As little, nevertheless, would it become my years and station not to admit without cavil certain errors which may justly be pointed out in these concluding "Tales of my Landlord,"--the last, and, it is manifest, never carefully revised or corrected handiwork, of Mr. Peter Pattison, now no more; the same worthy young man so repeatedly mentioned in these Introductory Essays, and never without that tribute to his good sense and talents, nay, even genius, which his contributions to this my undertaking fairly entitled him to claim at the hands of his surviving friend and patron. These pages, I have said, were the _ultimus labor_ of mine ingenious assistant; but I say not, as the great Dr. Pitcairn of his hero--_ultimus atque optitmis_. Alas! even the giddiness attendant on a journey on this Manchester rail-road is not so perilous to the nerves, as that too frequent exercise in the merry-go-round of the ideal world, whereof the tendency to render the fancy confused, and the judgment inert, hath in all ages been noted, not only by the erudite of the earth, but even by many of the thick-witted Ofelli themselves; whether the rapid pace at which the fancy moveth in such exercitations, where the wish of the penman is to him like Prince Houssain's tapestry, in the Eastern fable, be the chief source of peril--or whether, without reference to this wearing speed of movement, and dwelling habitually in those realms of imagination, be as little suited for a man's intellect, as to breathe for any considerable space "the difficult air of the mountain top" is to the physical structure of his outward frame--this question belongeth not to me; but certain it is, that we often discover in the works of the foremost of this order of men, marks of bewilderment and confusion, such as do not so frequently occur in those of persons to whom nature hath conceded fancy weaker of wing, or less ambitious in flight.