PREFACE. 
iv 
the time of publishing the letters in book form. That 
I considered it probable I might make use of the ma¬ 
terial at some future period, I frankly admit; but in 
looking over my notes and the mass of sketches thus 
brought together, the task of re-writing, and making 
any thing of them in the way of a serious work on 
Palestine, seemed too formidable to be undertaken by 
one who has scarcely yet commenced his travels. 
Such as the sketches are, I have chosen to put them 
together in the form of a connected narrative; and 
they are now presented to the public, with such illus¬ 
trations from my own portfolio, drawn on wood by 
competent artists, as I thought would give them any 
additional value. 
It will be seen that I have not felt it to be my duty 
to make a desponding pilgrimage through the Holy 
Land ; for upon a careful perusal of the Scriptures, I 
can find nothing said against a cheerful frame of mind. 
If there be any person, however, who may think that 
a traveler has no right to be lively in that part of the 
world, I beg that he will suspend his judgment till I 
visit Jerusalem again ; in which event he may depend 
upon it I shall use every exertion to be depressed in 
spirits, and produce something uncommonly heavy 
and substantial. 
In regard to the apparent egotism of writing so 
much about one’s self, I can not do better than quote 
the words of Thomas de Quincey: “ It is not offered as 
deriving any part of what interest it may have from 
myself as the person concerned in it. If the partic¬ 
ular experience selected is really interesting, in virtue 
}f its own circumstances, then it matters not to whom, 
it happened. Let him [the reader] read the sketch as 
