Place holders have been included in the text for possible insertions at a later date]. 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 town or village where I arrived which romance or history, religion or politics, had not invested and adorned with every interest of mental association.
Under such impressions, and with such opportunities, it was scarcely possible to resist recording something of what I saw and felt; and if the publication of my hasty record be an error, it will be deemed by my friends, I hope, a pardonable one. My book can scarcely demand the serious attention of the critic; nor could criticism well expect a better style from one whose profession is seldom supposed to allow much leisure to acquire nicety in the arts of composition.
