It does not appear that Grosley, an inquiring and diligent note-taking Frenchman who travelled through England in 1765, noticed this remarkable sign, but so soon as he had landed at Dover he was impressed with the extravagance of signs of all sorts, and as he journeyed to London took note of their “enormous size,” the “ridiculous magnificence of the ornaments with which they are overcharged, and the height of a sort of triumphal arches that support them.” He and other foreigners travelling in England at that period soon discovered that innkeepers overcharged their signs and their guests with the utmost impartiality. Misson, another of these inquisitive foreigners, had already, in 1719, observed the signs. He rather wittily likened them to “a kind of triumphal arch to the honour of Bacchus.” It will be seen, therefore, that the surviving signs of this character are very few and very simple, in proportion to their old numbers and ancient extravagance. If we are to believe another eighteenth-century writer on this subject, who declared that most of the inscriptions on these signs were incorrectly spelled, inquiring strangers very often were led astray by the ridiculous titles given by that lack of orthography. “This is the Beer,” said one sign, intending to convey the information that the house was the “Bear”; but the reader will probably agree that the misspelling in this case was more to the point than even the true name of the inn. To know where the beer is; _that_ is the main thing. Who cares what the sign may be, so long as the booze is there? Swipes are no better for a good sign, nor good ale worse for a bad. The Brighton Road being so greatly travelled, we may claim for the gallows sign of the “George” at Crawley[3] a greater fame than any other, although that of the “Greyhound” at Sutton, on an alternative route, is very well known. The once pretty little weather-boarded inn has, unfortunately, of late been rebuilt in a most distressingly ugly fashion. The gallows sign of the “Cock” at Sutton was pulled down in 1898.[4] [Illustration: THE “FOUR SWANS,” WALTHAM CROSS.] The “Greyhound” at Croydon owned a similar sign until 1890, when, on the High Street being widened and the house itself rebuilt, it was disestablished, the square foot of ground on which the supporting post stood, on the opposite side of the street, costing the Improvements Committee £350, in purchase of freehold and in compensation to the proprietor of the “Greyhound,” for loss of advertisement. At Little Stonham, on the Norwich Road, the sign of the “Pie”[5]--_i.e._ the Magpie--spans the road, while at Waltham Cross, on the way to Cambridge, that queer, rambling old coaching inn, the “Four Swans,” still keeps its sign, whereon the four swans themselves, in silhouette against the sky, form a very striking picture, in conjunction with the old Eleanor Cross standing at the cross-roads.