Note 1 — TO THE READER.

Having mentioned how this trifling Work came to be written, a word may be said on how it came to be published. While the fourth volume of the “O’Briens” was going through the press, Mr. Colburn was sufficiently pleased with the subscription (as it is called in the trade) to the first edition, to desire a new work from the author. I was just setting off for Ireland, the horses literally putting to—when Mr. Colburn arrived with his flattering proposition. I could not enter into any future engagement; and Mr. C., taking up a scrubby MS. volume, which the servant was about to thrust into the pocket of the carriage, asked “What was that?” I said it was “one of many volumes of odds and ends, de omnibus rebus;” and I read him the last entry I had made the night before, on my return from the Opera. “This is the very thing,” said the European publisher; and if the public is of the same opinion, I shall have nothing to regret in thus coming, though somewhat in déshabillé, before its tribunal.