summon our reader to a very different scene from those which would be likely to greet his eyes, were he following the adventures of our new Telemachus. Nor wilt thou, dear reader, whom we make the umpire between ourself and those who never read—the critics;—thou who hast, in the true spirit of gentle breeding, gone with us among places where the novelty of the scene has, we fear, scarcely atoned for the coarseness, not giving thyself the airs of a dainty Abigail;—not prating lackey-like on the low company thou hast met;—nor wilt thou, dear and friendly reader, have cause to dread that we shall weary thy patience by a "damnable iteration" of the same localities. Pausing for a moment to glance over the divisions of our story which lies before us like a map, we feel that we may promise in future to conduct thee among aspects of society, more familiar to thy habits;—where the Unquessed Events flow to their allotted gulf through landscapes of more pleasing variety, and among tribes of a more luxurious civilization.
Upon the banks of one of fair England's fairest rivers, and about fifty miles' distant from London,
