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LETTERS
FROM
ENGLAND
PREFACE
BY THE TRANSLATOR.
The remarks of Foreign Travellers uponour own country have always been so wellreceived by the Public, that no apologycan be necessary for offering to it thepresent Translation, The Author of thiswork seems to have enjoyed more advantagesthan most of his predecessors, andto have availed himself of them with remarkablediligence. He boasts also of hisimpartiality: to this praise, in general, heis entitled; but there are some thingswhich he has seen with a jaundiced eye. Itis manifest that he is bigotted to the deplorablesuperstitions of his country; andIVwe may well suppose that those parts ofthe work in which this bigotry is most apparent,have not been improved by the aidfor which he thanks his Father Confessor.The Translator has seldom thought it necessaryto offer any comments upon thepalpable errors and mis-statements whichthis spirit has sometimes occasioned: thefew notes which he has annexed are distinguishedby the letters Tr.
PREFACE.
A volume of Travels rarely or never, inour days, appears in Spain: in England,on the contrary, scarcely any works are sonumerous. If an Englishman spends thesummer in any of the mountainous provinces,or runs over to Paris for six weeks,he publishes the history of his travels;and if a work of this kind be announcedin France, so great a competition is excitedamong the London booksellers, thatthey import it sheet by sheet as it comesfrom the press, and translate and print itpiece-meal. The greater number of suchbooks must necessarily be of little value:all, however, find readers, and the worstof them adds something to the stock ofgeneral information.
We seldom travel;