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LONDON:

PRINTED BY REYNELL AND WEIGHT,

LITTLE PULTENEY STREET.

THESE Volumes were designed to be dedicated to one lately passed to "that bourne from which no traveller returns" with the praise. and the prayer of thousands. To that good old English Nobleman, the Right Honourable the Earl of LONSDALE, it was my hope to present this humble tribute of my deep admiration; and although the pulse is still and the tongue mute who, I am sure, would not have been regardless of the wish to make this acknowledgement, however inadequate, for his kindness and hospitality enjoyed by me in the sunset of his life, yet they shall be inscribed to his memory.

"For while yet a nook is left,

Where English minds and manners may be found,

Hearts shall be constrained to love him."

The Lawn, Twickenham,

April, 1844.

JOHN MILLS.

PREFACE.

IN the opening page of my first work I stated that my fears of success were based on the foundation of inexperience in the art of book-making. In my second I pleaded, that because I was so alarmingly successful with the first-that is, the edition did not find its way to the trunkmakers' or the chandlers' shops in the time specified for the reception of modern productions in literature I was in dire trepidation of a counter-hit and total overthrow with the

attempt to build upon the bricks of chance. Thanks, however - and let the thanks be awarded to where and to whom they are due thanks, however, I repeat, to Mr Colburn's liberal advertisements, 'The Stage Coach' neither broke down, stopped, nor -yes, I was about to commit an error -the axles did want greasing, and no attention was spared in the labour. I positively assert, however, that I did not write any review or notice myself; but one of my friends was decidedly guilty of such an act of ill-natured kindness; and I wish most especially to impress upon his mind. the moral of a certain fable, wherein a bear is desirous of brushing a wasp, or a fly, or a bee, or a flea, from the proboscis of his master, or companion, and, in the attempt to gratify

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