was
affected. And if thou vouchsafe to read this Treatise, it shall seem
to thee no otherwise than the way to an ordinary traveller, sometimes
fair, sometimes foul; here champion, there enclosed; barren in one
place, better soil in another. By woods, groves, hills, dales,
plains, and lead thee _per ardua montium et lubrica vallium et
roscida cespitum et glebosa camporum_, through variety of objects, to
that which thou shalt like or haply dislike."

If thou art scholarly, Gentle Reader, running to and fro on Old or New
Roads may do thee good. It will afford thee time to rest eye and hand,
and furnish thee with more glimpses of this working world than are to be
seen from a library-window. But if it chance that thou be not clerkly,
then mayest thou both 'run to and fro' and 'increase thy knowledge' even
with the aid of so poor a guide as he who now bids thee "Heartily
Farewell."

Footnotes:

{9} The appellation of this, the earliest Roman road, affords another
instructive example of the connection between the necessary wants of man
and civilization. Salt, among the first needs of the city of Romulus,
produced the path from the Salt-works; and the convenience of the
Salt-work Road led ultimately to the construction of the Appian,
Flaminian, and AEmilian.

{10} The first introduction of stirrups was probably not earlier than
the end of the sixth century, A.D. See Beckmann's 'History of Inventions
and Discoveries,' Eng. Trans., 1817, vol. ii. pp. 255-270.

{18} It is acknowledged on all hands that no people talk so much about
weather as the English. It is also true that no literature contains so
many descriptions of the sensations dependent on the seasons. A French
or Italian poet generally goes to Arcadia to fetch images proper for "a
fine day." We, on the contrary, paint from the life. Chaucer
luxuriates, in his opening lines of the 'Canterbury Tales,' on the
blessings and virtues of "April shoures." Our modern novelists are
always very diffuse meteorologists. In lands where the seasons are
unhappily uniform, the natives are debarred from this unfailing topic of
conversation. Hajji Baba, in Mr. Morier's pleasant tale, is amazed at
being told at Ispahan, by the surgeon of the English Embassy, that "it
was a fine day." On the banks of the South American rivers, mosquitoes
afford a useful substitute for meteorological remarks.--"How did you
sleep last night?" "Sleep!