The author visited Italy, labouring under a pulmonary affection, and was com pelled during the first year of his residence in that country, to attend almost exclusively to the re-establishment of his health. Pleasure and business which open a field for observation, and furnish opportunities of information, would have been incompatible with the infirmities of a debilitated constitution. When he was so far restored as to travel and to observe, his inquiries were governed by the casual impulses of curiosity and taste, rather than directed with the view of collecting such information, as might enable him to supply the deficiencies in the excellent works on Italy, already before the publick. Nothing at that time could have been further from his mind, than the idea of writing a book. A few hastily composed sketches of the scenery and manners of Italy, were the only memorials he preserved of his travels. To these he has sometimes had recourse, in order to renew on his memory, the almost faded images of a country, which he visited with so much delight. Some partial friends to whom he exhibited these sketches, suggested the idea, and urged the propriety of the publication which is now offered to the publick. To what has been already alleged in extenuation of its faults, may be added the difficulty of saying any thing new on the subject of Italy. This, although a consideration not likely to have its due weight with the publick, is one, upon which the author is inclined to lay peculiar stress, because he has felt it in all its force. No country affords so noble a field for the talent of writing, as Italy; at the same time perhaps there is none on which more ability of this kind has been displayed. He must possess a confidence in his own powers almost unlimited, who does not irresolutely approach a subject already decorated with the brilliant eloquence of Madame de Stäel, and which has been so fully and faithfully illustrated and described by the pen of Eustace. classick pen In treading a beaten track, an author's solicitude to screen himself from the charge of plagiarism, and to avoid the footsteps of those by whom he has been preceded, is apt to betray him into puerility or bombast; he must exaggerate or confine himself to the relation of barren and insignificant anecdotes.-Some novelty the author has endeavoured to give the following work, by blending with description, occasional remarks on the late political changes in Italy. He originally contemplated a plan which would have included a general view of the literature of Italy-the present state of its learned institutions, and some account of their most eminent professors; and the work in its present form would have been given much earlier to the publick, if it had not been delayed by the continued hope of obtaining the necessary materials for that purpose. Inelegancies of diction will be readily pardoned, when it is considered that the time allotted to composition, was subtracted from professional studies. In consequence, too, of the haste with which he has been sometimes obliged to furnish manuscript for the press, and the rapidity with which he has occasionally revised proof-sheets, some inaccuracies of a grammatical and typographical nature have escaped the author; these, however painful they may be to his eye, will hardly, he trusts, be considered by liberal criticks as unpardonable blemishes in a writer, who for the first time has had occasion to exercise something of that attention to minute elegance which is required in every composition destined for the publick. After all, the author goes forward before the world not much depressed by fear, and not much elated by hope. Criticism is the fashion of the day, and when he sees authors of much higher |