We have obtained the plans of towns and places, (rendered interesting by antiquity, and by the rank which they hold in the pages of history,) of which we have hitherto had no details; and have described, or made drawings of every object of note which has presented itself on the field of our operations. In fact, whatever may be the merit of our work in other respects, or the value attached to our exertions, we are satisfied ourselves with the matter acquired and with the labour and diligence which has been employed in collecting it; and it is because our materials are worthy of more attention than we had time and opportunities to bestow upon them, that we regret we are not able to offer them to the Public in a more complete form than we have been able to give them. Had it been in our power to employ excavation, on a more extensive scale than we did, and to bestow as much time upon every object worth attention as its importance appeared to demand, our work could have been a more perfect one; that is to say, it would have treated of art, and its details more exclusively (we mean the details of sculpture, architecture, and painting,) than it does in the shape which it at present assumes. We might also have given additional interest to our narrative by introducing more plates than we have been able to insert; but our number has been (we believe necessarily) limited, and we may add that the selection of those which appear might have been better if we had known, before the drawings went to the engraver, that we should have been obliged to leave out so many of them. Something should be said to account for the delay which has taken place in publication since the work was first announced. We may state that, so far as we are ourselves concerned, more than three parts of the MS. was finished at least two years ago; and that the remainder was only kept back because it could not be completed till the first portion was printed. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: The plan here alluded to of the City of Lebida was obligingly placed at our disposal by the author, and we wished to have had it engraved for the work; but, in consequence of being obliged to limit our number of plates to much fewer than we had originally anticipated, this plan, with some others of our own, have been omitted.] [Footnote 2: The poetical account of this tract of country by Lucan is well known to the readers of ancient literature, and we shall have occasion hereafter to advert to it in speaking of the actual appearance of the Syrtis.] [Footnote 3: A little before this period, an expedition undertaken by the Bashaw of Tripoly against his eldest son Mahommed, now Bey of Derna, afforded to Signor Della Cella, an Italian gentleman residing in Tripoly, the opportunity of visiting the Syrtis and Cyrenaica in the capacity of physician to the Bashaw’s second son, who at that time commanded the expedition against his brother.