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. CONTENTS. |