CHARLES DICKENS was born at Landport, Portsmouth, on February 7, 1812. At that time his father, Mr. John Dickens, held an office in the Navy Pay Department, the duties of which obliged him toreside alternately at the principal naval stations of England. But on the conclusion of peace in 1815a considerable reduction was made by Government in this branch of the public service. Mr. JohnDickens, among others, was pensioned off, and he removed to London with his wife and children, when his son Charles was hardly four years of age.No doubt the varied bustling scenes of life witnessed by Charles Dickens in his early years, had aninfluence on his mind that gave him a taste for observing the manners and mental peculiarities ofdifferent classes of people engaged in the active pursuits of life, and quickened a naturally livelyperception of the ridiculous, for which he was distinguished even in boyhood.It is curious to observe how similar opportunities of becoming acquainted practically with life, andthe busy actors on its varied scenes, in very early life, appear to influence the minds of thinking andimaginative men in after-years. Goldsmith's pedestrian excursions on the Continent, Bulwer'syouthful rambles on foot in England, and equestrian expeditions in France, and Maclise's extensivewalks in boyhood over his native county, and the mountains and valleys of Wicklow a little later, were fraught with similar results.Charles Dickens was intended by his father to be an attorney. Nature and Mr. John Dickens happilydiffered on that point. London law may have sustained little injury in losing Dickens for "alimb." English literature would have met with an irreparable loss, had she been deprived of himwhom she delights to own as a favourite son.Dickens, having decided against the law, began his career in "the gallery," as a reporter on The TrueSun; and from the first made himself distinguished and distinguishable among "the corps," for hisability, promptness, and punctuality.Remaining for a short term on the staff of this periodical, he seceded to The Mirror of Parliament, which was started with the express object of furnishing verbatim reports of the debates. It only lived, however, for two sessions.The influence of his father, who on settling in the metropolis, had become connected with theLondon press, procured for Charles Dickens an appointment as short-hand reporter on the MorningChronicle. To this period of his life he has made some graceful and interesting allusions in a speechdelivered at the Second Anniversary of the Newspaper Press Fund, about five years