of
carriage-springs on the pavement of London, and I now glide without noise
or fracture on wooden pavement. I can walk, by the assistance of the
police, from one end of London to the other without molestation; or, if
tired, get into a cheap and active cab, instead of those cottages on
wheels which the hackney coaches were at the beginning of my life.
Whatever miseries I suffered, there was no post to whisk my complaints
for a single penny to the remotest corners of the empire; and yet, in
spite of all these privations, I lived on quietly, and am now ashamed
that I was not more discontented, and utterly surprised that all these
changes and inventions did not occur two centuries ago. I forgot to add
that, as the basket of stagecoaches in which the luggage was then carried
had no springs, your clothes were rubbed all to pieces; and that, even in
the best society, one-third of the gentlemen at least were always drunk."

And now, Gentle Reader, have we not kept both troth and tryste with you?
We put it to you seriously, did you ever chance to read a more rambling
volume than the one now presented to you? You may talk to a pleasant
companion in your first or second class carriage without losing the
thread of our argument; you may indulge in a comfortable nap without its
being necessary for you to mark the page where you dropped off. It may
be better to begin at the beginning, and read in ordinary fashion to the
close. But it will not be much worse if you have a fancy for commencing
with the end. In short, you cannot go wrong, so you do but read in a
charitable spirit--not being extreme to mark the much which is amiss.

Finally, we entreat of you to read this book in the temper which a
certain English worthy recommends for his own.

"One or two things yet I was desirous to have amended, if I could,
concerning the manner of handling this my subject, for which I must
apologize, _deprecari_, and upon better advice give the friendly
reader notice. I neglect phrases, and labour wholly to inform my
reader's understanding, not to please his ear. 'Tis my study to
express myself readily and plainly as it happens: so that, as a river
runs, sometimes precipitate and swift, then dull and slow: now
direct, then _per ambages_: now deep, then shallow: now muddy, then
clear: now broad, then narrow; doth my style flow now serious, then
light, as the present subject required, or as at the time I