My journey through central France took me by Chartres, Orleans, down the Loire to Nantes, then through La Vendee to Fontenay, Niort, Poitiers, Saintes, Rochefort, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, Angouleme, Limoges, and thence back to Paris.

On looking at the book for the first time since I read the proof-sheets I find it amusing.

The fault of it, as an account of the district traversed, is, that it treats of the localities described on a scale that would have needed twenty volumes, instead of two, to complete the story of my tour in the same proportion.

I do not remember that any of my critics noted this fault.
Perhaps they feared that on the first suggestion of such an idea I should have set about mending the difficulty by the production of a score of other volumes on the subject! I could easily have done so.

I was in no danger of incurring the anathema launched by Sterne--I think it was Sterne--against the man who went from Dan to Beersheba and found all barren.