Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the originaldocument have been preserved.The author's use of accents was retained as printed.
PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY:
WRITTEN
DURING SOME YEARS OF RESIDENCE AND TRAVEL
IN
EUROPE.
BY
N. PARKER WILLIS.
NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER, 124 GRAND STREET.
MDCCCLX.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1852, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern Districtof New York.
PREFACE.
A word or two of necessary explanation, dear reader.
I had resided on the Continent for several years, and had beena year in England, without being suspected, I believe, in thesocieties in which I lived, of any habit of authorship. No productionof mine had ever crossed the water, and my Letters tothe New-York Mirror, were (for this long period, and I presumedwould be forever), as far as European readers were concerned, anunimportant and easy secret. Within a few months of returningto this country, the Quarterly Review came out with a severecriticism on the Pencillings by the Way, published in the New-YorkMirror. A London publisher immediately procured abroken set of this paper from an American resident there, andcalled on me with an offer of £300 for an immediate edition ofwhat he had—rather less than one half of the Letters in thispresent volume. This chanced on the day before my marriage,and I left immediately for Paris—a literary friend most kindlyundertaking to look over the proofs, and suppress what mightannoy any one then living in London. The book was printed inviiithree volumes, at about $7 per copy, and in this expensive shapethree editions were sold by the original publisher. After hisdeath a duodecimo edition was put forth, very beautifully illustrated;and this has been followed by a fifth edition lately published,with new embellishments, by Mr. Virtue. The onlyAmerican edition (long ago out of print) was a literal copy ofthis imperfect and curtailed book.
In the present complete edition, the Letters objected to by theQuarterly, are, like the rest, re-published as originally written.The offending portions must be at any rate, harmless, after beingcirculated extensively in this country in the Mirror, and prominentlyquoted from the Mirror in the Quarterly—and this beingtrue, I have felt that I could gratify the wish to be put fairly ontrial for these alleged offences—to have a comparison institutedbetween my sins, in this respect, and Hamilton's, Muskau's, VonRaumer's, Marryat's and Lockhart's—and so, to put a definitevalue and meaning upon the constant and vague allusions to theseiniquities, with which the critiques of my contemporaries abound.I may state as a fact, that the only instance in which a quotationby me from the conversation of distinguished men gave the leastoffence in England, was the one remark made by Moore the poetat a dinner party, on the subject of O'Connell. It would havebeen harmless, as it was designed to be, but for the unexpectedcelebrity of my Pencillings; yet with all my heart I wished itunwritten.
I wish to put on record in this edition (and you need not be atixthe trouble of perusing them unless you please, dear reader!) anextract or two from the London prefaces to "Pencillings," and