VI 
PREFACE. 
acquaintance with the manners, customs and habits, 
the literature, arts and social condition of that country 
to the description of which they are confined. In the 
present series, if there shall be found less to entertain, 
there will, I trust, be more to instruct, and a fair 
balance of advantage in the reader s favour be there- 
by struck. In saying this, I am not vain enough to 
imagine that I have done justice to the subject, far 
from it ; but although sensible that in abler hands 
it might have been made full of high and stirring 
interest, I trust I may be allowed to say, that I 
have collected information from a variety of sources 
not open to general readers, and that, with all its de- 
ficiencies, the volume will contain the results of much 
painful and laborious research. I might have pro- 
duced an apparently learned work at less cost of ex- 
ertion, — for the mask of learning is easily assumed ; 
but my purpose has been rather to be understood by 
unlearned readers, than to challenge the higher and 
more fastidious reading of learned men. 
In writing these lives, it has been my aim to con- 
vey all the information in my power, without en- 
cumbering the text with dry details, or embarrassing 
it by multiplying the names of persons and places ; 
