PREFACE.
The matter contained in the following pages has been gathered from a diary, in which the incidents of each successive day had been regularly noted down, not with any intention of subsequently submitting them to the public, but from a belief that the practice, if not actually instructive, is at least sure to repay the little trouble it occasions.
As the writer had not been attracted either to Egypt or Italy, by any of the usual inducements which influence the generality of travellers, but had been suddenly transplanted, by a somewhat singular chain of circumstances, from the yellow fogs of the great Metropolis, to the bracing air and cloudless skies of the Desert, it was suggested that a relation of his experiences, might possibly present something new, even upon those countries, without encroaching upon themes already exhausted by able and experienced travellers. He has not therefore, carried the reader into the midst of scenes with which he is already well acquainted, nor are his pages filled with elaborate descriptions of churches, temples, and palaces—he has not indulged in rhapsodies upon the pleasant prospects which greeted him, as well as his predecessors, in a ramble through the garden of Italy, neither does he seek to parade his own opinions upon the many glorious works of art, it has been his good fortune to fall in with. All that awaits the reader, is a simple narrative of adventures during a few months’ active employment in Egypt, and a description of such places and things, in Rome and other Italian cities, as are more immediately connected with modern Art and its numerous votaries.
The writer trusts that the title of the present volume is too ambiguous to allow of any feeling of disappointment being engendered in the minds of those who may take it up for curiosity’s sake, and as Sand and Canvas are at the best but dry subjects, it will be hardly fair on the part of such as consent to follow him to the end, to retaliate on the score of any previous misconception.
London, December, 1848.