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Excerpt from Hill-Side and Border Sketches: With Legends of the Cheviots and the Lammermuir I Am one of those persons who hold the exploded opinion that Great Britain - Ireland, of course, excepted - is the only country in Europe for a gentleman to reside in permanently. With all its faults I love it - and never waste a thought on the eternal encroachments upon English liberty, as "said and sung" over half-and-half by the tailors of Tooley Street. I disbelieve that patriotism and a begging-box can be things co-existent - I have the gift of sleep, a discretion -, and, if in my transits to Brighton or Harrowgate, I should be unhappily cooped up in a railway carriage with a radical, on the first emission of a Jeremiade against military punishment and the abuses of the State, I recline my head comfortably in the corner, and for the remainder of the journey "take mine ease." I have been through life a wanderer - and inns have been my abiding places. With West-end hostelries I am familiar as the house-cat - and had I the vulgar ambition of inscribing my name on glass, there is not a window ten years old in any house of entertainment from the Seine to the Neva, that would not bear my patronymic and Christian appellatives. I have smoked the night away in a Persian caravanserai - been martyred in a Spanish Venta - lived a week in an Irish sheebieene-house - and survived the insolence and extortion of a Yankee Colonel in Kentucky. On every hotel variety - from the palace to the pest-house - I could discourse eloquently; but of all that I have honoured with my presence, give me the little roadside inn to be found nowhere on the surface of the earth, but in "Merrie England" and "the land of cakes." In such an hostelrie, gentle reader, have I commenced these rambling sketches which I design, and thou shalt confess, to be a right pleasant and instructive portraiture of the adventures which attend, and the scenes that are presented to one, who, like myself, may with more truth than compliment be designated a sporting vagabond. My locale, at present, is Northumberland. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.