Chapter I: Preface

The following Letters were written under very adverse circumstances, in a part of France remote from the beaten track in which travellers generally keep, and where curiosity has seldom led to observation. As connected with that stupendous object, which has concentrated the attention not only of Europe, but of every quarter of this planet where human communications reach, they are offered to the Public. A considerable part of the collection was unavoidably dedicated to matters which must, from their nature, be uninteresting to a majority of readers; but the author trusts to the importance of the subject to compensate for the poverty of the relation. Since his return to England they have been revised; and would have been earlier sent to the press, had not reasons of a private nature interposed to procrastinate his intention.