PREFACE.


In justice to the public and to myself, I must disavow for the
following pages any higher literary pretension than what is conveyed
by the simple title of "Notes," under which I have ventured to give
them to the world. I had no other aim in writing but to occupy as
rationally as I could the hours of travel, and no other object in
publishing but to impart to others as plainly as I could a portion of
the pleasure I myself experienced. It has somewhere been remarked to
this effect, that if every man of common understanding were to put
down the daily thoughts and occurrences of his life, candidly and
unaffectedly as he experienced them, he must necessarily produce
something of interest to his fellow men, and make a book, which,
though not enlivened by wit, dignified by profundity of reasoning, nor
valuable by extent of research, yet no man perhaps should throw aside
with either weariness or disgust.

Whether I shall prove fortunate enough not to excite these sensations
in such readers as may honour my book with a perusal, I fear to
conjecture. But it was my good fortune, during a season of uncommon
beauty, to make a tour through some of the most interesting parts of
France, and to meet with persons who, from situation and talents,
were highly calculated to give my journey every charm of society and
information. The natural face of the country through which I passed
was peculiarly beautiful: I could scarcely move a step without
some novelty of picturesque enchantment, and had the most perfect
opportunities of contemplating Nature in all her varied poetry, from
the grand and terrible graces of savage sublimity, to the soft and
playful loveliness of cultivated luxuriance. There was scarcely a