My father arrived in London on the 17th of June, 1817, having left it on the 10th of April, 1810. Besides his own, he had brought with him all Haller's drawings for the intended book which was to be the complete and final authority on Greek architecture and the grand result of his seven years of travel. Haller was to come to England to see it through the press. Had it appeared at once it would have been most _à propos_. Greek architecture was all the fashion. Unhappily, the intention was thwarted by the sudden death of Haller, which took place at Ambelakia, in the Vale of Tempe, of a congestion of the lungs, caught while making excavations in the month of September 1818. The loss of this valuable help disheartened my father, who had no taste for the work. He was already busy in other ways, and the task which should have had his first attention gradually sank into the background. One by one those who had taken part in the discoveries died: Stackelberg in 1836, Linckh and Foster not many years after. But the book remained a load on my father's conscience all his life, and it was not till 1859, more than forty years later, that it saw the light. The interest in the events and actors had died down, and the novelties had become common property. His unfortunate dislike for writing lost him much of the credit he might have reaped, while others profited by his experience. His collection of inscriptions was picked over by Walpole; Hughes fills out his pages with his letters; Bronstedt uses his drawings. It is Stackelberg who relates how he discovered the bas-reliefs at Phigaleia; Beaufort anticipates anything he might have had to tell of Karamania; Wordsworth plundered his portfolio; and in the absence of any consecutive account of his own, it has been often only by the help of the writings of others that it has been possible for me to piece together his disjointed and often undated diaries. FOOTNOTES: [49] See frontispiece. [50] Charles Percier (1764-1838), originator of the so-called "Empire" style in furniture, architect of the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, and of parts of the Louvre and of the Tuileries. PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., NEW-STREET SQUARE LONDON End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Travels in Southern Europe and the Levant, 1810-1817, by Charles Robert Cockerell