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PRINTED BY WIAM EGLINGTON, GOSWELL STREET, LONDON.

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My recreations are the very opposite of those that might be anticipated from the title I have selected for my narrative. My general habits are retiring and domestic. I love my wife, my children, my books, my garden. I love too a quiet day's fishing, a ramble in the woods, a solitary walk among heath and ferns, and other wild plants that I can collect or classify; or a stroll by the sea-side, where I can pick up shells and alga marina. Such have been my pursuits for years. I dislike crowds; I failed at the bar, although I thirsted for the distinction I had not the courage nor confidence to attain; and believing myself unequal to contend with the bolder spirits who were my associates, I withdrew from the world at the death of my father, and retired to a small property he had bequeathed to me in one of the most picturesque of our English agricultural counties, the quiet scenery of which harmonised with my hermit disposition.

I have deemed it right to give so far this insight into my character, in order that the reader may be prepared to understand the nature of the recreations I shall present to his perusal. Out of doors I was irritable, and very disagreeable to all around me. The village doctor exhausted the pharmacopoeia in vain for me; my wife became uneasy, and insisted on my consulting the celebrated Doctor L- of London, who advised me to travel. This advice was substituted for the blue pills and rigid dietary by which I had previously been

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martyrized. And yet when I heard it-assafoetida, pure, unadulterated, undisguised, to be taken three times a day, would have been to me a preferable nostrum. Any interruption which forced me from my retirement was a source of annoyance.

Though I had read much in a desultory way, and was not a stranger to men and manners, to languages and countries, as they appear in the works of by-gone authors, nevertheless, to the existing realities of life I was like a child, and just as unfit to enter into unwonted scenes.

However, the affectionate entreaties of my wife prevailed; and after considerable discussion as to the plan of my pilgrimage, it was decided that I should try the waters of Germany, as, in the language of the Bubbles, "my brain required calming, my nerves soothing, my skin softening, and my limbs a parboiling in the Kochbrunnen." I should have preferred a trip to Harrowgate with my wife, who was a striking contrast to myself-active, energetic, goodhumoured, easily pleased; and so healthy that she hardly knew at which side of her body her liver was seated; she would have been the best companion for me on my tour had she not been just then a nursing mother. Our family physician gave me a professional poke in the right side, to test the sensibility of my liver, and urged me to set out without needless delay.

My wife forthwith began to sew buttons on my shirts, and to air the changes of linen and flannel I might require, slipping a pill

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