ADVERTISEMENT. HIS work is compofed from the ob-. THI fervations of perhaps half my life, made without the left original view of publication, from the numberlefs walks taken in and about our capital, with a mind occupied with more ideas than the frivolous vifit, or the mere object of the hour. SOME were made in company of different friends, stricken, like myself, with the love of the science of antiquities; and with the desire of tracing the progress of perhaps the first city (comparing all its advantages) in the universe. THE remarks made in these latter walks iv ADVERTISEMENT. were committed to my tablets till they became rather confiderable. In that state I determined to lay them before the public, not urged by defire of friends, nor the wish of the people, or any fimilar motives, but by my own continued propenfity to writing. I HAVE two things to apologize for in this performance. First, its irregularity but I do affure my friends it is given nearly in the same manner in which the materials were collected, and quite according to the course of the walk of the day. Secondly, Let me request the good inhabitants of London and Westminster, not to be offended at my having stuffed their Iliad into a nut-fhell: the account of the city of London, and liberties of Westminster, into a quarto volume. I have condenfed into it all I could; omitted nothing that fuggefted itself, nor am· plified ADVERTISEMENT. plified any thing to make it a guinea book. In a word, it is done in my own manner, from which I am grown too old to depart. I FEEL within myself a certain monitor that warns me to hang up my pen in time, before its powers are weakened, and rendered vifibly impaired. I wait not for the admonition of friends. I have the archbishop of Grenada in my eye and fear the imbecility of human nature might produce, in long-worn age, the fame treatment of my kind advisers, as poor Gil Blas had from his most reverend patron. My literary bequefts to future times, and more serious concerns, muft occupy the remnant of my days. This clofes my public labors. To every particular friend and correfpondent I send my most cordial thanks, for their candid and unremitted attention to my various enquiries and for their bearing fo long with my yearning 4 vi ADVERTISEMENT. yearning after information; and with my uncommon curiofity, without which no writer can proceed with the confidence of accuracy, or ought to lay any thing before the public unfanctioned by local information. So much for acknowlegement of private favors.—I take leave of a partial public, with the trueft gratitude for its long endurance of my very voluminous writings: for its kind fostering my few merits: for its affected blindness to my numerous defects. The laft act concluded! Valete et Plaudite. THOMAS PENNANT. Downing, March 1, 1790. INSTRUCTIONS |