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THE

PUBLISHER'S PREFACE.

THE

HERE have been feveral publications whofe chief objects were the arts, cheats, designs, and various decep.. tions of the metropolis, but they are generally allowed to be deficient, either in point of ftyle, decency, or accuracy of delineation; and country gentlemen, who have become the purchafers of fuch unfaithful trafh, have been laying out their money to no purpose: for, instead of buying a fair, honeft, and candid defcription (intending it, very likely, as a kind of traveller's pocket companion) they have bought a farrago of fictitious stories, and a A 3 parcel

parcel of printed pages that cannot be depended upon.

Mr. Robert Randal, however, the Author of the following fheets, was not only a more ingenious, but a more ingenuous rambler: he left his country friends in order to oblige, inftruct, and entertain them; and his humble companion, John Trufty, has imitated his master with a very commendable degree of precifion..

In the course of thefe letters we are fürnished with a display of undoubted facts in a very lively and diverting flow of language. The remarks are apropos, the humour agreeable, and the scenes inftructive.:

of

Whoever is yet ignorant of the ways the lower, and, indeed, the higher departments of the LONDON people, may, in these pages be enabled to undertake a journey to the city with lefs hazard of being gulled and impofed upon; and, if they read cautiously, they may escape a

thousand

PREFACE.

vit

thousand disasters and hypocrifies, to which án honest countryman when he comes to London in the fullness of his fimplicity is expofed.

In fhort, the Publifher of Mr. RANDAL'S EXCURSION prefumes to recommend it as an impartial reprefentation. of facts, as they happen every day, and every night, in this metropolis; and as it is. the trueft guide to warn country gentlemen of misfortune, vice, and danger, by fhewing wherein they confift, and under what an infinite variety of plaufible and bewitching difguifes they offer themselves. to a stranger's eyes, imagination, purfe, and paffions.

It should be noted, in juftice to Mr. Randal, that these letters are interfperfed with fuch original observations, and fuch judicious extracts, as put them upon a more ufeful, exact, and copious scale, than any other publication of the kind, In a word, morality, humour, and well

merited

merited fatire, characterife the Excurfion.
of Mr. Robert Randal, and his old fen-
fible fervant John Trufty. As to the
freedom with which Mr. Randal has
written to his friend Mr. Crony, it must
be obferved, that he has never drawn any
pictures of vice or of voluptuoufness, so
as to make the reader, or even his cor-
refpondent, in love with them on the
contrary, he has never painted a fair and
beautiful temptation, without pointing
very plainly at the pernicious confequences
of yielding to it nor is there any thing in
this volume that can offend the chafteft
eye, except the natural difguft with which
it will view the scenes of artifice, and dan-
gerous ingenuity, that are, nevertheless,,
the inftructive fubjects of it..

CONTENTS.

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