f the work. He has not grown _taller_ since
its publication, and his coffers continue to retain the same stinted
condition as his person. Yet what has he not _produced_ since that
representation of his person? How has it pleased a gracious Providence
to endow him with mental and bodily health and stamina, to prosecute
labours, and to surmount difficulties, which might have broken the
hearts, as well as the backs, of many a wight "from five to ten inches
taller than himself!" I desire to be grateful for this prolongation of
labour as well as of life; and it will be my heart-felt consolation,
even to my dying hour, that such "labour" will be acceptable to the
latest posterity.

Yet a word or two by way of epilogue. The "Reminiscences" contain a
catalogue raisonne of such works as were published up to the year
1836. Since then the author has not been idle. The "_Tour into the
North of England and Scotland_," in two super-royal octavos, studded
with graphic gems of a variety of description--and dedicated to the
most illustrious female in Europe, for the magnificence of a library,
the fruit chiefly of her own enterprise and liberality--has at least
proved and maintained the spirit by which he has been long actuated.
To re-animate a slumbering taste, to bring back the gay and gallant
feelings of past times, to make men feel as gentlemen in the
substitution of _guineas_ for _shillings_, still to uphold the beauty
of the press, and the splendour of marginal magnitude, were, alone,
objects worthy an experiment to accomplish. But this work had other
and stronger claims to public notice and patronage; and it did not
fail to receive them. Six hundred copies were irrevocably fixed in the
course of the first eighteen months from the day of publication, and
the price of the large paper has attained the sum of L12. 12_s._
Strange circumstances have, however, here and there, thrown dark
shadows across the progress of the sale.

If it were pleasing to the Author, in the course of his Journey, to
receive attentions, and to acknowledge hospitalities, from the gay and
the great, it were yet more pleasing to hope and to believe that such
attentions and hospitalities had been acknowledged with feelings and
expressions becoming the character of a gentleman. They have been so;
as the pages of the work abundantly testify. But English courtesy is
too frequently _located_. It is a coin with a feeble impress, and
seems subject to woful attrition