Whether I shall prove fortunate enough not to excite these sensations in such readers as may honour my book with a perusal, I fear to conjecture. But it was my good fortune, during a season of uncommon beauty, to make a tour through some of the most interesting parts of France, and to meet with persons who, from situation and talents, were highly calculated to give my journey every charm of society and information. The natural face of the country through which I passed was peculiarly beautiful: I could scarcely move a step without some novelty of picturesque enchantment, and had the most perfect opportunities of contemplating Nature in all her varied poetry, from the grand and terrible graces of savage sublimity, to the soft and playful loveliness of cultivated luxuriance. There was scarcely a town or village where I arrived which romance or history, religion or politics, had not invested and adorned with every interest of mental association. Under such impressions, and with such opportunities, it was scarcely possible to resist recording something of what I saw and felt; and if the publication of my hasty record be an error, it will be deemed by my friends, I hope, a pardonable one. My book can scarcely demand the serious attention of the critic; nor could criticism well expect a better style from one whose profession is seldom supposed to allow much leisure to acquire nicety in the arts of composition. I claim no other merit for my Notes than having followed the advice (of Gray, I believe) that ten words put down at the moment upon the spot, are worth a whole cart load of recollections. I have not sought to add to their attraction (if they should possess any) by the embellishments of my invention, or the graces of my periods--the decorative artifices of execution can never give value to falsehood, and truth needs them not. A simple landscape, simply described from nature, has always a charm above the most high-finished compositions of mere fancy; and, like a moderate painting from the same source, still imparts a feeling of reality. I hope, therefore, I shall be excused for attempting some description, slight and unskilful as it may be, of places and scenery where the human mind has exhibited some of its most curious and powerful features, and which awaken reflections of the deepest interest--I allude particularly to the monastery of _La Trappe_, and to the country of _La Vendée_. The former had dwelt among the earliest impressions of youth, with something like the wild and wonderful force of a romantic tale; and I was anxious to become an eye-witness of what had so long been one of the most powerful objects of my imagination. The gloomy and almost inaccessible situation chosen by this strange fraternity for their convent--their rigid separation from human intercourse--the infringible taciturnity imposed upon themselves--and the terrible severity of their penances, are certainly circumstances more