Traits of Travel

ADVERTISEMENT.

AUTHORS of what is intended to be (like the present volumes) light reading, are sometimes tempted to make prefatory acknowledgments that illness and other depressing circumstances have attended the progress of their work. I doubt the policy of this plan either in propitiating the critic or in interesting the public. It is very questionable whether the state of mind or body influences the pen when it is able to move at all. Many a farce has been composed in moods of hypochondria, and the deepest tragedies have often been the productions of the merriest fellows. But even admitting the contrary of my theorems, the captious reader is too fond of his privilege of finding faults, to receive a warning that he is to meet with them at every turn; while the most tolerant must be prejudiced against an effort to amuse, prefaced by a desponding face or a suit of mourning. The better way is, surely, to let readers be cheerful and contented while they may. On this principle, I hope mine will believe that the following pages were written in high health, high fortune, and high spirits. With a friendly few, who may find reason to imagine the contrary, I have little fear of its doing any mischief.

A portion of the sketches, and one of the tales, contained in this mélange, have been reprinted from periodical works; and for another of the stories I am chiefly indebted to an original French manuscript. The anecdote entitled the Tea-pot Gentleman, was communicated to a popular actor, and introduced by him into one of his entertainments in a garbled form, but has never

before appeared in print. The remainder of the matter, forming about three-fourths of the whole, has been written many months, and the book was intended to appear early in the present season. This is stated merely to obviate the reproach of carelessly hurrying another novel, of more extended design. but by no means of more pretension, than those I have hitherto written, and which I hope to offer to the public before the end of the present year.

Though not matter of much interest, the public might be amused at the various debates to which the title of a new book gives rise, and surprised to learn that the first page is most commonly the last written. In the present case, I must frankly confess, that after sundry harassing efforts to hit upon a name which might tell unpresumingly (as all title pages should) the nature of the book it ushered into the world, I have given up that part of my task, in something very like despair, leaving it entirely to my enterprising and experienced publisher, and giving him carte blanche, which I trust will be filled up to the public taste.