(From the 1886 Cassell & Company edition)
INTRODUCTION
Charles P. Moritz's "Travels, chiefly on foot, through several parts
of England in 1782, described in Letters to a Friend," were
translated from the German by a lady, and published in 1795. John
Pinkerton included them in the second volume of his Collection of
Voyages and Travels.
The writer of this account of England as it was about a hundred
years ago, and seven years before the French Revolution, was a young
Prussian clergyman, simply religious, calmly enthusiastic for the
freer forms of citizenship, which he found in England and contrasted
with the military system of Berlin. The touch of his times was upon
him, with some of the feeling that caused Frenchmen, after the first
outbreak of the Revolution, to hail Englishmen as "their forerunners
in the glorious race." He had learnt English at home, and read
Milton, whose name was inscribed then in German literature on the
banners of the free.
In 1782 Charles Moritz came to England with little in his purse and
"Paradise Lost" in his pocket, which he meant to read in the Land of
Milton. He came ready to admire, and enthusiasm adds some colour to
his earliest impressions; but when they were coloured again by hard
experience, the quiet living sympathy remained. There is nothing
small in the young Pastor Moritz, we feel a noble nature in his true
simplicity of character.
He stayed seven weeks with us, three of them in London.
