in my steps. The more I thought, the more I disliked the notion;
until the distaste grew into a sort of panic terror, and I rushed
into this Preface, which is no more than an advertisement for
readers.

What am I to say for my book? Caleb and Joshua brought back from
Palestine a formidable bunch of grapes; alas! my book produces
naught so nourishing; and for the matter of that, we live in an age
when people prefer a definition to any quantity of fruit.

I wonder, would a negative be found enticing? for, from the
negative point of view, I flatter myself this volume has a certain
stamp. Although it runs to considerably upwards of two hundred
pages, it contains not a single reference to the imbecility of
God's universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could have made
a better one myself.--I really do not know where my head can have
been. I seem to have forgotten all that makes it glorious to be
man.--'Tis an omission that renders the book philosophically
unimportant; but I am in hopes the eccentricity may please in
frivolous circles.

To the friend who accompanied me I owe many thanks already, indeed
I wish I owed him nothing else; but at this moment I feel towards
him an almost exaggerated tenderness. He, at least, will become my
reader: --if it were only to follow his own travels alongside of
mine.

R.L.S.