novel manner the legends of his native county
has been viewed by the periodical press.

To his numerous readers, in the capacity of an author, he would say
Farewell, did not the "everlasting adieus," everlastingly repeated, warn
him that he might at some future time be subject to the same infirmity,
only rendered more conspicuous by weakness and irresolution.

Rochdale, _October_ 1831.

INTRODUCTION TO THE SECOND SERIES.

No method has yet been discovered for preserving the recollection of
human actions and events precisely as they have occurred, whole and
unimpaired, in all their truth and reality. Time is an able teacher of
causes and qualities, but he setteth little store by names and persons,
or the mould and fashion of their deeds. The pyramids have outlived the
very names of their builders. "Oblivion," says Sir Thomas Browne,
"blindly scatters her poppies. Time has spared the epitaph of Adrian's
horse--confounded that of himself!"

Few things are so durable as the memory of those mischiefs and
oppressions which Time has bequeathed to mankind. The names of
conquerors and tyrants have been faithfully preserved, while those from
whom have originated the most useful and beneficial discoveries are
entirely unknown, or left to perish in darkness and uncertainty. We
should not have known that Lucullus brought cherries from the banks of
the Phasis but through the details of massacre and spoliation--the
splendid barbarities of a Roman triumph. In some instances Time displays
a fondness and a caprice in which the gloomiest tyranny is seen
occasionally to indulge. The unlettered Arab cherishes the memory of his
line. He traces it unerringly to a remoter origin than could be claimed
or identified by the most ancient princes of Europe. In many instances
he could give a clearer and a higher genealogy to his horse. But that
which Time herself would spare, the critic and the historian would
demolish. The northern barbarians are accused of an exterminating
hostility to learning. It never was half so bitter as the warfare which
learning displays against everything of which she herself is not the
author. A living historian has denied that the poems of Ossian had any
existence save in the conceptions of Macpherson, because he
condescendingly informs us, "Before the invention or introduction of
letters, human memory is incapable of any faithful record which may be
transmitted from age to age."

The account which Macphe