As soon as this matter was arranged, Lady Lillycraft took her leave of the family at the Hall; taking with her the captain and his blushing bride, who are to pass the honeymoon with her.  Master Simon accompanied them on horseback, and indeed means to ride on ahead to make preparations.  The general, who was fishing in vain for an invitation to her seat, handed her ladyship into the carriage with a heavy sigh; upon which his bosom friend, Master Simon, who was just mounting his horse, gave me a knowing wink, made an abominably wry face, and, leaning from his saddle, whispered loudly in my ear, “It won’t do!” Then, putting spurs to his horse, away he cantered off.  The general stood for some time waving his hat after the carriage as it rolled down the avenue, until he was seized with a fit of sneezing, from exposing his head to the cool breeze.  I observed that he returned rather thoughtfully to the house; whistling softly to himself, with his hands behind his back, and an exceedingly dubious air.

The company have now almost all taken their departure; I have determined to do the same to-morrow morning; and I hope my reader may not think that I have already lingered too long at the Hall.  I have been tempted to do so, however, because I thought I had lit upon one of the retired places where there are yet some traces to be met with of old English character.  A little while hence, and all these will probably have passed away.  Ready-Money Jack will sleep with his fathers:  the good Squire, and all his peculiarities, will be buried in the neighbouring church.  The old Hall will be modernized into a fashionable country-seat, or, peradventure, a manufactory.  The park will be cut up into petty farms and kitchen-gardens.  A daily coach will run through the village; it will become, like all other commonplace villages, thronged with coachmen, post-boys, tipplers, and politicians:  and Christmas, May-day, and all the other hearty merry-makings of the “good old times,” will be forgotten.

THE AUTHOR’S FAREWELL.

  And so without more circumstance at all,
  I hold it fit that we shake hands and part.

  —­Hamlet.

Having taken leave of the Hall and its inmates, and brought the history of my visit to something like a close, there seems to remain nothing further than to make my bow, and exit.  It is my foible, however, to get on such companionable terms with my reader in the course of a work, that it really costs me some pain to part with him; and I am apt to keep him by the hand, and have a few farewell wards at the end of my last volume.

When I cast an eye back upon the work I am just concluding, I cannot but be sensible how full it must be of errors and imperfections:  indeed, how should it be otherwise, writing as I do about subjects and scenes with which, as a stranger, I am but partially acquainted?  Many will doubtless find cause to smile at very obvious blunders which I may have made; and many may, perhaps, be offended at what they may conceive prejudiced representations.  Some will think I might have said much more on such subjects as may suit their peculiar tastes; whilst others will think I had done wiser to have left those subjects entirely alone.