All who are acquainted with the difficulties attendant on any endeavour to discover truth, will at once be able to form some estimate of those which the Author has encountered in producing the following Work, where, amidst the most extraordinary contrariety of evidence, it was necessary to record the minutest circumstances with accuracy. It would be presumption to declare that he has been successful in doing so in every instance, but he may be permitted to state, that neither time, labour, travel, nor correspondence have been spared, to ensure the correctness of all facts, however trifling, and he is consequently disposed to believe, that if errors do exist anywhere throughout the whole narrative, they must necessarily be so small both in number and importance, as to leave to it all the character of fidelity that can belong to a human performance. He is the more emboldened to express this conviction, because every information was readily supplied to him by those distinguished personages who bore prominent parts in the scenes described, the sheets being afterwards subjected to their strict revision, for which he begs thus to express his most grateful acknowledgments.

At the risk of increasing the number of its pages, but with the hope of imparting to them a greater degree of interest in the eyes of those who are unacquainted with Scotland, it has been thought right to notice the antiquities, and other objects of interest, as well as to describe the scenery all along the route of The Queen’s Progress.