she avouches her
grandfather cut off from the body after the execution, and which the
believers look upon with great reverence. O rare Dick Turpin!

We shall, perhaps, be accused of dilating too much upon the character of
the highwayman, and we plead guilty to the charge. But we found it
impossible to avoid running a little into extremes. Our earliest
associations are connected with sunny scenes in Cheshire, said to have
been haunted by Turpin; and with one very dear to us--from whose lips,
now, alas! silent, we have listened to many stories of his exploits--he
was a sort of hero. We have had a singular delight in recounting his
feats and hairbreadth escapes; and if the reader derives only half as
much pleasure from the perusal of his adventures as we have had in
narrating them, our satisfaction will be complete. Perhaps, we may have
placed him in too favorable a point of view--and yet we know not. As
upon those of more important personages, many doubts rest upon his
history. Such as we conceive him to have been, we have drawn him--hoping
that the benevolent reader, upon finishing our Tale, will arrive at the
same conclusion; and, in the words of the quaint old Prologue to the
Prince of Prigs' Revels,

------------Thank that man,
Can make each thief a complete Roscian!

NOTES

[1] See the celebrated recipe for the Hand of Glory in "_Les Secrets du
Petit Albert_."

[2] The seven planets, so called by Mercurius Trismegistus.

[3] Payne Knight, the scourge of Repton and his school, speaking of the
license indulged in by the modern landscape-gardeners, thus vents his
indignation:

But here, once more, ye rural muses weep
The ivy'd balustrade, and terrace steep;
Walls, mellowed into harmony by time,
On which fantastic creepers used to climb;
While statues, labyrinths, and alleys pent
Within their bounds, at least were innocent!--
_Our modern taste--alas!--no limit knows;
O'er hill, o'er dale, through wood and field it flows;
Spreading o'er all its unprolific spawn,
In never-ending sheets of vapid lawn._

_The Landscape, a didactic Poem,
addressed to Uvedale Price, Esq._

[4] Mason's English Garden.

[5] Cowley.

[6] Query, Damocles?--_Printer's Devil._

[7] James Hind--the "Prince of Prigs"--a royalist captain of some
distinction, was hanged, drawn, and quartered, in 1652. Some good