A preface appears to me necessary to this book, in order that the
expectation with which the English reader might open it should not be
disappointed.
Some curiosity has of late been excited in England with regard to
America: its political existence is a momentous experiment, upon which
many eyes are fixed, in anxious watching of the result; and such
accounts as have been published of the customs and manners of its
societies, and the natural wonders and beauties of its scenery, have
been received and read with considerable interest in Europe. This being
the case, I should be loth to present these volumes to the English
public without disclaiming both the intention and the capability of
adding the slightest detail of any interest to those which other
travellers have already furnished upon these subjects.
This book is, what it professes to be, my personal journal, and not a
history or a description of men and manners in the United States.
Engaged in an arduous profession, and travelling from city to city in
its exercise, my leisure and my opportunities would have been alike
inadequate to such a task. The portion of America which I have visited
has been a very small one, and, I imagine, by no means that from which
the most interesting details are to be drawn. I have been neither to the
south nor to the west; consequently have had no opportunity of seeing
two large portions of the population of this country,--the enterprising
explorers of the late wildernesses on the shores of the
Mississippi,--and the black race of the slave slates,--both classes of
men presenting peculiarities of infinite interest to the traveller: the
one, a source of energy and growing strength, the other, of disease and
decay, in this vast political body.
My sphere of observation has been confined to the Atlantic cities, whose
astonishing mercantile prosperity, and motley mongrel societies, though
curious under many aspects, are interesting but under few.
What I registered were my immediate impressions of what I saw and heard;
of course, liable to all the errors attendant upon first perceptions,
and want of time and occasion for maturer investigation. The notes I
have added while preparing the text for the press; and such opinions and
details as they contain are the result of a longer residence in this
country, and a somewhat better acquaintance with the people of it.
Written, as my journal was, day by day, and often after the fatigues of
a laborious evening's duty at the theatre, it has infinite sins of
carelessness to answer for; and but that it would have taken less time
and trouble to re-write the whole book, or rather write a better, I
would have endeavoured to correct them,--though, indeed, I was something
of Alfieri's mind about it:--"Quanto poi allo stile, io penso di lasciar
fare alla penna, e di pochissimo lasciarlo scostarsi da quella triviale
e spontanea naturalezza, con cui ho scritto quest' opera, dettata dal
cuore e non dall' ingegno; e che sola puo convenire a così umile tema."
However, my purpose is not to write an apology for my book, or its
defects, but simply to warn the English reader, before he is betrayed
into its perusal, that it is a purely egotistical record, and by no
means a history of America.