Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/18

 the plates, for all of which I am indebted to her pencil.

With regard to the general tone of my work, which will be found to differ materially from that adopted in some recent publications, I shall make no apology for this want of coincidence between my views and those of my predecessors. I have met with much kindness in Mexico, and should be sorry to think that this kindness emanated entirely from my public situation, which was an advantage only in as far as it brought me into more general, and immediate, contact with the natives. Upon this my opinions of their character are founded. To write either a satire upon human nature in general, or a criticism upon those peculiarities of manner, in which foreigners differ from ourselves, was not my object. The first I might have accomplished without leaving home; and had my happiness depended upon the second, I should have been a very miserable man during fourteen years of my life, nearly the whole of which I have passed abroad. I confess, therefore, that it has been my pleasure to dwell rather upon the good, than the bad, and to separate the valuable parts of the national character from the scum, and dross, which a long period of misrule, followed by the total dissolution of all social ties.