Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/119

Rh by dint of head-work, we can discover no good reason why a little learning should not be introduced into the "London Guide." Certainly a plan much preferable to that gallimaufry of incoherencies, and antiquated rigmarole of precautions against evils that no longer exist,—of obsolete terms, and disused methods,—entitled "King's Frauds of London," scarcely a line in a page of which is applicable to the present times, and present practices; no more applicable to the present day, than the "Cheats of Scapin," or those of "Gil Blas," are to the present manners of Spain.

And yet the trash of that poor miserable varment has been adopted, and repiinted into Mr. Barrington's book, "The London Spy;" of which it comprises about one half, as near as I can reckon; another quarter of that London Spy is occupied either in telling us about horse-racing and other country cheats, or the details of mal-practices upon the river Thames, which no longer exist. These latter are copied out of one of the books I have by me, written twenty years ago, before those Docks were formed which entirely altered the practices upon, and commercial appearance of the river. A man might as well talk of the beauties of Grecian building in the reign of king Harry, as of the