Many may object that I am making much too serious a matter of the department of the business of travelling under present notice. They do not pretend to be moral philosophers;--they do not desire to be oracles;--they attempt nothing more than to give a simple report of what has come under their notice. But what work on earth is more serious than this of giving an account of the most grave and important things which are transacted on this globe? Every true report is a great good; every untrue report is a great mischief. Therefore, let there be none given but by persons in some good degree qualified. Such travellers as will not take pains to provide themselves with the requisite thought and study should abstain from reporting at all. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that the study shown to be requisite is vast and deep. Some knowledge of the principles of Morals and the rule of Manners is required, as in the case of other sciences to be brought into use on a similar occasion; but the principles are few and simple, and the rule easy of application. The universal summary notions of Morals may serve a common traveller in his judgments as to whether he would like to live in any foreign country, and as to whether the people there are as agreeable to him as his own nation. For such an one it may be sufficient to bear about the general notions that lying, thieving, idleness, and licentiousness are bad; and that truth, honesty, industry, and sobriety are good; and for common purposes, such an one may be trusted to pronounce what is industry and what idleness; what is licentiousness and what sobriety. But vague notions, home prepossessions, even on these great points of morals, are not sufficient, in the eyes of an enlightened traveller, to warrant decisions on the moral state of nations who are reared under a wide diversity of circumstances. The true liberality which alone is worthy to contemplate all the nations of the earth, does not draw a broad line through the midst of human conduct, declaring all that falls on the one side vice, and all on the other virtue; such a liberality knows that actions and habits do not always carry their moral impress visibly to all eyes, and that the character of very many must be determined by a cautious application of a few deep principles. Is the Shaker of New England a good judge of the morals and manners of the Arab of the Desert? What sort of a verdict would the shrewdest gipsy pass upon the monk of La Trappe? What would the Scotch peasant think of the magical practices of Egypt? or the Russian soldier of a meeting of electors in the United States? The ideas of right and wrong in the minds of these people are not of the enlarged kind which would enable them to judge persons in situations the most opposite to their own. The true philosopher, the worthy observer, first contemplates in imagination the area of humanity, and then ascertains what principles of morals are applicable to them all, and judges by these.