Produced by David Widger THE ENGLISH SPY: An Original Work CHARACTERISTIC, SATIRICAL, AND HUMOROUS. COMPRISING SCENES AND SKETCHES IN EVERY RANK OF SOCIETY, BEING PORTRAITS DRAWN FROM THE LIFE BY BERNARD BLACKMANTLE. THE ILLUSTRATIONS DESIGNED BY ROBERT CRUIKSHANK. By Frolic, Mirth, and Fancy gay, Old Father Time is borne away. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY SHERWOOD, JONES, AND CO. PATERNOSTER-ROW. 1825. [Illustration: Cover] [Illustration: Frontispiece] [Illustration: Titlepage] BERNARD BLACKMANTLE{*} TO THE REVIEWERS. "But now, what Quixote of the age would care To wage a war with dirt, and fight with air?" Messieurs the Critics, After twelve months of agreeable toil, made easy by unprecedented success, the period has at length arrived when your high mightinesses will be able to indulge your voracious appetites by feeding and fattening on the work of death. Already does my prophetic spirit picture to itself the black cloud of cormorants, swelling and puffing in the fulness of their editorial pride, at the huge eccentric volume which has thus thrust itself into extensive circulation without the usual _cringings_ and _cravings_ to the _pick fault tribe_. But I dare defy the venal crew that prates, From tailor Place* to fustian Herald Thwaites.{**} * The woolly editor of the Breeches Makers', alias the "Westminster Review." ** The thing who writes the leaden (leading) articles for the Morning Herald.