of his travels. * * *

“His descriptions are equally good in the various regions for which talents of such different kinds are required. The wildest and the loveliest scenes of nature; buildings, and works of art; incidents of every kind; individual character and social groups,—all are treated with the same clear perception, the same easy unaffected grace. * * *

“The peculiarities of English manners and habits are drawn vividly and distinctly, and without exaggeration. We acquire a lively idea of that wonderful combination, that luxuriant growth,—of that insular life which is based in boundless wealth and civil freedom, in universal monotony and manifold diversity; formal and capricious, active and torpid, energetic and dull, comfortable and tedious, the envy and the derision of the world.

“Like other unprejudiced travellers of modern times, our author is not very much enchanted with the English form of existence: his cordial and sincere admiration are often accompanied by unsparing censure. * * *

“He is by no means inclined to favour the faults and weaknesses of the English; and in these cases he has the greatest and best among them—those whose reputation is universal—on his side.”—Göthe.

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

TO THE

THIRD AND FOURTH VOLS. OF THE LONDON EDITION.

Since it has been suggested that I ought not to suffer several glaring, though (as I think) unimportant, errors to pass unnoticed, as if I were not aware of them, I mention the most conspicuous. The Author says the Royal Exchange was built by Charles II.; that the piece of water at Blenheim covers eight hundred acres, whereas I am told it covers only two hundred and fifty;—he calls the great Warwick Beauchamp, and not Neville:—alluding to Sir Walter Scott’s ‘Kenilworth,’ he calls Varney, Vernon; and he lays the scene of Varney’s murder of his wife at Kenilworth, instead of at Cumnor.—There may be more such mistakes for aught I know. Such are to be found in every account of a foreign country I have ever seen, with the exception of some two or three works of faultless correctness and veracity, which nobody reads. Of these Carsten Niebuhr’s may be taken as a representative. Whoever has had the good fortune to see a work on Germany, which was considerably accredited here, commented with marginal notes by an intelligent and veracious German, may have had a fair opportunity of comparing the sum of misstatements between the two countries. Of our ‘natural enemies’ I say nothing, nor of our irritable child, whom so much has been done to irritate, across the Atlantic. Of Italian travellers, Eustace is given up as nearly a romance-writer; Englishmen believe Forsyth to be extremely correct, but instructed Italians point out errors grosser than any of those here noticed. After all, errors of the kind are (except to tourists) comparatively unimportant, when they relate to countries which are not explored with a view to science, but merely for the purpose of giving the general aspect, moral and physical, of the country. Whoever succeeds in doing that with anything like fairness, may be regarded as having effected as much as the extreme difficulty of obtaining accurate information, even on the spot, will admit; and, in a work like the present, which makes no pretension to any higher character than that of chit-chat letters to an intimate friend, will have accomplished all that it is fair to look for.

It has also been suggested that I ought to have given the names of the persons alluded to at length, instead of merely copying the initials given in the original. To this I can only reply, that had I the inclination, I am totally without the power. I know nothing of any of the persons or incidents recorded; nor have I any means, which are not equally at the command of all my readers, of guessing to whom the Author alludes in any case. Inquiries of the kind are as foreign to my tastes and pursuits as the society in question is from my station in life. I have regarded these incidents solely in the light of illustrations of national manners; and the applying them to individuals is a matter in which I should take not the slightest interest. But since it is obvious that this is not the common taste, I have rather thought to obscure than to elucidate those parts of the book which are objectionably personal. If I could have done this still more, without entirely changing the character of the work, I should have done it. But by any such material change I should have made myself, in some sort, responsible for its contents: which, as a mere translator, I can in no way be held to be. Whenever I find that the English public are likely to receive, with any degree of favour, such a German work as it would be my greatest pride and pleasure to render into my native tongue to the best of my ability, I shall be too happy to share with the illustrious and humanizing poets and philosophers of Germany any censure, as I should feel it the highest honour to partake in the minutest portion of their glory.

Hitherto I have found no encouragement to hope that any such work as I should care to identify myself with, would find readers.

The Reviews and other Journals (which, for the most part, have been divided between excessive praise, and censure equally excessive, of this slight but clever work) have, of course, not been sparing in allusions to the personal character of the Author. Of that, and of all that concerns his residence here, I am utterly ignorant. When I projected the translation of the book, I believed it to be, what the title announces, The Letters of a deceased Person. All that I now know of the Author’s personal history while in England, (if information from such sources may be called knowledge,) is gained from the writings of his reviewers. Whether their representations be true or false, I have not the slightest interest in discussing. Even if every several anecdote related by him were a lie, it would remain to be considered, whether or not his remarks on England and English society tallied in the main with those of other instructed foreigners, and with those of the more impartial and enlightened portion of Englishmen.

PREFACE OF THE EDITOR.

THE Letters which we now lay before the public have this peculiarity,—that, with very few and unimportant exceptions, they were actually written at the moment as they appear in these pages.

It may, therefore, easily be imagined that they were written without the most distant view to publicity. The writer, however, is now numbered with the departed. Many scruples are thus removed: and as his Letters contain not only many interesting details, but more especially internal evidence of a real individuality; as they are written with no less uncoloured freedom than perfect impartiality,—we thought that these elements are not so abundant in our literature as to render such a work a superfluity.

It was, I must confess, an infelicity which attended the deceased author during life, that he set about everything in a manner different from that pursued by other men; from which cause few things succeeded with him. Many of his acquaintances thought that he affected originality. In that they did him injustice. No man was ever more sincere and genuine in his singularities; none, perhaps, had less the appearance of being so. No man was more natural, in cases where everybody thought they saw design.

This untoward fate still, in a certain degree, pursues the appearance of his Letters. Various circumstances, which cannot be explained here, compel us, contrary to all usage, to begin with the last two volumes, which the public must accept as the first. Should these meet with approbation, we hope soon to be able to publish that preceding sequel which will be found no less independent than these. For the convenience of the reader, we have annexed a