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THE SECOND EDITION.

they were as correct and as deep and "abstract" as first impressions usually are. They were written, as I have elsewhere mentioned, with every species of interruption, and dispatched, "unshrived," by the first post, and to re-write them by my subsequent observation would be to write a new book.

It will be seen by the dates added to this edition, that there were considerable intervals of time between some of my letters from the Continent, and, (a circumstance which I wish particularly to be understood) that, though I have been in England nearly two years, these letters end with the first four months after my arrival. My impressions of England then ceased to be first impressions, and therefore were unfitted to the previous design of my letters; and I found occasion so often to correct my Pencillings by the Way, that I ceased to write altogether. Why it is more difficult to write hastily of England than of other countries will be apparent to those who have travelled. In other countries the objects of interest are classic or physical, and reducible to known standards; in England they are social or moral, and require diligent observation and study.

I commit my letters once more to the public with a strong impression of the truth of Southey's remark-that the best book (and, à fortiori, the worst) does but little good to the world, and much harm to the author.

N. P. WILLIS.

London, March 8, 1836.

PREFACE

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THE FIRST EDITION.

It is common for authors in their Prefaces to give their reasons for publishing. Mine is a novel one-I cannot help it. On the eve of a late departure for the Continent, I was informed, for the first time, that two editions of the following work were in the press. Having no control over the imperfect copy which the publishers had obtained from periodicals, my only choice was between these crude editions and a corrected and enlarged one superintended by myself. I have chosen the least of two evils.

The extracts from these letters which have appeared in the public prints have drawn upon me much severe censure. Admitting its justice in part, perhaps I may be allowed to shield myself from its remaining excess by a slight explanation. During several years' residence in Continental and Eastern countries, I have had opportunities (as attaché to a foreign legation) of seeing phases of society and manners not usually described in books of travel Having been the editor, before leaving the United States, of a Monthly Review, I found it both profitable and agreeable to continue my interest in the periodical in which that Review was merged at my departure, by a miscellaneous correspondence. Foreign courts, distinguished men, royal entertainments, &c. &c.,-matters which were likely to interest American readers more particularly, have been in turn my themes. The distance of America from these countries, and the ephemeral nature and usual obscurity of periodical corresvondence, were a sufficient warrant to my mind that my

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

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descriptions would die where they first saw the light, and fulfil only the trifling destiny for which they were intended. I indulged myself, therefore, in a freedom of detail and topic which is usual only in posthumous memoirs -expecting as soon that they would be read in the countries and by the persons described, as the biographer of Byron and Sheridan that these fruitful and unconscious themes would rise from the dead to read their own interesting memoirs. And such a resurrection would hardly be a more disagreeable surprise to that eminent biographer, than was the sudden appearance to me of my own unambitious letters in the Quarterly Review.

The reader will see (for every letter containing the least personal detail has been most industriously re-published in the English papers) that I have in some slight measure corrected these Pencillings by the Way. They were literally what they were styled-notes written on the road, and dispatched without a second perusal; and it would be extraordinary, if, between the liberty I felt with my material, and the haste in which I scribbled, some egregious errors in judgment and taste had not crept in unawares. The Quarterly has made a long arm over the water to refresh my memory on this point. There are passages (I only wonder they are so few) which I would not re-write, and some remarks on individuals which I would recall at some cost, and would not willingly see repeated in these volumes. Having conceded thus much, however, I may express my surprise that this particular sin should have been visited upon me at a distance of three thousand miles, when the reviewer's own literary fame rests on the more aggravated instance of a book of personalities* published under the very noses of the persons described.

'Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk.'

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Those of my letters which date from England were written within three or four months of my first arrival in this country. Fortunate in my introductions, almost embarrassed with kindness, and, from advantages of comparison gained by long travel, qualified to appreciate keenly the peculiar delights of English society, I was little disposed to find fault. Every thing pleased me. Yet in one instance -one single instance-I indulged myself in stricture upon individual character, and I repeat it in this work, sure that there will be but one person in the world of letters who will not read it with approbation—the editor of the Quarterly himself. It was expressed at the time with no personal feeling, for I had never seen the individual concerned, and my name had probably never reached his ears. I but repeated what I had said a thousand times, and never without an indignant echo to its truth-an opinion formed from the most dispassionate perusal of his writings-that the editor of that Review was the most unprincipled critic of the age. Aside from its flagrant literary injustice, we owe to the Quarterly, it is well known, every spark of ill feel ing that has been kept alive between England and America for the last twenty years. The sneers, the opprobrious epithets of this bravo in literature have been received in a country where the machinery of reviewing was not understood, as the voice of the English people, and an animosity for which there was no other reason has been thus periodically fed and exasperated. I conceive it to be my duty as a literary man-I know it is my duty as an American-to lose no opportunity of setting my heel on the head of this reptile of criticism. He has turned and stung me. Thank God, I have escaped the slime of his approbation.

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