the narrating all events, and describing all varieties, with the same monotonous and unmodulating tone.
The Hero of the story is an attempt to pourtray an individual of a species of which the country is now happily rid, but which seem to me to have possessed as many of the real properties of romance, especially comic and natural romance, as the foreign Carbonari and exotic pirates whom it has pleased English writers, in search of captivating villains, to import to their pages. For my part, I will back an English highwayman, masked, armed, mounted, and trotting over Hounslow Heath, against the prettiest rascal the Continent ever produced.
In conclusion, let me add that I have endeavoured to take warning from the errors of my preceding works. Perhaps it will be found that, in this the story is better conducted, and the interest more uniformly upheld, than in my other productions. I have outlived the Recluse's desire to be didascular, and have avoided alike essay-writing and digression;—in a word, I have studied more than in my two last works to write a tolerably entertaining novel. I have admitted only one episode of importance—the History of Augustus Tomlinson; and I have only admitted that exception, because the History is no episode in the moral and general design, though it is in the current of narration.
And now, my dear friend, it is high time that I should end an Epistle already too long, even for your
