e about their gray pinnacles! I could not behold
this great mausoleum of what is most illustrious in our paternal
history, without feeling my enthusiasm in a glow. With what eagerness
did I explore every part of the metropolis! I was not content with
those matters which occupy the dignified research of the learned
traveller; I delighted to call up all the feelings of childhood, and
to seek after those objects which had been the wonders of my infancy.
London Bridge, so famous in nursery songs; the far-famed Monument; Gog
and Magog, and the Lions in the Tower, all brought back many a
recollection of infantile delight, and of good old beings, now no
more, who had gossiped about them to my wondering ear. Nor was it
without a recurrence of childish interest, that I first peeped into
Mr. Newberry's shop, in St. Paul's Church-yard, that fountain-head of
literature. Mr. Newberry was the first that ever filled my infant mind
with the idea of a great and good man. He published all the
picture-books of the day; and, out of his abundant love for children,
he charged "nothing for either paper or print, and only a
penny-halfpenny for the binding!"

I have mentioned these circumstances, worthy reader, to show you the
whimsical crowd of associations that are apt to beset my mind on
mingling among English scenes. I hope they may, in some measure, plead
my apology, should I be found harping upon stale and trivial themes,
or indulging an over-fondness for any thing antique and obsolete. I
know it is the humour, not to say cant of the day, to run riot about
old times, old books, old customs, and old buildings; with myself,
however, as far as I have caught the contagion, the feeling is
genuine. To a man from a young country, all old things are in a manner
new; and he may surely be excused in being a little curious about
antiquities, whose native land, unfortunately, cannot boast of a
single ruin.

Having been brought up, also, in the comparative simplicity of a
republic, I am apt to be struck with even the ordinary circumstances
incident to an aristocratical state of society. If, however, I should
at any time amuse myself by pointing out some of the eccentricities,
and some of the poetical characteristics of the latter, I would not be
understood as pretending to decide upon its political merits. My only
aim is to paint characters and manners. I am no politician. The more I
have considered the study of politics, the more I have found it fu