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fair fellow-traveller in a stage-coach, a totally erroneous and false application, I have been told, was made. In certain characters, there might be grounds, though I did not know them at the time; in that character, I am thoroughly convinced there never were any grounds.

There was a great disposition to apply exhibitions to scenes, with which I was once conversant; and also to other very distant scenes, with which I was conversant at the time of the publication. My hero having first appeared in the Highlands of Scotland, I could not avoid describing Highland manners; and I exhibited the majority as I found them, amiable and respectable, and a few as I found them able and estimable. There, however, as well as in other parts of the world, there are fools and knaves; and among the weak, there is particularly the preposterous folly of