ΤΟ

JOHN SIDDALL WOOD, ESQ.

MY DEAR WOOD,

As to your kindness I owe my

introduction to that grand country I have ventured to write notes about, allow me to dedicate them to you, in memoriam of the soft and hard weather we shared

together, and of your patient endurance of the whims and oddities of

PREFACE.

WRITI

RITING a book may be very pleasant, for if you have your head and your heart full of a subject it is easy enough to jot your thoughts down. Writing a preface is quite the reverse. Never having written but one book in my life, and that without a preface, I don't think I can make head or tail of one. Therefore I am resolved this shall be as short as possible.

Now then, what shall I say? My publisher tells me that my first work, "Twenty Years' Reminiscences of the Lews," has found great favour with the public, having reached a second edition, and going in for a third, &c., &c., &c.

Very much obliged to the public indeed for its kind appreciation of that work, which, but for certain circumstances totally unconnected with its merits or demerits, would probably have

shared the fate of that celebrated secret history, which was so secret that its printer and author were its only readers. But then having passed some twenty summers in the Hebrides, I really knew something of what I was writing about, and had some sort of authority for setting up as "Sir Oracle." As very few people knew there was such a place as the Lews-nay, as one wise British magnate insisted it was part of the mainland of Scotland, though it was clearly proved to him it could only be reached by the sea, there was nobody to contradict me. My readers were mostly marines.

Now, however, the case is entirely reversed. Having spent about six weeks or two months in Norway-knowing nothing of its language— having had little intercourse with its people— having seen little of its interior, I am bold enough to put forth a little volume of notes

* "Cette histoire secrête

Est si secrête,

Qu'elle n'a pour lecteur

Que l'imprimeur

Et Monsieur Du Bois, qui l'a faite."

See some French Rhymer-somewhere.