OR'S FAREWELL.

And so without more circumstance at all,
I hold it fit that we shake hands and part.

--_Hamlet_.

Having taken leave of the Hall and its inmates, and brought the
history of my visit to something like a close, there seems to remain
nothing further than to make my bow, and exit. It is my foible,
however, to get on such companionable terms with my reader in the
course of a work, that it really costs me some pain to part with him;
and I am apt to keep him by the hand, and have a few farewell wards at
the end of my last volume.

When I cast an eye back upon the work I am just concluding, I cannot
but be sensible how full it must be of errors and imperfections:
indeed, how should it be otherwise, writing as I do about subjects and
scenes with which, as a stranger, I am but partially acquainted? Many
will doubtless find cause to smile at very obvious blunders which I
may have made; and many may, perhaps, be offended at what they may
conceive prejudiced representations. Some will think I might have said
much more on such subjects as may suit their peculiar tastes; whilst
others will think I had done wiser to have left those subjects
entirely alone.

It will probably be said, too, by some, that I view England with a
partial eye. Perhaps I do; for I can never forget that it is my
"father land." And yet, the circumstances under which I have viewed it
have by no means been such as were calculated to produce favourable
impressions. For the greater part of the time that I have resided in
it, I have lived almost unknowing and unknown; seeking no favours, and
receiving none: "a stranger and a sojourner in the land," and subject
to all the chills and neglects that are the common lot of the
stranger.

When I consider these circumstances, and recollect how often I have
taken up my pen, with a mind ill at ease, and spirits much dejected
and cast down, I cannot but think I was not likely to err on the
favourable side of the picture. The opinions I have given of English
character have been the result of much quiet, dispassionate, and
varied observation. It is a character not to be hastily studied, for
it always puts on a repulsive and ungracious aspect to a stranger. Let
those, then, who condemn my representations as too favourable, observe
this people as closely and deliberately as I have done, and they will,
probably, change their opinion. Of one thing, at any rate, I am
certain, that I have spoken honestl