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Summary

When I first began to indulge myself with a few holiday weeks in France and Germany, it was as little likely that I should ever publish any thing on the Manners of either country, as it was probable that I should ever take pen in hand to write about Art in the days when I used to leave my bed betimes to hammer out Hook's harpsichord lessons and the “Battle of Prague” on the feeblest of all old-fashioned square piano-fortes. The public will care little for the temptations which have led me to venture an essay then so little contemplated; but I hope I may be permitted, for honesty's sake, to state the amount and nature of the materials from which the following sketches of Music and Manners have been arranged, with a constant reference to English wants and English capabilities.

They are the fruit of six journeys. As I have travelled for the most part alone, a diary, for one sufficiently habituated when at home to penwork, was only a natural companion. As, moreover, I have never, since the days of Hook and Kotzwara, been able to listen to music without speculating upon the circumstances which gave it peculiarity of form and character, or noticing the place as well as the manner of its execution, — it was, again, not unnatural that a favourite pursuit, indulged in a manner which links it with so many engaging subjects of fancy and observation, should give a predominant colour to my familiar chronicle of Paris, and Berlin, and Dresden.