“Vitae summa brevis SPEM nos vetat inchoare LONGAM.”

But such hopes are now irretrievably cut off; and the remembrance of the past must solace the anticipations of the future.

So much respecting the decorative department of this new edition of the Tour.  I have now to request the Reader’s attention to a few points more immediately connected with what may be considered its intrinsic worth.  In the first place, it may be pronounced to be an Edition both abridged and enlarged:  abridged, as regards the lengthiness of description of many of the MSS. and Printed Books—­and enlarged, as respects the addition, of many notes; partly of a controversial, and partly of an obituary, description.  The “Antiquarian and Picturesque” portions remain nearly as heretofore; and upon the whole I doubt whether the amputation of matter has extended beyond an eighth of what appeared in the previous edition.  It had long ago been suggested to me—­from a quarter too high and respectable to doubt the wisdom of its decision—­that the Contents of this Tour should be made known to the Public through a less costly medium:—­that the objects described in it were, in a measure, new and interesting—­but that the high price of the purchase rendered it, to the majority of Readers, an inaccessible publication.  I hope that these objections are fully met, and successfully set aside, by the Work in its PRESENT FORM.  To have produced it, wholly divested of ornament, would have been as foreign to my habits as repugnant to my feelings.  I have therefore, as I would willingly conclude, hit upon the happy medium—­between sterility and excess of decoration.

After all, the greater part of the ground here trodden, yet continues to be untrodden ground to the public.  I am not acquainted with any publication which embraces all the objects here described; nor can I bring myself to think that a perusal of the first and third volumes may not be unattended with gratification of a peculiar description, to the lovers of antiquities and picturesque beauties.  The second volume is rather the exclusive province of the Bibliographer.  In retracing the steps here marked out, I will not be hypocrite enough to dissemble a sort of triumphant feeling which accompanies a retrospection of the time, labour, and money devoted.. in doing justice, according to my means, to the attractions and worth of the Countries which these pages describe.  Every such effort is, in its way, a NATIONAL effort.  Every such attempt unites, in stronger bonds, the reciprocities of a generous feeling between rival Nations; and if my reward has not been in wealth, it has been in the hearty commendation of the enlightened and the good:  “Mea me virtute involvo."[16]