THE Proprietors deem it necessary to inform

the Public, That this Volume, though marked the FOURTH of Mr. Pratt's Gleanings, is but the Preliminary Volume of GLEANINGS IN ENGLAND; and, notwithstanding its being a separate and independent Work, such of those Purchasers of the former Volumes who wish for uniformity and numerical succession in binding and lettering, will be thereby accommodated.

GLEANINGS IN ENGLAND.

LETTER I

To THE BARON DE B.

London, May 1, 1798.

It is not without a pleasure known only to Friendship,-and where is the isolated wretch who knows not that?-I hear you still cherish the intention of visiting the Country from whence I have now the honour to address you: and that, whether "Grim-visag'd War shall smooth his wrinkled front," or not, you will indulge a curiosity which has grown up with you from your earliest youth, of passing some time on a little handful of Earth, which is, comparatively, but as an ant-hill on the Globe; but which, like the ant-hill, is populated by the most industrious, ingenious, and wonder-working creatures in the universe.

The information which your last favour, by the route of Hamburgh, brought me, that your long-form'd design of coming amongst us, acknowledges a new motive in the "animating thought," as you generously call it, of our being again within reach of each other, is no small addition to my pride and pleasure. And your reminding me of my promise to give you some IDEA of my Country in return for the liberal and instructive services rendered me in yours, flatters my self-love, at the same time that it demonstrates your good opinion.

But you chide me, for so long appearing to neglect my native Land. Lovingly, and like a brother, indeed, but still you chide; and you measure my deserving your reproof, from the Letter which I sent you, of my being again on English ground; when I transmitted to you an account of the flowery day I past immediately after my landing; and which the copy of the Books, I had the honour to forward to you since,

* Introduction to Vol. I. of Gleanings through Wales, Holland, and Weftphalia.'

will shew, was printed as an introduction to what I had imported from other shores.

Knowing you could not arrange your affairs so as to leave Germany, for the term proposed, in less than five years, from the period of forwarding to you those remarks, I imagined, they would serve as a general description, till a more particular one became necessary; and I was willing, besides, that the observations I stood pledged to give you, should not be too remote from the time of their proving useful; lest with the loss of all their novelty, they should lose some of their interest.

Still you are dissatisfied. "A Gleaning of England!" you argue, "would be in keeping with the nature and spirit of your friend's former pictorial sketches, independent on all the compacts of private friendship; not only as the proper finish and crown of the corre spondence, but as a tribute of gratitude and of patriotism to the talents, the dignity, and the beauty of the Island."

This is seductive reasoning, my dear Baron. you have lived, chiefly, in an unemigrating

But

country;-persons of almost all countries may be comparatively so called with the wanderers of Great Britain :-perhaps, therefore, you do not know how often our inland travellers have trod the beaten, and some the unbeaten pathsthat trips, tours, journals, and journies, through every nook and corner of the realm, frequently for the sole purpose of detailing, or giving in the gross, parts of their travel to others,-not to mention a considerable phalanx, that make very good books of this kind, without travelling at all, or at least only from one library to another;→→ a kind of literary worms which live upon any old leaf they can get at, and are even more abundant than our histories of England,-and that our histories are only to be out-numbered by our authors, and that our authors are only less incalculable than yours. Hence, it would be no easy task to find a river, or a rill, a palace, or a hut, that has not meandered or murmured, displayed its magnificence or boasted its humility, and been some way or another made known to fame by a "true-born Englishman.”

Were I disposed to break promise, I might