There is a certain Book-Club, or Society, (no matter where) in which the Volumes of this Opus have been regularly ordered as they appeared, and regularly perused, to the edification of many Readers, the admiration of more, and the amusement of all. But I am credibly informed that an alarm was excited in that select literary Circle by a Chapter in the fourth volume, and that the said volume was not allowed to circulate by the Managing Directors or Committee, of the said Book Club, till the said Chapter had been exscinded, that is to say, cut out. Aballiboozo! When a poor wretch fell into the hands of that hellish Tribunal which called itself the Holy Office, the Inquisitors always began by requiring him to tell them what he was accused of; and they persisted in this course of examination time after time, till by promises and threats, long suspense and solitary confinement, with the occasional aid of the rack, they had extorted from him matter of accusation against himself and as many of his friends, relations and acquaintances as they could induce, or compel, or entrap him to name. Even under such a judicial process I should never have been able to discover what Chapter in this Opus could have been thought to require an operation, which, having the fear of the expurgatorial scissars before my eyes I must not venture to mention here, by its appropriate name, tho' it is a Dictionary word and the use of it is in this sense strictly technical. My ignorance however has been enlightened, and I have been made acquainted with what in the simplicity of my heart I never could have surmised. The Chapter condemned to that operation, the chapter which has been not bisked, but semiramised, is the hundred and thirty-sixth Chapter, concerning the Pedigree and Birth of Nobs; but whether the passage which called forth this severe sentence from the Censors were that in which Moses and Miss Jenny, the Sire and Dam of Nobs, are described as meeting in a field near Knavesmire Heath, like _Dido dux et Trojanus_; or whether it were the part where the consequences of that meeting are related as coming unexpectedly to light in a barn between Doncaster and Adwick-in-the-Street, my informant was not certain.