I think that I have held out something like a guarantee, in the course of these papers, that my readers shall be introduced to a fair amount of fashionable life. How far I have performed my promise it is for them to judge; but I am not, myself, without misgivings. True it is that, under my guidance, they have perambulated Regent Street; have dined off the fat of the land at a Public Dinner; have betted at Tattersall’s; ridden in the Park; heard the band play at St. James’s; strolled through the Pantheon Bazaar; and lounged in a theatrical green-room: but then, have not I, discourteous _cicerone_, cajoled them into visiting strange unlovely places, dismal to look upon; persuaded them to hang up their harps by the willows of the Custom-house quay, and listen to the slang of oyster-boatmen and bargees, at Billingsgate; forced them to haunt the purlieus of police-courts, and witness the departure of prison-vans and their felonious cargoes; to keep bad hours, and associate with newspaper boys, market-gardeners, paupers, and common people who travel by parliamentary train; to become acquainted, in fact, with scenes and people distressingly low and unfashionable? It is true that I have not taken them to the lanes of Petticoat and Field; to Duke, his Place; or St. Mary, her Axe; or Bevis, his Marks; or Rag, its Fair; or Whitechapel, its Butcher Row; or Ratcliff, its Highway; or Lock, his Fields; or Somers Town, its Brill; or Rats, their Castle; or Whetstone, its Park; or Jacob, his Island; or Southwark, its Mint; or Lambeth, its New Cut; or St. Giles, its Church Lane and Hampshire Hog Lane. If I have not moved them so to travel with me, it is not, I fear, through any _laches_ of intention or deficiency of will, but simply because I have at different seasons travelled over every inch of the road I have named with other readers, and that I have a decent horror of repeating myself, and respect for the maxim of _non bis in idem_. Be my demerits granted or disallowed, I have still some time left to me wherein to make amends. Though it may be my duty, ere we have finished, to lead you again into dismal and wretched places, you shall have at least an instalment of fashionable life now; and—follow honest Sancho’s advice as to not looking the gift-horse in the mouth; be satisfied with my assurance that this present one is of the pure Godolphin Arabian lineage, elegant in form, unquestionable in mettle, electrical in swiftness. The next may be but a sorry nag, spavined, blown, wind-galled, and sprung. You must take the bad with the good, in this world, and in all things.