Page:A Sketch of the Life of George Wilson, the Blackheath Pedestrian.djvu/15

 whose suggestion it was written. They have been pleased to urge me to the task, as one which may afford some alternative for my relief from the consequences of my interruption in the late pedestrian feat I had undertaken on Blackheath, and which I certainly should have completed long within the time I proposed, had it not been for the sudden and most unexpected prohibition, decreed against my further progress by certain of the Worshipful Magistrates of the district, assembling alternately at the Green Man on the Heath, and the Mitre in Greenwich Town, and for which prohibition no act of mine, as I humbly conceived, gave any just or lawful occasion. I was unconscious of any violation to the laws of or man. I concerted nothing with the popular crowds who were pleased to consider me and my task as among the objects of curiosity and amusement worth the trouble of their attention. If curiosity be the prevalent principle of the British mind, and he sometimes highly excitable by causes not very important in the view of sages or philosophers, it was not I who implanted that principle. I did not send for the numerous attractions of popular gazement that crowded Blackheath, from some days after my commencement to the moment in which the manifesto or rescript of the Worshipful Bench was issued, not only to stop my further progress, but to take me into custody, and bring me before their dread tribunal to answer for my misdoings. I had no sort of connexion with the Tumblers, Rope-Dancers, Fire-Eaters, Conjurors, Poney-Racers, Sutlers, Gin-Sellers, Gingerbread-Merchants, Ballad-Singers, or other purveyors of amusement or luxury, who crowded Blackheath for a whole fortnight without