PREFACE.

“ Gracious Heaven ! grant me but health, thou grea*bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my com-panion ; and shower down thy mitres, if it seems good untothy divine providence, upon those heads which are achingfor them." Sterne.

Indisposition was the author’s reasonfor leaving England , and visiting a foreignclime in search of that first of earthlyblessings, health, so justly and empha-tically desired in the above quotation.Proceeding, therefore, in the first placeto Lisbon , and then to the Mediterranean;touching at Alghesiras in the bay of Gi-braltar, and at Port Mahon in the islandof Minorca , he ultimately disembarked atGenoa .