PREFATORY. 



THE only part of my book I wish to preface is 

 the last part, the foreign sketches, and it is not 

 much matter about these, since, if they do not contain 

 their own proof I shall not attempt to supply it here. 



I have been told that De Lolme, who wrote a no- 

 table book on the English Constitution, said that 

 after he had been in England a few weeks, he fully 

 made up his mind to write a book on that country ; 

 after he had lived there a year, he still thought of 

 writing a book, but was not so certain about it, but 

 that after a residence of ten years he abandoned his 

 first design altogether. Instead of furnishing an ar- 

 gument against writing out one's first impressions of 

 a country, I think the experience of the Frenchman 

 shows the importance of doing it at once. The sen- 

 sations of the first day are what we want the first 

 flush of the traveler's thought and feeling, before 

 his perception and sensibilities become cloyed or 

 blunted, or before he in any way becomes a part of 

 that which he would observe and describe. Then the 

 American in England is just enough at home to en- 



