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COMPRISING

NARRATIVES, DESCRIPTIONS,

AND

DIRECTIONS FOR ECONOMICAL TOURISTS.

BY

THE PEDESTRIAN.

EDINBURGH:

WILLIAM WHYTE AND CO.,

BOOKSELLERS TO THE QUEEN DOWAGER;

LONDON:

LONGMAN, BROWN AND CO.

GLASGOW: W. COLLINS.

DUBLIN: W. CURRY, JUN. AND CO. BELFAST: W. M'COMBE.
PERTH: J. DEWAR. ABERDEEN: A. BROWN AND CO.

MDCCCXLII.

18

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PREFACE.

"I HAVE observed," says Mr Addison, "that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure, until he knows whether the writer of it be a black man or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of a like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author." If this feeling required to be gratified in the readers of mere moral essays, much more so is it likely to hold in perusing the personal narratives of a pedestrian's tour. Το satisfy, then, a curiosity so natural, let this work be opened up in a prefatory way, with a short but somewhat particular description of THE PEDESTRIAN.

THE PEDESTRIAN is cousin-german of the imaginary character so well drawn by Sir Humphrey Davy in his Consolations in Travel, called THE UNKNOWN STRANGER, who, among many other good services,

drew with his fishing tackle the worthy baronet out of the river Traun, after he had been tossed over one of the best water-falls in the Alps. THE PEDESTRIAN is a descendant too, of that "certain odd and unaccountable fellow," mentioned in the Spectator, "who, having read the controversies of some great men, concerning the antiquities of Egypt, had his curiosity raised to such a degree, that he travelled to Grand Cairo, merely to take the measurement of a pyramid; and who, so soon as he had set himself right in that particular, returned to his native country with great satisfaction." THE PEDESTRIAN was born before phrenology came into repute; but when he was a child he happened to sustain a knock on the head, in creeping down the nursery stair, with the precocious intention of peeping into the world below. A small protuberance was in this way raised on his skull, which still remains. For many years nobody noticed it; but when his passion for travelling began to be developed his cranium was carefully thumbed over by a professor of the new science, who, mistaking the effect for the cause, denominated this accidental lump, the traveller's bump. Be that as it may, he had, like his cousin and forefathers, from the first an insatiable thirst after knowledge, which carried his desires into

all the countries of Europe, where there was anything strange to be seen. When he was a school-boy he devoted his holidays to making a grand tour on foot to all his relations; and when a student at college he saved something every winter from his limited allowances, that he might in summer visit some of the celebrated localities of his own country. During that period of mirth and activity, between the finishing of his studies and his professional establishment, which is exactly adapted for a jaunt to the Continent, THE PEDESTRIAN was unfortunately shut out from Germany, in as much as mirth without money would not carry him through a foreign land, unless like Goldsmith he could play his way on the German flute. Once fixed in life, his means became plenty enough, but then time began to be scarce; and these, namely, time and money, were thus like the two mathematical lines which always approach but never meet; or rather, they were, in the Pedestrian's circumstances, like the two electrical balls charged with opposing fluids, which sometimes seem to come near one another but only to start farther back than ever. In this way the Pedestrian was fixed between the horns of a dilemma, till at last the astonishing march of intellect brought into play the elements of air, water, and fire, along our levels,

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