Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/12

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ii
PREFACE.

more than ordinary guide-books profess to do,—viz., the views and opinions of a foreigner for the first time coming in contact with the noble institutions of the West. A thorough and careful revision of these extracts would require greater leisure than what the writer has at his disposal; he therefore ventures to publish them with such alterations only as seemed urgently needed.

  Calcutta
June, 1872.
  R. C. DUTT.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

It is not without misgivings that a new edition of this little work is placed before the public. The notes of a tourist who makes a hurried tour through countries of which excellent and readable accounts are available can have little interest except for his personal friends. The sketchy and superficial notes contained in the following pages can scarcely interest the public.

Again, the first four chapters of the present work are almost a reprint,—with some alteration in arrangement, and somewhat condensed,—of a little book which I published in 1872 after my return from Europe. They were extracts from