HISTORICAL, STATISTICAL, AND DESCRIPTIVE.
Motives for visiting the United States.-Intercourse with various Classes of Society.Extensive geographical Range of the Country traversed.-Names of the several States and Territories examined.-Form of Narrative adopted in Description.-Historical and statistical Sketches blended with this.-General Topics chiefly dwelt on in Cities and States.-Pictures of Manners and Customs in public and private Life.
AFTER a long course of travels over a great portion of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and of voyages in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean, spreading over more than thirty years of a varied and active life, I had a strong desire to add to the knowledge thus acquired of the countries of the Old World by examining for myself the most favoured portion of the New. I had once visited the United States, about thirty years ago, just after the period when the gifted poet, Thomas Moore, had passed through the country; and I had the pleasure to mingle in many of the circles that he had enlivened by his wit and enchanted by his verse: but from that period, 1808, up to 1837, all my wanderings had been in the Eastern hemisphere, and the Western had continued, to me at least, to be "a sealed fountain," of whose waters I longed the more ardently to drink.
At the close of my Parliamentary labours in 1837-when the great object of my public life had been successfully accomplished by the abolition of the East India Company's monopoly, and the opening of the vast and populous regions of the East to British enterprise-I availed myself of my retirement to make a second visit to America, with the intention of devoting at least three years to a careful examination of all the most prominent and interesting objects of nature and art that the country contained, as well as investi. gating the nature of its institutions, the structure of its society, and the character and manners of its people.
In all the works I had hitherto read in the shape of trav els through the United States, there appeared defects or omissions, which a more patient, more diligent, and more