p. 235.]]

London:
Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman,
Paternoster-Row.
1835.

TO

SIR WILLIAM GELL.

DEAR SIR,

On quitting Naples, for those scenes which your pen and pencil have so
faithfully illustrated, I promised to fill my note book. I now offer you
its contents, as a small and unworthy token of my gratitude for the long
continued kindness you have shown.

Your faithful and obedient servant,

THE AUTHOR.

_Naples, April, 1835._

PREFACE.

The publication of the pages of a journal in the crude and undigested
form in which they were originally composed appears so disrespectful to
the public, that it requires some explanation. They were written,
"currente calamo," among the scenes they describe; more as a record of
individual adventure, and to fix the transient impressions of the moment
for the after gratification of the author, than with any hope of
affording amusement during an idle hour, even to those who might feel an
interest in all he saw and noted.

The intense curiosity, however, which exists at present to learn even
the minutest particulars connected with Greece and Turkey, and the
possibility that some of his hurried notices might not be altogether
devoid of interest, have induced the author to submit them to the public
attention. In so doing, he has preferred giving them in their original
state, with all their defects, to moulding them into a connected
narrative; his object being not to "make a book," but to offer his
desultory remarks as they arose; to present the faint outline he
sketched upon the spot, rather than attempt to work them into finished
pictures.

With some hope, therefore, of receiving indulgence from the critics,
whose asperity is rarely excited except by the overweening pretensions
of confident ignorance and self-sufficiency, he ventures on the ground
already trodden by so many distinguished men, whose works, deep in
research, beautiful in description, and valuable from their scrupulous
fidelity, have left little to glean, and rendered it a rather hazardous
task for an humble and unskilful limner to follow in their wake.

While thus disclaiming all pretensions to the possession of their
enviable talents, still, if the author should succeed in affording his
readers a few hours' pleasure from the perusal of his Journal, or enable
any one to re-picture scenes he may himself have visited, the principal
object of its publication will have been at