e for
practical earnest. And so, giving your character fairer credit than if I
feared you as one of those captious cautious people who make a man
offender for an ill-considered word; commending to the cordial warmth of
Humanity my unhatched score and more of book-eggs, to perfect which I
need an Eccaleobion of literature; and scorning, as heartily as any
Sioux chief, to prolong palaver, when I have nothing more to say; suffer
me thus courteously to take of you my leave. And forasmuch as Lord
Chesterfield recommends an exit to be heralded by a pungent speech, let
me steal from quaint old Norris the last word wherewith I trouble you:
"These are my thoughts; I might have spun them out into a greater
length, but that I think a little plot of ground, thick-sown, is better
than a great field, which for the most part of it lieth fallow."

APPENDIX.

AN AFTER-THOUGHT.

It will be quite in keeping with your author's mind, and consistently
characteristic of his desultory indoles--(not indolence, pray you, good
Anglican, albeit thereunto akin,)--if after having thus formally taken
his _conge_ with the help of a Petronius so redoubtable as Chesterfield,
he just steps back again to induce you to have another last ramble. Now,
the wherefore of this might sentimentally be veiled, were I but little
honest, in professed attachment for my amiable reader, as though with
Romeo I cried, "Parting in such sweet sorrow, that I could say farewell
till it be morrow;" or it might be extenuated cacoethically, as though a
new crop of fancies were sprung up already, an after-math rank and wild,
before the gladdening shower of commendation has yet freshened-up my
brown hay-field: or it might be disguised falsely, as if a parcel of
precious MSS. had been lost by penny-postage, or stolen in the purlieus
of Shoe-lane; but, instead of all these unworthy subterfuges, the truth
shall be told plainly; we are yet too short by a sheet (so hints our
publishing Procrustes) of the marketable volume. Accordingly, whether or
not in this booklet your readership has already found seed sufficient
for cyclopaedias, I am free to admit that the expectant butter-man at
least has not his legitimate post-octavo allowance of three hundred
pages; and to fill this aching void as cleverly and quickly as I can, is
my first object in so rapid a return. That honesty is the best policy,
deny who dare?

Still it is competent for me to confess worthier objects, (although