PREFACE TO 1850 EDITION

I do not find it easy to get sufficiently far away from this Book, in the 1st sensations of having finished it, to refer to it with the calm which this formal heading would be seem to require. My interest in it, is so recent and strong; and my mind is so divided between pleasure and regret - pleasure in the accomplishment of a long design, regret in the separation from galore companions - that I am in danger of exhausting the reader whom I love, with personal confidences, and private emotions.

Besides which, all that I could say of the Story, to any purpose, I have endeavoured to say in it.

It would be concern the reader little, perhaps, to know, how dolefully the pen is set down at the close of a two-years' ingenious task; or how an A