Cooling Churchyard, near Rochester, beyond which lies a large tract of marsh country extending from the Medway to the estuary of the Thames. While at Rochester in August, 1879, with Mr. Hull, we drove out to look at the spot, and the sketch is one I made of the church and churchyard. This tale has many allusions to Rochester, but mostly under the name of "our market town." According to Forster, "Restoration House," as it is called (and a drawing of which, by Mr. Hull, is before you), stands for the "Satis House" in the tale. That may be so, but it certainly is not the "Satis House" where Richard Watts entertained Queen Elizabeth. That stood on Boley Hill, close up to the curtain wall of the castle, and overlooking the river. There is a fine description of the desolate tract of wild marshes beyond the village of Cooling, and of the "fearful wild fowl" in the shape of escaped convicts sometimes caught there. Pip, the hero of the story, says: To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine-who gave up trying to get a living exceedingly early in that universal struggle-I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs, with their hands in their trouser pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence. Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out, for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all, and beginning to cry, was Pip. "Hold your noise !" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. "Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!" A fearful man all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briers; who limped and shivered, and glared and growled ; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin. The convict makes the frightened boy promise to bring him in the morning a file and some "wittles," and then takes himself off, "hugging his shuddering body in both his arms, and picking his way among the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in." Pip gets the file and the "wittles," and in the morning finds the convict at an old battery on the marshes— Hugging himself and limping to and fro as if he had never all night left off hugging and limping. He was awfully cold, to be sure. I half expected to see him drop down before my face, and die of deadly cold. His eyes looked so awfully hungry, too, that when I handed him the file, and he laid it down on the grass, it occurred to me he would have tried to eat it if he had not seen my bundle. "What's in the bottle, boy ?" said he. "Brandy," said I. He was already handing mince-meat down his throat in the most curious mannermore like a man who was putting it away somewhere in a violent hurry than a man who was eating it--but he left off to take some of the liquor. He shivered all the while so violently that it was quite as much as he could do to keep the neck of the bottle between his teeth without biting it off. "I think you have got the ague," said I. "I'm much of your opinion, boy," said he. "It's bad about here," I told him. "You've been lying out on the meshes, and they're dreadful aguish. Rheumatic too." "I'll eat my breakfast afore they're the death of me," said he. "I'll beat the shivers so far, I'll bet you." He was gobbling mince-meat, meat bone, bread, cheese, and pork pie all at once; staring distrustfully while he did so at the mist all around us, and often stopping-even stopping his jaws-to listen. Some real or fancied sound, some clink upon the river or breathing of beast upon the marsh, now gave him a start, and he said suddenly: "You're not a deceiving imp? You brought no one with you?" "No, sir! no!" "Nor giv' no one the office to follow you?" "No!" "Well," said he, "I believe you. You'd be but a fierce young hound indeed if, at your time of life, you could help to hunt a wretched warmint, hunted as near death and dunghill as this poor wretched warmint is!" Something clicked in his throat as if he had works in him like a clock, and was going to strike. And he smeared his ragged, rough sleeve over his eyes. The following extract may be, and very likely was, a personal experience of Dickens on revisiting Rochester. In the story it is the experience of Pip, after he had for a time realized his great expectations: It was interesting to be in the quiet old town once more, and it was not disagreeable to be here and there suddenly recognized and stared after. One or two of the tradespeople even darted out of their shops, and went a little way down the street before me, that they might turn, as if they had forgotten something, and pass me face to face-on which occasions I don't know whether they or I made the most pretence; they of not doing it, or I of not seeing it. The story of Great Expectations lies either in Rochester and |