Votre très-humble, très-obéissant, très-fidèle et très savant sujet et serviteur Caritidès, Français de nation, Grec de profession, ayant considéré les grands et notables abus qui se commettent aux inscriptions des enseignes des maisons boutiques, cabarets, jeux de boule et autres lieux de votre bonne ville de Paris, en ce que certains ignorants, compositeurs des dites inscriptions, renversent, par une barbare, pernicieuse et détestable orthographe, toute sorte de sens et de raison, sans aucun regard d’etymologie, analogie, énergie ni allégorie quelconque au grand scandale de la république des lettres et de la nation Française, qui se décrie et déshonore, par les dits abus et fautes grossières, envers les étrangers, et notamment envers les Allemands, curieux lecteurs et inspecteurs des dites inscriptions ... supplie humblement Votre Majesté de créer, pour le bien de son État et la gloire de son empire une charge de contrôleur, intendant-correcteur, réviseur et restaurateur général des dites inscriptions et d’icelle honorer le suppliant.... [Illustration: ZUM SCHLÜSSEL BOZEN.] In all impartiality we have to admit that really the sign lost by and by its usefulness as a street-guide, since the trades and crafts occupying a house changed often, while the old signs, especially those which formed a part of its architecture, remained unchanged, thus producing the most ridiculous contradictions against which the above-mentioned reformer of “The Spectator” protested not without reason, saying: “A cook should not live at ‘The Boot’ nor a shoemaker at ‘The Roasted Pig.’” But the most ruthless enemy of the sign became the police itself, who once protected it. As early as the year 1419 we find an English police regulation, threatening with a fine of forty pence--in those days quite a sum--“that no one in future should have a stake bearing either his sign or leaves, extending or lying over the King’s highway, of greater length than seven feet at most.” As every innkeeper tried to outdo the other by the size and the magnificence of his sign, one arrived finally at absurdly great constructions which really hampered the traffic: as in England, where we find wrought-iron signs which, like arches of triumph, reached from one side of the street to the other. A precious old book, “A Vademecum for Malt-Worms” (British Museum), in a quaint woodcut, “The Dog in Shoreditch,” gives us a picture of such a sign monument. To the artist’s eyes they were charming things, combining happily great lanterns with the sign into a harmony which we so often find lacking in modern days, where beautiful old signs through the addition of ugly modern lamps lose all their artistic charm of yore. [Illustration: ·THE·DOG·IN·SHOREDITCH·]