Charles Dickens, from a recent daguerreotype by Mayall, 1 December, 1855Memoir of Charles DickensThe lives of men of genius when happy, are ordinarily uneventful. It may, perhaps, be one of the reaspms for the paucity of materials available for the life of him who was "not for an age but for all time," that our Shakespeare went through life a prosperous gentlemen, that he had shares, and rents, and messages, and tenements, and that he died at last in affluence, in his bed, in his own house, near the pleasant town he loved so well. But the most moving and most copious literary memoirs are merely records of miseries. The blindness of Milton, the weary life-struggle of Dryden, the deformity of Pope, the persecution of Defoe, and the melancholy of Swift; the stern woe of Dante, the heart-sickness of Petrarch, the despair of Butler; Tasso's fetters, Cervantes' neglect, Camoens' hospital pallet, Guilbert's starvation, and Chatterton's suicide; all these are bold and jutting headlands in the seascape of life - stern and rugged rocks, all beaten by the tempests of time, and seamed and furrowed by the salt waters of sorrow. These the painter can seize and transfer to canvas, giving force and variety to his picture. He can paint the surging billows and the angry sky; but what scope has he for display when the sea is smooth as glass, calm as a good man's bossom, when the bark glides placidly along, when the log of the mariner may be summed up in two words: Genius or Success? These two words are really the summary of the career of the famous writer whose portrait graces our page. There are no moving accidents by flood or field in his life to tell; his life has been one of uniform industry and prosperity. Yet, as our readers must naturally be anxious to learn even the minutest particulars concerning one who possesses such remarkable talents, and has occupied for so long so conspicuous a position in society, we will proceed, to the best of our ability, to tell how Mr. Dick