Deus nobis hæc otia fecit.———VIRGIL
KIND and courteous readers, if any of you have a mind to see any curiosities, you must not stay home, or sit by the fire side; but you must set d(illegible text) your feet, and reambulate mountains, and then(illegible text) will see different manners, customs, and curiosities the idleness of some people, and the hardship of others: and we will see the one half of the people world, they know not how the other half do. Some lives retired in deserts, and some among mountains, as the people in Borrowdale, almost excluded from the terestrial world, because they dwell in the bleu regions, astonishing to behold; some of t(illegible text) seems to touch the very clouds. Some lives in mountains of snow, and others among shoals of ice; some are forced to shelter under the wide canopy of heaven exposed to all the inclemency of the wether: some wander in foreign regions, friendless and harbourless deplorably situated in smoky houses, covered soot and nastiness; and they see nothing within doors but poverty, and without wild cattle; as the pe(illegible text) in Borrowdale to them may be compared. And there is but one way of coming into the world, but the(illegible text) more ways of departing from it again; and the much betwixt the cradle and the grave. Some there are, who, for the sake of finery on their backs, go with hunger in their bellies; and they starve their own families by wearing silks and satins; but on(illegible text)subject my pen must cease to write, while I turn attention to local history; and for me to write all curious things I have seen in Cumberland, to me will be too tedious, and for the want of a learned (illegible text) I cannot write such a history as the most famous cholson and Burns; and had I but the golden (illegible text) of these noble grecian poets and historians, as Homer, Anacreon, Longimus, Epictatus, Pindar, He(illegible text) Xenophon, Sophocles, Gerard, Volsius, and that (illegible text) famous Athenian, the Grecian orator, the wor(illegible text) Demosthenes, or the pens of these brave and n(illegible text)
