Promenade d’un Français dans l’Irlande/Advertisement
I Fulfil, at length, the engagements which I had contracted with the Encouragers of this Work. If it appears later than it was promised, let the difficulty of publishing a French book in a strange country, plead my apology. More pains have perhaps been taken to avoid typographical errors in this volume than in the first : Not having a French compositor, the labour has wholly fallen on myself, and while correcting, I may often have read what should have been written for what was really written ; I earnestly request of the reader to do the same, not merely with respect to the typographical part, but to the style and subject-matter.
Some pleasantry may have escaped me, but none I will be bold to say, that bears the stamp of ill-humour ; and I trust to the reader’s candour to make no meaning out of the book but such as a well-intentioned mind may be supposed to have indulged in.
Encouraged by the success of my first work, I passed over from Great Britain into Ireland, in the intention of publishing such another there, as much with a view to my own instruction, as to the utility it might be of to the country I visited. Not only have I been received with the greatest kindness, but I have been provided with every thing which could promote the execution of my plan. In taking the circuit of the Island, I have employed eight or nine months, during which space of time I was every where received with a hospitality which has nothing surprising in Ireland : That in such a length of time I have been but six times at an inn, will give a better idea of this hospitality, than could be done by many a laboured phrase.
On what was merely personal to myself, I have generally been silent ; some inconveniences must have been sustained in an expedition of the kind ; but they were much fewer than could have been expected. What has most affected me, has been the death of Mr. Burton Conyngham, whose plan is in great part followed throughout this work ; could I have profited by his advice to its completion, it might have proved a more extensive and a more useful one.
At my return to Dublin, I was to have followed the course of all the canals made or projected ; and of the navigable rivers ; and to have visited the coal-mines of Kilkenny and Leitrim ; this tour, through the interior of the country would have rendered my work more complete ; but the disturbances which prevailed, would have let me hope but little safety or satisfaction. Though in the journey from Belfast to Dublin, no accident had befallen me, I had however seen enough to anticipate nothing seducing, in a renewed ramble on foot through high roads ; so remained in the capital, where I have put in order the remarks I had been able to collect, and which I now publish in the hope that they may interest the respected individuals by whom I have been treated with so much kindness, and not prove unworthy the notice of the public at large.
Fate having denied me the happiness of being useful to my own country, it is at least flattering to me under that misfortune, to have endeavoured to make myself so, to that which has afforded me an asylum. Such has been my invariable object, whether on some occasions affecting severity, or on others giving way to that native gaiety, which is the only good that adverse circumstances have not been able to take from me. Light as my style and manner may sometimes be, after what I have said, it can scarce be necessary to add, that I can never by possibility have meant to offend. Never have I knowingly deviated from the exactest truth ; and never have I spoken truer, than when I now declare, that if restored to my own country, my dearest satisfaction would be, to try to return to my kind entertainers, that hospitality which it is my pleasure and pride to repeat, they have bestowed upon me.