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. b 134352 be be made: it would be a vain undertaking to characterize 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 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. both by diminishing the size of the type, and by the omission of Latin interpretations of Greek authors, which are often erroneous. With regard, however, to the numerous additions made to his Work in the form of Notes, it may be proper to state, once for all, that they are exclusively his own, with the exception of the extracts made from the Manuscript Journals of his Friends: and when these occur, the name of the traveller has always been added, to whom the author is indebted for the passage inserted. He has been induced to mention this circumstance, that no person may be made responsible for any of those errors and imperfections which belong solely to himself. In addition to the Manuscript Journal of Mr. WALPOLE, this part of the Work will be found to contain also a few Extracts made from the posthumous Papers of the late Lieutenant-colonel JoHN SQUIRE, of the corps of Royal Engineers; who met with a melancholy fate, in the service of his country, at Truxillo in Spain, in the thirty-third year of his age. The death of COLONEL SQUIRE was owing to a fever occasioned by excessive fatigue at the siege of Badajoz. Never was the loss of any officer more deeply and sincerely lamented by his friends and fellow-soldiers. To be employed in fighting the battles of his country was his ruling passion; and in fighting them he had been nobly engaged for the last thirteen years of his life. During that space of time, he served on the several expeditions to the Helder, to Egypt, to South America, to Sweden, under Sir J. Moore, to Portugal and Spain, under the same general, to Zealand, and a second time to the Spanish Peninsula, where he ter ́minated his honourable career. The active mind of Colonel Squire |