PREFACE.

If I were to assert that these Travels were not intended to see the light; that I give them to the public with regret, and, as it were, in spite of myself, I should tell the truth, and, probably, nobody would believe me.

My tour was not undertaken with the intention of writing it; I had a very different design, and this design I have accomplished in the Martyrs. I went I could not behold Sparta, Athens, Jein quest of images, and nothing more. rusalem, without making some reflections. Those reflections could not be introduced into the subject of an epopee; they were left in the journal which I is these that I now submit to the public. kept of my tour, and

I must, therefore, request the reader to consider this work rather as memoirs of a year of my life, than as a book of travels. I pretend not to tread in the steps of a Chardin, a Tavernier, a Chandler, a Mungo Park, a Humboldt: or to be thoroughly acquainted with people, through whose country I have merely passed. A moment is sufficient for a landscape painter to sketch a tree, to take a view, to draw a ruin; but whole years are too short for the study of men and manners, and for the profound investigation of the arts and sciences.

I am, nevertheless, fully aware of the respect that is due to the public, and it would be wrong to imagine that I am here ushering into the world a work that has cost me no pains, no researches, no labour; it will be seen, on the contrary, that I have scrupulously fulfilled my duties as a writer. Had I done nothing but determine the site of Lacedæmon, discover a new tomb at Mycena, and ascertain the situation of the ports of Carthage, still I should deserve the gratitude of travellers.

In a work of this nature, I have often been obliged to pass from the most serious reflections to the most familiar circumstances: now indulging my reveries among the ruins of Greece, now returning to the cares incident to the traveller, my style has necessarily followed the train of my ideas, and the change in my situation. All readers, therefore, will not be pleased with the same passages; some will seek my sentiments only, while others will prefer my adventures; these will feel themselves obliged to me for the positive information I have communicated respecting a great number of objects; those again will be tired of the observations on the arts, the study of monuments, and the historical digressions. For the rest, it is the man, much more than the author, that will be discovered throughout; I am continually speaking of myself, and I spoke, as I thought, in security, for I had no intention of publishing these Memoirs. But as I have nothing in my heart that I am ashamed to display to all the world, I, have made no retrenchments from my original notes. The object which I have in view will be accomplished, if the reader perceives a perfect sincerity from the beginning of the work to the end. A traveller is a kind of historian; it is his duty to give a faithful account of what he has seen or heard; he should invent nothing, but then he must omit nothing; and whatever may be his private opinions, he should never suffer them to bias him to such a degree as to suppress or to distort the truth.

*Les Martyrs, ou le Triomphe de la Religion Chretienne, in 3 vols. 8vo published by the author about two years ago.

B

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE volume here submitted to the public, is the last performance of a man, whose works, though less known in this country than they deserve to be, have gained, at home, a greater share, both of applause and animadversion, than those of, perhaps, any living writer. His Atala, or the Amours of Two Savages in the Desert, and a short extract from his great work Genie du Christianisme, which appeared under the title of a Demonstration of the Existence of God, are the only part of his writings that has hitherto been laid before the English reader Les Martyrs, ou le Triomphe de la Religion Chretienne, which may be considered as his master-piece, yet remains wholly unknown here; though repeated editions of each of these performances evince the celebrity which they have acquired in France.

It was the latter that furnished occasion for the present tour. When we behold an author, for the sake of a close adherence to truth and nature, quitting his native land, and exposing himself in once classic, but now barbarous countries, to every species of fatigue, hardship, and danger, at the expense of his fortune and his health, merely that he may give a faithful portraiture of the scenes which he has chosen for a work of fiction; it is impossible to withhold our admiration of the ardour and enthusiasm which alone could suggest the idea of such an enterprise, and communicate the fortitude and energy requisite for its accomplishment.

Such, as we are informed by M. de Chateaubriand himself, was the sole motive for these Travels, the journal of which, though not originally intended for publication, will, unless I am mistaken, excite a considerable degree of interest in various classes of readers. The scholar and the man of science will accompany his steps, with feelings of mingled pleasure and pain, through some of the most renowned regions of antiquity; the Christian will follow him with devotion in his pilgrimage to the scenes hallowed by the presence and the miracles of the Divine Founder of his religion; the artist will find studies ready sketched to his hand; and the general reader will be delighted with the variety of information, the adventures, and the reflections, alternately sublime and pathetic, with which this volume is interspersed; while a tinge of melancholy, which pervades all the works of this writer, a grandson of the illustrious M. de Malesherbes, and which may, doubtless, be ascribed to the domestic calamities that his early life was destined to experience from a sanguinary revolution, will, assuredly, not diminish the interest arising from the perusal.

With respect to the translation, I shall merely observe, that I believe it will be found as free from imperfections as the very short time allowed for its exe. cution will admit. A tolerable copious Index, which is not in the original, will, it is hoped, prove an acceptable addition.

London, October 3, 1811.

F. SHOBERL