in the morning. It was now winter again; and the fresh, cold windy day, and the sweeping down-land, brightened up my hopes a little.

Coming into Canterbury, I loitered through the old streets with a sober pleasure that calmed my spirits, and eased my heart. There were the old signs, the old names over the shops, the old people serving in them. It appeared so long, since I had been a schoolboy there, that I wondered the place was so little changed, until I reflected how little I was changed myself. Strange to say, that quiet influence which was inseparable in my mind from Agnes, seemed to pervade even the city where she dwelt. The venerable Cathedral towers, and the old jackdaws and rooks whose airy voices made them more retired than perfect silence would have done; the battered gateways, once stuck full with statues, long thrown down, and crumbled away, like the reverential pilgrims who had gazed upon them; the still nooks, where the ivied growth of centuries crept over gabled ends and ruined walls; the ancient houses, the pastoral landscape of field, orchard, and garden; everywhere—on everything—I felt the same serener air, the same calm, thoughtful, softening spirit.

Arrived at Mr. Wickfield’s house, I found, in the little lower room on the ground-floor, where Uriah Heep had been of old accustomed to sit, Mr. Micawber plying his pen with great assiduity. He was dressed in a legal-looking suit of black, and loomed, burly and large, in that small office.

Mr. Micawber was extremely glad to see me, but a little confused too. He would have conducted me immediately into the presence of Uriah, but I declined.

“I know the house of old, you recollect,” said I, “and will find my way up-stairs. How do you like the law, Mr. Micawber?”

“My dear Copperfield,” he replied. “To a man possessed of the higher imaginative powers, the objection to legal studies is the amount of detail which they involve. Even in our professional correspondence,” said Mr. Micawber, glancing at some letters he was writing, “the mind is not at liberty to soar to any exalted form of expression. Still, it is a great pursuit. A great pursuit!”

He then told me that he had become the tenant of Uriah Heep’s old house; and that Mrs. Micawber would be delighted to receive me, once more, under her own roof.

“It is humble,” said Mr. Micawber, “to quote a favourite expression of my friend Heep; but it may prove the stepping-stone to more ambitious domiciliary accommodation.”

I asked him whether he had reason, so far, to be satisfied with his friend Heep’s treatment of him. He got up to ascertain if the door were close shut, before he replied, in a lower voice—

“My dear Copperfield, a man who labours under the pressure of pecuniary embarrassments is, with the generality of people, at a disadvantage. That disadvantage is not diminished, when that pressure necessitates the drawing of stipendiary emoluments, before those emoluments are strictly due and payable. All I can say is, that my friend Heep has responded to appeals to which I need not more particularly refer, in a manner calculated to redound equally to the honour of his head, and of his heart.”

“I should not have supposed him to be very free with his money either,” I observed.

“Pardon me!” said Mr. Micawber, with an air of constraint, “I speak of my friend Heep as I have experience.”

“I am glad your experience is so favourable,” I returned.

“You are very obliging, my dear Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber; and hummed a tune.

“Do you see much of Mr. Wickfield?” I asked, to change the subject.


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