free to
say, and to say it with the most perfect confidence,
and the most entire sinceri.y, that among them all
there breathes not the man whom we would welcome
with such heartfelt enthusiasm as the distinguished
guest towards whom we have the high gratification
of extending our hospitalities this evening.—(Loud
cheering.) We have been enabled to trace the course
of many writers, from the feebler effusions of their
early years to the more finished efforts of advanced
manhood ; but our gifted and youthful guest sprang
into public existence before our delighted vision like
Minerva from the brain of Jove, completely clad in
intellectual panoply.—(Applause.) The writings of
no author, I will not except Sir Walter Scott himself,
have been so universally read at the time of their pub-
lication, as those of the gentleman to whom allusion
has just been made, as-they have been received in this
country in detached parts, they have been seized by
the periodical press, and scattered broadcast over the
Union, and as each work has been completed, it has
been issued from the presses of various publishing
houses in the country, again to be read by those who
had already perused it in numbers, or to be devoured
by others, who had postponed the gratification of their
mental appetites until toe whole rich feast could be
spread at once before their view.—(Applause.). Gen-
tlemen, we are assembled as the admirers 'of our guest,
and of his writings—we admire the latter, on ac-
count of the wonderful powers of description and
imagination they display—we admire them for their
playful satire and amusing humour—we admire them
on account of the accurate knowledge of human cha-
racter they evince, and for the passages of exquisite
beauty that are to be found gleaming and glistening
along their pages ; but, Gentlemen, we especially
admire them, because of the broad, bright, pure, deep
stream of human affection that runs through the ideal
world he has created for us—(Continued applause)—a
world blooming with verdure, blushing with flowers,
nd prolific of blessed fruits.—(Applause.) We ad-
mire the Man, because, leaving to others the trappings
of rank, and the magnificence of wealth, he has taken