Page:Costello - A pilgrimage to Auvergne from Picardy to Velay - A 30154 1.pdf/7

 TO THE READER.

I had long felt a great desire to to visit Auvergne, its extinct volcanoes, boiling springs, and antique towns, the scenes of so many of the romantic histories related by Froissart, and, in the spring of 1841, set out from England with the intention of doing so ; but as the whole of the route I chose from Picardy, through Artois, Yalois, Champagne, and Burgundy, was new to me, I paused at every place of interest, and found so many, that I was much longer in arriving at my destined bourn than I had calculated on. As I met with such numerous and varied subjects worthy to arrest attention, I cannot but hope that the record I have made of my impressions may excite the same pleasure in the minds of my readers, and that those who felt amused in following my wanderings amongst the Bocages and the Vines of the Loire, will not be sorry to ac-