PREFACE. 



In presenting this volume to the public, I feel that a 

 few words of explanation are due to the readers that it 

 may obtain, in addition to those oifered to them in the 

 first chapter. When I first visited England, in 1846, it 

 was my intention to make a pedestrian tour from one 

 end of the island to the other, in order to become more 

 thoroughly acquainted with the country and people 

 than I could by any other mode of travelling. A few 

 weeks after my arrival, I set out on such a walk, and 

 had made about one hundred miles on foot, when I was 

 constrained to suspend the tour, in order to take part in 

 movements which soon absorbed all my time and strength. 

 For the ensuing ten years I was nearly the whole time 

 in Great Britain, travelling from one end of the king- 

 dom to the other, to promote the movements referred to J 



