m over the correction of
his last proof-sheet. "Sir!" said the gentleman; "I have looked in to
inform you that the Constitution has just been overthrown." To which the
Abbe replied:--"Sir! they may overthrow the Constitution, but they can't
overthrow MY BOOK"--and he quietly went on with his work.

On precisely similar principles, I quietly went on with MY
TITLE-PAGE.

So much for the name of the book. For the book itself, as published in
its present form, I have a last word to say, before these prefatory
lines come to an end.

Cornwall no longer offers the same comparatively untrodden road to the
literary traveller which it presented when I went there. Many writers
have made the journey successfully, since my time. Mr. Walter White, in
his "Londoner's Walk to the Land's End," has followed me, and rivalled
me, on my own ground. Mr. Murray has published "The Handbook to Cornwall
and Devon"--and detached essays on Cornish subjects, too numerous to
reckon up, have appeared in various periodical forms. Under this change
of circumstances, it is not the least of the debts which I owe to the
encouraging kindness of my readers, that they have not forgotten
"Rambles Beyond Railways," and that the continued demand for the book is
such as to justify the appearance of the present edition. I have, as I
believe, to thank the unambitious purpose with which I originally
wrote, for thus keeping me in remembrance. All that my book attempts is
frankly to record a series of personal impressions; and, as a necessary
consequence--though my title is obsolete, and my pedestrian adventures
are old-fashioned--I have a character of my own still left, which
readers can recognise; and the homely travelling narrative which I
brought from Cornwall, eleven years since, is not laid on the shelf yet.

I have spared no pains to make these pages worthy of the approval of new
readers. The book has been carefully revised throughout; and certain
hastily-written passages, which my better experience condemns as
unsuited to the main design, have been removed altogether. Two of the
lithographic illustrations, (now no longer in existence) with which my
friend and fellow-traveller, Mr. Brandling, adorned the previous
editions, have been copied on wood, as accurately as circumstances would
permit; and a "Postscript" has been added, which now appears in
connexion with the original narrative, for the first time.

The little supplementary sketch thus presented, d