He who expects to find these “Loiterings” of mine of any service as a “Guide Book” to the Continent, or a “Voyager’s Manual,” will be sorely disappointed; as well might he endeavour to devise a suit of clothes from the patches of cloth scattered about a tailor’s shop, there might be, indeed, wherewithal to repair an old garment, or make a pen-wiper, but no more. My fragments, too, of every shape and colour--sometimes showy and flaunting, sometimes a piece of hodden-grey or linsey-wolsey--are all I have to present to my friends; whatever they be in shade or texture, whether fine or homespun, rich in Tyrian dye, or stained with russet brown, I can only say for them, they are all my own--I have never “cabbaged from any man’s cloth.” And now to abjure decimals, and talk like a unit of humanity: if you would know the exact distance between any two towns abroad--the best mode of reaching your destination--the most comfortable hotel to stop at, when you have got there--who built the cathedral--who painted the altar-piece--who demolished the town in the year fifteen hundred and--fiddlestick--then take into your confidence the immortal John Murray, he can tell you all these, and much more; how many kreutzers make a groschen, how many groschen make a gulden, reconciling you to all the difficulties of travel by historic associations, memoirs of people who lived before the flood, and learned dissertations on the etymology of the name of the town, which all your ingenuity can’t teach you how to pronounce. Well, it’s a fine thing, to be sure, when your carriage breaks down in a _chaussée_, with holes large enough to bury a dog--it’s a great satisfaction to know, that some ten thousand years previous, this place, that seems for all the world like a mountain torrent, was a Roman way. If the inn you sleep in, be infested with every annoyance to which inns are liable--all that long catalogue of evils, from boors to bugs--never mind, there’s sure to be some delightful story of a bloody murder connected with its annals, which will amply repay you for all your suffering.