Vlll l'REFACE.

daub he has turned out. " Ah, you should see thc books I haven'twritten !" said Rousseau to a fricnd who was praising his works.Let the writer of the present volume speak, therefore, only ofwhat he purposed at the coramencement of his task. In thedescription of the Rhino Falls he was desirous of seeing whetherit were possible, by mere verbal signs, to convey a conception ofthe " largest cataract in Europe " to those who had never visitedthe spot. In the articles, on the other band, upon Worms andthe " Concilium's Saal" at Constanz, his object was to use thelocal associations as means of conjuring up a livelier sense of theearly struggles of the Reformation ; whilst in the chapter on Stras-burg ho wished not only to impress the reader with a sense ofthe picturesque mongrel character of the town — (French in itsgovernment-institutions, German in the manners and customs ofits people, and Dutch in its canal-lined streets), but also to paintin words the choice Gothic grace of its Cathedral, as well as thecurious automaton movements of its celebrated clock. In theother " Seenes," however, he proposed merely to render suchpeculiarities of the places as would serve to give those at homea rough ideal of the Rhenish country and the towns.

With reference to the more continuous portion of the book —tbat which professes to give an account of the Domestic Manncrsof the Rhenish Prussians — it should be explained, that it is anattempt to regard German society and German character from apurely English point of view. It has long appeared to the author,that travelling southward from England is like going backwardin time'—every ten degrees of latitude corresponding to abouta hundred years in history; for as in France we see society inthe same corrupt and uncomfortable state as prevailed in ourown nation at the beginning of the present Century, so in Germanywe find the people at least a hundred years behind us in all therefinements of civilisation and "progress;" whilst in Spain, weare assured, we live a positive mediseval life, among the samedirt and intellectual darkness, the same beggary and bigotry, as