FROM DRAWINGS BY CATTERMOLE, COX, AND CRESWICK, AND AN ACCURATE MAP. LONDON: HENRY G. BOHN, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN. EVERY age must have its prevailing fashion, and that of the present is, assuredly, pictorial embellishment in all its forms and branches. Our most distinguished living poets, and, indeed, writers of every class, seldom now appear before the world unrecommended by the genius of the painter, and the magic influence of the engraver. In describing scenery familiar to almost every eye, how little chance has the tourist at home of winning even a passing glance without borrowing some grace from the sister arts? This intimate and still growing union -so unlike any other and so agreeable to the taste of the times-seems to derive fresh strength from trial (the result of advantages mutually derived, and of that golden harvest not unfrequently reaped), merely by the pleasant process of both parties agreeing to benefit each other, and confer pleasure upon an en M134349 lightened public. Still, in an alliance every way so desirable, and calculated to gratify both the eye and the mind, the Author would fain enter his protest against the glory of letters being esteemed subsidiary to any other design, ranking, as it ought, first and preeminent in the march of intellect, as in the records of the human mind. For, without the slightest idea of challenging a controversy with his distinguished collaborateurs, was it not, he may ask, from the diviner thoughts of the Poet that the Painter first drew the fire and energy which emboldened him to follow, and strive to embody, those majestic creations of the muse of Homer, of Dante, and of Milton ? Without these inspirations, could a Michael Angelo, a Raphael, or a Flaxman, have exhibited scenes to startle the imagination and to awaken the finest emotions of the soul? But if, sometimes, the arts arrayed in all their strength and majesty combine to awe and surprise (a combination happily for us not amenable to the laws), at others they are of a less imposing and more gentle character; and the artist and the author may walk arm-in arm over the pleasant hills, by the green valleys or the sunny shores, ever ready" to catch the Cynthia of the minute," to take Nature as they find her, in her more joyous, her passionate, her solitary, and her mournful moods. Here, at least, their highest ambition has been to interpret her language in a simple and faithful manner. Theirs has been less a work of labour than one of love. To the Author, in particular, no task was assigned beyond that of amusing the reader by the way-side, leaving the judicious artists to speak to his eye, and his imagination, in tints bright and manifold as the rainbow. Light and sketchy as he could make it— drawn from no small variety of sources, antiquarian, historical, descriptive, and anecdotical-the Author's invariable aim has been, to make his book a pleasant companion, and, like a pleasant companion, to throw a charm over an idle hour-relieve the gloom of some passing moment, a solitary evening, a rainy day, the tedium, in short, incidental to every tourist's path, be he a wayfarer at home, or far away. He has sought to convey with fidelity his |