prevail upon his credulity to make him more miserable? or will any Surgeon expose his patient? For your _own sake_, apply to some man of ingenuity and probity, who appears to justify his practice by his success; _one of which invites you to his house_, at the Golden-heart and Square-lamp, in Crane-court, near Fetter-lane. Ask for the Surgeon, who is to be advised with every morning till 11 o'clock, and from two till nine at night, in any distemper." After the above interrogatories, it would be absurd to attempt the application of any argument against Quackery. The queries of this extraordinary Quack are absolutely unanswerable; but it will be necessary to add, for the _information of posterity_, that the daily papers are still filled with false advertisements and false testimonies of cures performed; and that the angles of the streets, walls, and fences of London, are covered with bills issued by Quacks, while, perhaps, upwards of an hundred persons obtain a livelihood by handing them to passengers in every street. This method of proceeding may be pronounced one of the customs which distinguish London; and, as I purpose tracing those, the reader will forgive my entering upon the subject without any other preliminary observation, than that I am afraid he will find some of the number trench very closely upon the rights of the articles under the head of Depravity. FOOTNOTES: [90:A] The gentleman who reviews this work in the European Magazine, mentions 'the Royal Oak Lottery,' on the authority of Congreve's "Love for Love," as particularly ruinous. [92:A] Mark the regularity of the gradations. [92:B] Gazette. [96:A] Original proposals. [97:A] The artist against whom this advertisement was levelled, "was Bat Pigeon, whose sign of a Bat and a Pigeon once attracted much attention, and of whom honourable mention has been made both by Steele and Addison. Honest Bat had a very handsome house and shop on the North side of the Strand, a few doors from St. Clement's Church Yard." European Magazine. [104:A] Newspapers. [118:A] A writer in the European Magazine says, he could add _sixty other schemes_ to my list; I should however imagine my readers are already satisfied. [141:A] This amount seems impossible; but the authority from which it was taken is correctly copied. [170:A] Poems for Children six feet high, 1757. [185:A] In other words a Ventriloquist. [191:A] The worthy Magistrate was right in his conjecture, for highway robbery is very uncommon at present in the neighbourhood of London. CHAP. III. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE INHABITANTS OF LONDON FROM 1700 TO 1800.