He rests his chief hope of the approbation of the public, upon having given a plain and faithful statement of a journey, which must be regarded as possessing a degree of originality, arising from the peculiar circumstances under which it was accomplished.
He now concludes his prefatory matter, by soliciting the indulgence of his readers, and entreating them not to criticise with too much severity, a work which, he trusts, has some claims upon their forbearance; and which, if it happens to repay their perusal by any pleasurable emotion, or to excite a kind sympathy for his own situation, will have answered the fullest expectation of its author.
Windsor,
May 1st, 1822.
THE
NARRATIVE,
&c.
CHAP. I.
DEPARTURE FROM ENGLAND, AND JOURNEY TO PARIS.
My friends expressed considerable surprise, when I announced my actual determination to undertake a continental tour, and I believe many of them, to the last moment, were inclined to doubt whether I seriously intended it; they did not fail to question how I proposed, with my personal defects, to make progress through a strange country, unaccompanied by even a servant to assist and protect me, and with an almost total ignorance of the languages of the various people I was about to visit. I urged in reply, that the experience of more than twenty years, during which I had been, as it were, a citizen of the world, and a great part of which had been spent in foreign climes, would be sufficient to direct me through the common occurrences and incidents, to which the traveller is exposed; that for the rest, I was content to leave it to God, upon whose protection, in the midst of dangers, I had the most implicit reliance, and under whose providential guidance, I doubted not to attain the completion of the various objects of my journey, remembering, as Cowper happily expresses it, that
“To reach the distant coast,
The breath of Heaven must swell the sail,