IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES OF EUROPE ASIA AND AFRICA BY EDWARD DANIEL CLARKE LL.D. PART THE SECOND GREECE EGYPT AND THE HOLY LAND SECTION THE SECOND PRINTED FOR T. CADELL AND W. DAVIES STRAND LONDON BY R. WATTS BROXBOURN HERTS. M DCCC XIV. PREFACE TO THE SECOND SECTION OF PART THE SECOND. THIS further addition to the SECOND PART of these Travels, will enable the Reader to form a tolerable estimate of the probable compass of the entire Work: and it may serve to prove, that the author, if he should live to complete his undertaking, has not exceeded his original estimate, in the account of a journey through forty-five degrees of longitude, and nearly forty of latitude. By the endeavours made to concentrate the subject, he may perhaps sometimes have omitted observations which a particular class of Readers would have preferred to those which have been inserted. He has sometimes, for example, sacrificed statistical notices, that he might introduce historical information, where Antient History is pre-eminently interesting; and again, on the other hand, he has purposely omitted much that he had written on the subject of Antiquities, that he might insert a few remarks upon the Egyptian and Grecian scenery, and upon the manners of the people. General observations, as applied to the inhabitants of Greece, cannot well be VOL. III. h be made: it would be a vain undertaking to characterize in one view such a various population. Throughout every part of the country there may be observed, not only a difference of morals and of habits, but also peculiarities of religion and of language. In the mixed society of one island, the Italian character seems to predominate; in another, Turks or Albanians have introduced their distinctions of manners and customs. Perhaps this may be one of the causes which, added to the fine climate of the country, and to its diversified landscape, communicate such a high degree of cheerfulness during a journey or a voyage in Greece: for whether the traveller be upon its continent, or visiting its islands, a succession of new objects is continually presenting itself; and in places which are contiguous in situation, he may witness a more striking change, both as to natural and to moral objects, than would be found in other countries, for example in Russia, if he were to traverse a very considerable portion of the globe'. After all, an author, in the arrangement of his materials, cannot be supposed capable of making any exact calculation, as to what his Readers may deem it proper for him to omit, or to insert: but so far as experience has enabled the writer of these Travels to determine, he has endeavoured to obviate former objections; first, by disposing into the form of Notes all extraneous matter, and all citations; and secondly, by compressing even these, as much as possible, both (1) "Where'er we tread, 'tis haunted, holy ground, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, p. 105. Lond. 1805. |