No two persons ever see the same thing, or receive identical impressions from even the same object in the same situation; and every visitor to Rome thus sees a different Rome from that of his companion. The Author may therefore, without presumption, hope to be able to present a picture of what he has seen, which shall be at the same time faithful to its original, and different in many points from its predecessors. He has selected from his Notes such objects, scenes, and incidents, as have seemed to him best adapted to convey to an American the most vivid and correct notions of Rome; and he has endeavored to present them to the mental vision of the Reader, in the precise order, and with the characteristic peculiarities, which would strike his bodily eyes, if the realities were substituted for their descriptions, and were seen by the Reader, as by the Writer, with the ideas, prepossessions, and prejudices of an American and a New-Yorker.